Because there’s nothing like waiting until the last minute to do some holiday shopping, we’ve compiled this handy-dandy shopping guide to the best DVDs of 2008 that you can use now, or wait until the dust settles and clean up with any cash that Santa or Hanukkah Harry happened to leave you. It’s broken down by the person you’ll be shopping for to make things easier, even if that person happens to be yourself.
When noted, we’ve picked the Blu-ray version over the standard definition, because we try to be all about 1080p and other technical terms whenever possible. But, the regular versions are just fine as well. Still, it’s true what they say: once you go HD you’ll never go back.
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I recently had the chance to sit down with director Seth Gordon while he was promoting his holiday comedy Four Christmases, which is a decent enough film with a few laughs in it, most of them courtesy of Jon Favreau’s UFC fighter wannabe character and his redneck wife, excellently played by Katy Mixon. Growing up in Texas, it’s a great portrait of many holidays past.
However, I couldn’t stop myself from asking him about The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, and the controversy it’s stirred up. In my other article talking about that movie and Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, my point was that Ghosts was a much better film if you’re looking for a documentary about the arcades of yesteryear. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t entertained by The King of Kong –– on the contrary I find it very entertaining, and having met Steve Wiebe several times, he literally is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, just like in the film.
My main problem was the fact that Seth and his producer Ed Cunningham had seemed to play fast and loose with the facts when they edited their movie. Gordon doesn’t deny this, and he tantalizingly drops the fact that Billy Mitchell was actually much worse than they depicted in the movie. Does this mean that there needs to be a The King of Kong 2: Take This Hammer and Shove It sequel to set the record straight? I’d stand in line for that.
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On this week’s installment of The Media Diet, we talk to Seth Gordon, director of the documentary King of Kong. King tells the story of Steve Weibe, a mild-mannered middle-school teacher/Donkey Kong phenom who attempts to set the Guinness World Record for highest recorded score on the arcade version of the game. Steve has only one obstacle, and that’s charismatic fast food employee/”Gamer of the Century” Billy Mitchell, who held the Donkey Kong record for 20 years until Weibe managed an unprecedented 1,000,000 point game. Mitchell and Weibe spent several months battling for the Guinness record, and Gordon got it all on film.
It may sound totally dorky, but it’s also a full-on crowd pleaser. Last weekend, I went to a screening at the Museum of the Moving Image, where the median audience member age is probably 65, and the King of Kong trailer brought the house down. You can see what all the fuss is about on August 17, when Kong opens in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Austin (it’s set to expand to additional cities in the weeks to follow; to find out when Kong is coming to your town, go here and click on “Theaters and Tickets” at the bottom of the page). And click through to read Gordon’s thoughts on Uwe Boll, Saved By The Bell, his upcoming feature adaptation of King of Kong, and the Roger Ebert vs. Gamers debate.
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“If the personalities of 
