Picking Through the NYT Mag's 2007 Breakthroughs

This week's New York Times Magazine features 15 actors who had "breakthrough" performances in 2007. It's a nice glossy yearbook even though some of the photos are too artistic for my taste. There are some online pieces that complement the magazine:

+ NYT Mag editor at large Lynn Hirschberg narrates an audio slideshow of the magazine photos while making some odd observations:

• "The Assassination of Jesse James by the 'Outlaw' Robert Ford." Uh? Really small, but how do you make that mistake - by that I mean where does it even come from? Oh well, great to see Casey Affleck as first up here.
  
• Jim Sturgess - I loved him in Across the Universe, but saying "he will have one of the biggest careers that anyone will ever witness" seems a little much at this point.
• Edith Piaf, as played by Marion Cotillard, is "probably one of the most well-known singers of all time." If that were true, La Vie en Rose would have been a box-office smash.
  
• Seth Rogen has created a character that will carry him "throughout the next 50 years of his career." Ay, I hope he finds more defining characters in that time.
• Hal Holbrook - fine, great, I liked him, but WHERE is Emile Hirsch in this group?! This is an even more incredible snub than his lack of an Oscar nomination.
  
• Ellen Page is "this year's special star." Fine - truth be told, Hirschberg's accompanying article is one of the more concisely convincing pieces I've yet read about Page's talent. Makes me feel like she succeeded despite Diablo Cody's writing of Juno MacGuff's character, not because of it.
• Josh Brolin - No Country for Old Men is covered, but shouldn't there have also been mention of his 2007 work in American Gangster, In the Valley of Elah, and Grindhouse?
  

+ Ryan McGinley's music video, "Shooting Stars," offers a behind-the-scenes look at the photo shoot:

• The comedy in this is presumably unintentional - but really, really great. Each of the actors is placed in what look to be extremely uncomfortable settings and positions (laying down on ice, standing in front of fireworks or a fire, sitting in the snowy woods or a smoky cave, wading in cold surf, Seth Rogen feeding geese in a park?) while wearing a "What am I doing here?" expression on their face (best exhibited by Sienna Miller, Michael Cera, Casey Affleck and Josh Brolin). The music works, though.

+ Jake Paltrow - Gwyneth's brother - directs the short film Breakthroughs, in which 8 of the 15 breakthrough actors discuss the actors that inspired them:

• The beginning of this was really cool.
• Casey Affleck is a lot cooler than Ben Affleck.
• Ellen Page - "I loved Jurassic Park. I thought Laura Dern was super cool....and I just thought, how cool is this person?"
• Jim Sturgess (on River Phoenix - "This guy is very cool") is going to be really cool in future roles.
• James McAvoy's accent is pretty cool.
• Amy Ryan is cooler than Helene McCready.
• Paul Dano is cooler than I thought.
• Marion Cotillard's piece would have been cooler had she been speaking French.
• James Brolin has some cool insights, but he's not quite as cool as he thinks he is.

Neither am I.

REVIEW: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (A)

Background: Clearly, documentaries have exploded in Hollywood to the point where several are released each week, when years ago it may have been one a month. Filmmakers are following animals, soldiers, spelling bee contestants, athletes, and pretty much anything else that moves. And I've enjoyed all of them! But, I must admit I scoffed when I first heard about this - Donkey Kong? Really? Where will it end? Believe it or not I even did a quick Tomatometer check on RT to see if this was a joke or a gem. Totally rare for me, but that just shows how skeptical I was. I'd never heard of the director, Seth Gordon, and I really never played Donkey Kong that much. So, I went.

Synopsis: In 1982, Billy Mitchell, then a mustached, sneaky looking guy with a mullet, set the all-time high score for the arcade version of Donkey Kong. Since that year, no one has even approached his high score of 850,000+, but not for lack of trying. In fact, an entire industry has been created out of setting world record scores for retro games, and we meet everyone from the Mappy (?!) champion to the score certifiers to the head referee. All the while, Mitchell, now a bearded, sneaky looking guy with a mullet, smirks at his desk throughout his night shift at a hot sauce factory in Florida. He brags, boasts, jeers, grins, and generally makes you feel really uncomfortable. Enter Steve Wiebe, an otherwise totally normal science teacher from Redmond, WA, who decides that Donkey Kong will be the one thing in his hard-luck life that he is going to be better than anyone else at. Wiebe buys a Donkey Kong arcade console for his garage and begins an intensive training regimen in the hope of facing Mitchell one-on-one. The rest of the film takes us to arcades and gaming competitions and essentially introduces us to a world and in its umm... unique inhabitants that are totally unknown to the average person. Wiebe faces extreme resistance from Mitchell's "disciples," but at the end earns one last shot (with wife and 2 kids in tow) at dethroning the great Billy Mitchell.

I Loved:
+ Wow - Steve Wiebe! How could you not!?
+ The surprisingly meaningful lesson you take home with you.
+ The classic lines - there are no jokes set up in this, but you and whoever you watch it with will have laughs for ages with these.

I Liked:
+ The really powerful emotional highs and lows Steve Wiebe and his family experienced.
+ "Mr. Awesome"
+ The soundtrack, background information given, and graphics.

I Disliked:
- Not knowing what has happened to so many of the film's subjects since it was completed.
- The sometimes unnecessary graphics.

I Hated:
- Wow - Billy Mitchell! How could you not!?

Grade:
Writing - N/A
Acting - N/A
Production - 9
Emotional Impact - 10
Music - 5
Significance - 5

Total: 29/30 = 97% = A

Last Word: This is the type of hilarious documentary that you tell everyone to see. I have to believe that anyone can find some humor and also some meaningful insight from Steve Wiebe vs. Billy Mitchell. And if you think it's just a completely mocking portrayal of video game players or nerds, it's not. At least not entirely. This is in the vein of Spellbound - real experiences of really interesting people that, against all odds, you really find yourself relating to. There are a lot of strange niche cultures out there, but few are shown in a way that people find appealing to watch. If this was just a historical review of the game Donkey Kong, it would lose everything. The human condition is the vital element, and it's gloriously on display in The King of Kong.