The Asian Film Festival of Dallas 2007 had its opening night tonight. Justin Lin's new movie Finishing the Game was the opener. It is sort of a fake documentary about an attempt to finish Bruce Lee's last movie Game of Death. You can catch the Fist of Führer spoof from the movie on youtube. Sung Kang and Roger Fan are the stars but it has cameos from Ron Jeremy, George Takei, MC Hammer, and James Franco.

Beyond the reverence they have for Bruce Lee its clear that Eric Byler's movies or James Hou's documentary Masters of the Pillow are part of the subtext. Unlike those filmmakers who focus on subverting Asian stereotypes Lin chooses to leverage them as humor in the subtext. Sung Kang's character being cast in a "European" (porn) movie seems like a light jab at Dr. Darrell Hamamoto making porn movies with an Asian male lead to repair the Asian male's self-image. I had most recently seen Sung Kang in The Motel where he gives an outstanding performance.

I sprung for the VIP pass this year so I plan to hit a lot more movies. As usual the programming really looks top notch.

King of Kong came out this weekend and will be gradually hitting more cities. I saw this movie back in March at the AFI Dallas Film Festival and have been excited about its release ever since. It's about the fight between two guys to be Donkey Kong world champion. I have been trying my hardest to get people to make this one of the five movies they see in the theater this year.

I suppose there is a formula to documentary filmmaking where you find a subculture, look for some kind of competitive angle and then film it to its conclusion. Okie Noodling did this with people who catch catfish using their fists. Pucker Up! did this for competitive whistling. There are a number of them that involve word games: spelling, Scrabble, crossword puzzles, etc. But some of those documentaries ignore the path blazed by earlier subculture documentaries like Crumb. A lot of what makes Crumb work is the interpersonal dynamics, not any competitive drive to be the best underground comic creator. You can even see the same structure at work in a narrative movie like Little Miss Sunshine.

Which is why I so thoroughly enjoyed in King of Kong. It captures the competition and the interpersonal relationships. It covers Billy and Steve's relationships with the people around them, beyond just what they think of their gaming skills. The filmmaker does an excellent job getting these people to talk like the camera isn't there. While that might make a good documentary it wouldn't be half as entertaining without Billy's outsized persona. He wears ties with the US flag on them. He talks about himself in the third person. He frames the passion of competitive gaming in terms of the abortion debate. At times the feud is so big I felt like I was watching the Trojan War unfold. Billy is the unbeatable Achilles and Steve is the reluctant warrior Hector. It's also edited together very well to keep the story twisting and pumping along to the showdown.

Afterwards you can ruminate on the allegorical examination of American culture, aging male nostalgia for childhood, absolute truth and how to find happiness in a culture that says happiness is reserved for children. But while you're watching, and for the 10-15 minutes immediately after its over, you'll feel excited, amused, and charmed in a way that you haven't been most of the year.

I was watching Harakiri tonight when I got my million dollar TV series idea: "So You Think You're a Samurai Warrior?"

I've been trying since mid-July to find someone who will replace my water-sourced heat pump. It has a freon leak in the condenser coil. It no longer cools.

I used to leave it on anyways and pretend that moving hot air around the loft made it feel cooler. This August I just switched it off entirely. Now the 100+ degree weather has come and my willpower doesn't seem strong enough to make it feel cool anymore.

I've finally found someone willing to replace it, but it will be 7-10 weeks since it must be custom built. During that time I plan to lease my loft out to the CIA for terrorist interrogations. A week of the heat and any terrorist's willpower will evaporate too.

The Amiga computer was a dream given form: an inexpensive, fast, flexible multimedia computer that could do virtually anything.

Ars posted the first part of a history of the Amiga. The Amiga 1000 changed my life. I got it as a birthday present, a few months after my father died.

Since then I've learned that it is rare for something of excellence to persevere for very long. Evolution rewards the mediocre. The more average you are the more likely you are to breed.