Resolved (HBO) - Both

Jennie and I often find the doldrums of summer are a catalyst to some of the worst television has to offer. Simply look at the lineup of the networks: Celebrity Circus, So You Think You Can Dance, and America’s Got Talent. This forces us to the barren wasteland of our digital cable as we search for something to watch.

Why don’t we do something active? Read books? Play strip poker? Something? Who knows, get off my back.

This particular night we stumbled upon a documentary that has been making the festival circuits. Now, I would be hard pressed to say that a documentary about policy debate garners any of my interest, but for some odd reason I stayed on the channel and Jennie and I were treated to a fantastic little film. You may have previously read my thesis on documentaries as of late, so I won’t go into the manipulation I’m sure occurred in the presentation, but I truly felt for these “characters”.

The documentary focuses on two sets of debaters, one from a highly prestigious Texas school and another from an inner city California school. The film at first focuses on how debate has mutated to its current state that is a speed read (sp-read) contest to see who can up the body count till one team proves the other team’s solution will cost more to humanity. The two teams the movie focuses on use vastly different strategies from this, now common, strategy and are successful in varying degrees.

Greg Whiteley, the director, uses cartoons and celebrities to push along the agendas and describe the action as it unfolds. This method is used by many of the new documentaries and I find it to be a perfect way to keep one's interest in a particularly dull subject. The team from the inner city eventually stands out as the true heroes of this film as they mount an attack on policy debate itself. They believe that just winning trough shear volume of arguments read isn’t true debate. Their noble attack leads to the climax of the film which finds them confusing debate teams across California as they deconstruct the very act of debate. We cheered as the bewildered opponents shuffled their stacks of paper and grumbled that they couldn’t understand what was going on. But, as the Clash have taught us, if you fight the law, the law will win. And in light of this inevitability the team eventually falls, but it works for the film.

6 out of 10: Whiteley turns policy debate into movie magic!

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Dvd) - Ashleigh

Ever since Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine (2002) documentaries have had a resurgence in popularity. Super Size Me (2004), March of the Penguins (2005), An Inconvenient Truth (2006) have all ridden this wave to fame and fortune. But all of these movies, excluding March of the Penguins, have been reviled as they have been revered, with naysayers and voices of decent crying charlatan and hoax at the filmmakers and their subjects. I say this only to put you in the frame of mind I was in when starting this film. I was looking for the director, Seth Gordon, to play on my preconceived notions (of what, I’m not sure, but documentarians lie right? They show us only half the truth - don’t they? They show us only what they want us to see - right?)

Billy Mitchell, the long lost brother of Wolf from American Gladiators, is the world champion of Donkey Kong. His record of 874,200 in 1982 is the best in the world (actually this is a lie; in 2000 Tim Sczerby obtained 879,200, the current record at the making of this film.) But Billy is also a world class villain. There is no documentary trick to make this guy into any more of an ass than he is. He is simply an arrogant, egotistical – gamer? In Billy’s own words, “Well, maybe they'd like it if I lose. I gotta try losing sometime.” The documentary shows very little of his family life, it contains damning footage of him being overly aggressive in his business practices, and he is a no-show in the one chance the documentary gives him to defend himself. But, he is the villain and the documentarian shows this with a lot of help from Billy.

Steve Wiebe is our hero. He is a nice guy who is dragged into the sorted world of competitive gaming and despite the pressure and upsets he maintains his nice guy persona. Steve is often overlooked, he takes second place in everything, and was recently let go from his job when the movie starts (he becomes a teacher while filming, I can’t think of nobler profession). You can’t dream of a better guy to take on the likes of Billy “Wolf” Mitchell.

The movie sets up that Steve beats Billy score, on videotape, one night in his garage and sends it to Twin Galaxies, the retro gaming record holders and friends of Billy. Steve is given the record and a small amount of fame in his local town. But then referees from Twin Galaxies come out to Steve’s town and look at his machine and claim that the machine is tampered with and thus the score is revoked, giving Billy the record back. (Actually this is a lie; Wiebe held the high score at the moment his score was revoked, and it reverted back to Steve’s high score.) Steve then goes out to FunSpot, a Retro gaming Mecca, to beat the score live and compete against Billy face to face. Billy sends a videotape. Steve beats Billy’s score live (the now reigning live high score), but Billy’s videotape, a scrambled mess of glitches and odd time stops, shows Billy reaching over a million points and Steve’s achievement is forgotten. In this moment the movie shines showing Steve’s everyman defeat against the cogs of the Twin Galaxies and Billy’s suspect tape. Steve’s plight is tangible at this moment as he is helpless to defeat the genius of Billy’s villainy. I won’t go into any more detail here.
This documentary certainly tries its hardest to make you root for Steve and fear and hate Billy. And even when I knew I was being shown half-truths and pandering I still rooted for Steve. You can’t help it. Billy is a villain without the cameras. Steve is a good guy without Donkey Kong. While I understood Steve’s emotional, family loving character could have been a construct of the filmmaker; it’d be hard to fake. And while Billy’s character could have been selective quotes and sharp edits; it’d be hard to fake.

8 out of 10: A fantastic underdog tale that will unexpectedly draw you in.