Movies

I don't go see many movies. Even before my daughter was born I wasn't much of a movie-goer. And I don't do rentals either. Basically, for me to see any given film I either have to catch it while its on, buy it on DVD, or get it on loan from Pat. When I do go to the movies, it's usually some sort of comedy/dramedy thing. Last few movies I saw in a theater? Farhenheit 9/11, Barbershop, and the Will Ferrel comedies Elf and Anchorman. Now, all three of the comedies were great films. Elf I found surprisingly good, as it managed to be a lot less hokey and saccharine than I expect from these sorts of feel-good family comedies. The other two flicks met and exceeded my expectations.

Still, these aren't exactly the sorts of films that you would expect a guy who maintain a gameblog to go see, are they? The number of geek movies I have yet to see staggers the imagination. My wife and I try to get to the Star Trek films, though Nemesis closed locally before we got a chance to see. (We went to the theater intending to watch it, but we changed our minds when we saw that the local cineplex was actually running Bowling for Columbine. When I finally saw Nemesis on TV I was glad I hadn't spent ticket money on it.) And we are big Star Wars fans.

But past that, my knowledge of geek-oriented film starts to looks like a desert wasteland. I've seen most of Spiderman on TV, but the sequel is an enigma to me. I haven't seen either X-movie. I only watched Fellowship of the Ring because I could borrow the DVD set from Pat. I still haven't seen the rest of the LoTR trilogy. Though I did re-read the books, for what it's worth. And I have yet to see the Matrix, the film that inspired this post. I know Pat's got a copy and I think it's time I bummed it off of him. There's this new Matrix-based rules-light rpg that's made some ways in the RPG.net set. It's called There Is No Spoon and it's written by RPGnetter and generally nifty guy Steve Darlington (a.k.a. SteveD). SteveD first came to my attention by virtue of his great reviews at RPG.net and his wonderful articles at Places to Go, People to Be, especially his Star Wars GM advice and his comprehensive History of Roleplaying series.

So in a nutshell, when SteveD writes a free rpg about kicking ass in the Matrix, then by golly I need to see the frickin' film. Even if I never run There Is No Spoon, I at least need to finally check out the movie. I know my logic here is a little bass-ackwards, but that's the way my brain works sometimes.