I've waited for this day for a long time. TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball is one of my all-time favorite documentaries, but it hasn't been widely available. Until now! TILT can now be found on
AND
It doesn't matter if you are a pinball fan or not; I wasn't a big pinball person when I first saw the film. The story told by TILT has got everything a documentary is supposed to have; interesting facts and beautifully illustrated background history, interviews with key contributors (like the guy who invented putting flippers at the bottom of the play field), and a story with an endearing human element to tie everything together.
Also check out Greg's Vimeo channel, there are some very cool additional clips there.
If you use Netflix or iTunes, go check it out IMMEDIATELY, and don't forget to add the bonus DVD to your Netflix queue. It's got some really great extras. Just do it, have I ever steered you wrong before? Swing by here and let me know what you think afterwards, and if you'd like to buy a copy to own after that, you can get it on the official website.
You can see the live chat that goes along with it here.
Update: 6:32 PM EST - OH SNAP! He's on his 3rd (and possibly final) try, somewhere under 200k I think, and the power just went out! You can hear them though. This is epic, I tell you, it's a SAGA...
I'm not ENTIRELY sure what to make of this, some of it is very funny, some of it is flat-out stupid. Are they serious about trying to help teach people good money habits? This clip would not lead you to believe that necessarily, but the WalletPop article sounds promising:
Green and the rest of his cast are here to help. "The whole goal of the show is to offer kids financial education, without something stale or boring, but super-informative about the basics," he says. In Unbroke, he goes off on the importance of a healthy mortgage. Samuel L. Jackson plays the bestselling author of Broke as Hell and Not Going to Take it Anymore. Will Smith takes on a boardroom of corporate-finance executives (which should be cathartic for all of us). Among other stars demystifying personal finance: Cedric the Entertainer, Christian Slater, Rosario Dawson, and -- in the program's showstopper -- the Jonas Brothers, who teach the secrets of stock-trading to an audience of screaming girls.
It kicks off tonight on ABC, and I think I'll check it out.
Seems like it's been ages since I reviewed a geekumentary here! I've been so focused working on my own, that in the meantime, some brand new ones have popped up.
I've got the Documentary Channel's sling website bookmarked, and have watched a lot of wonderful items since doing that. There was the documentary by Johnny Knoxville about an old moonshiner, and Johnny Berlin, a character-centric film about a porter on a luxury train. Both were FANTASTIC.
The most recent find, though, was even better. Their most recent blog featured a documentary called 10 MPH.
In this documentary, two guys give up their corporate jobs to trek from Seattle to Boston on the two-wheeled gyroscope contraption (a Segway), crossing some of the same paths as the Oregon Trail and the Lewis and Clark expedition all while traveling about the same speed as the Pony Express did way back when.
There is nothing geekier than a Segway, so welcome to the geekumentary club, guys! I really enjoyed this film, to the point that after watching it, I went straight to their website to purchase it. And there found that they are all about indie distribution. In fact, they even let you name your price for the film.
My copy arrived in the mail yesterday, and my husband and I watched it that night. At first, he was lukewarm about the whole thing, but I could see him get drawn in. He's a big fan of Into the Wild, and 10 MPH shares some strong elements with that story, including a soundtrack with a very similar sound. Its biggest strengths are in the people met on the journey, and their stories. It also didn't hurt that the end goal was Boston and Bedford, NH, about 20 minutes north of us.
As a documentary, they had all the right elements going for them. A storyline with a specific goal that the audience could easily grasp from the beginning but the achievement of which is not known straight away. Adversity, challenge, and a high degree of "I can relate" factor (who wouldn't want to quit their day job and pursue their dreams?). There were some technical facts I wondered about that weren't covered in the film, like how long a Segway battery lasts, how many they brought, and other trivia that would have been fun to know (may find that on the commentary). The chasing your dreams part was laid on a bit thick, but was nonetheless inspiring and heartwarming, and the medly of quotes at the end was a nice touch.
They've got a second film, Ten Yards, which is about fantasy football. I don't partake, but it's obviously a topic in my genre and I can see the potential for it to be entertaining (check out the trailer on that site). Josh and Hunter's real dream is clearly to make documentaries, and they're certainly doing it, with the third film they're working on, "Ride the Divide - a documentary about the world's toughest mountain bike race. The race spans 2711 miles from Banff, Alberta to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, and is fully self-supported."
I don't own a lot of geekumentaries, and many I do own I bought only because that was the ONLY way to see them. In this case, I saw the whole thing, and still wanted 10 MPH for my collection. I'm really looking forward to the director commentary, and to reading their take on indie distribution, because I know it can be quite an undertaking, even in the current self-publishing web 2.0 environment where one would assume such things are now easy. Which reminds me, I've been meaning to get a copy of BBS: The Documentary to review - that's another one you can watch online, but when you're talking about a 5 hour film...it's just better to own.
