Chumpatization?

9/4/07

King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Directed by Seth Gordon

TVOR has a new favorite word, and that word is "chumpetize". It means what you'd think it means--to make a chump of. But it sounds way better. It's used as both a passive and an active verb, and it's really useful, as in "He totally chumpetized you", and "Don't get chumpetized!" Thanks to one of the inhabitants of the world of classic video games we meet in King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, we now have a word to describe something we rightly fear in this complex world, full of people and organizations that would think nothing of chumpetizing us, and would probably even enjoy it. But enough of the vocabulary discussion. And TVOR's paranoia.

King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is a documentary about world-class Donkey Kong competition, something probably 99.9% of us didn't know existed. It tells the story of Steve Wiebe, a nice guy from Redmond, Washington, who, after being laid off from Boeing, polishes up his Donkey Kong skills, which are considerable, and takes on the Donkey Kong establishment, another thing that 99.9% of us didn't know existed. Steve fights to have his top score acknowledged by Twin Galaxies, the official record-keeping entity, and to engage the current champion in a live, head-to-head match. Will the nice guy finish first? Or will he be chumpetized? And who are all these people? Don't they have lives? Am I that weird about the things I care about?

This film doesn't really need the wide screen, so it's not necessary to run out and see it in the theater--but you probably won't regret it if you do. It's definitely worth catching on video when it becomes available, though. The cast of characters is way more interesting than any you could make up. Which makes you wonder about the remake that's being planned, using actors. What's the point?

Video note:

New on DVD today--

The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Ken Loach's Palme d'Or-winner from 2006, is a good movie with a bad title. Cillian Murphy stars in this tough, beautiful film about a young Irish doctor who becomes radicalized and joins the IRA in the 1920's.