Tonight at 9:30pm the Mayfair hosts the Ottawa Premiere of Indie Game: The Movie (followed by screenings on the 21st and 22nd at 8:30pm).

At one point in time I was deeply entrenched in video game playing and culture. I went to arcades (back when they existed in a more commonplace manner), had multiple video game platforms, even had subscriptions to video game magazines (back when people still read magazines). It wasn't a conscious decision to stop playing, but I think somewhere around college life just started getting excessively busy and something had to give. In a perfect world of no day-job or chores or only having so many hours in the day to watch movies and read comics, I'd likely still play. The only time I do play video games now-a-days are rare occasions of social interaction game playing of stuff like Mario Kart or hockey...but that happens very few and far in-between.

Despite my neutrality towards video games in general, I none-the-less found this documentary fascinating. It was expertly crafted together by the film-making team, and they had the luck of the documentary fates upon them. The 'characters' were all enthralling in their quests for independent video game design glory, the the story-line paths they went down were more interesting than most scripted Hollywood fiction.

Roger Ebert stirred up some controversy and debate a while back with his statements in that he didn't think video games were art. One of his arguments was that video games weren't art because they could be finished or not finished. My first thought at that train of thought was that books, movies or songs could be finished or not finished as well. You could be just as likely to read half a book and leave it behind out of disinterest as you might be to not get through the last level of a video game. More perplexing is that I think the problem might be that Roger doesn't like video games because they don't come from a distinct voice. Which is quite perplexing even more so since Roger reviews movies for a living, which of course are made by writers, producers, actors, a director (or two) and not one singular distinct voice.

Especially after seeing Indie Game: The Movie, any rants against the artistry of video games seem to be a kin to classical music aficionados being up in arms in anger over that rock n roll music stuff that the kids are all to not actually being music. Plus, lest we never forget that he gave positive reviews to not one but two Tomb Raider movies. It will also make you feel like giving up all other pursuits and instead just playing video games endlessly from all day and night. Even with nerds as central characters instead of a skin-tight wardrobed Angelina Jolie, Indie Game is way better than and Tomb Raider cinematic adventure.