“Noël Mitrani is the director of Sur La Trace D’Igor Rizzi, which premiered in Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006, winning the CityTV Award for Best Canadian First Feature. The film, in which Jean-Marc Thomas (Laurent Lucas), a former European soccer player, wanders the streets Montreal before falling into petty crime while grieving his dead lover, was reviewed positively by Torontoist before the festival, and now plays as part of Canada’s Top Ten tomorrow night, Wednesday, January 31, at 8:45pm, and Mitrani will be taking part in the panel, New Quebec Cinema, on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 6:30pm.”

A nice little interview with a rather lovely fellow. Worth reading, and as I’ve said before, Sur La Trace D’Igor Rizzi is well worth seeing.

“Our title this week of course refers to Catch and Release, a film which has been so endlessly trailered on TV (and we don’t even watch that much) that Torontoist feels like we could recite the whole bloody film right now. ‘The man I was going to marry is dead! I’m sitting wearing my wedding dress and moping – it’s a girl thing! Kevin Smith is fat and talentless, but friends with Ben Affleck so he can be in this! I’ve fallen in love with you now, sexy and stereotypical unshaven male lead! The End!’

Is that about right? Now’s Glenn Sumi joins us in being incredibly bitchy about a film that looks so depressingly targeted (and without soul) that it makes us want to catch Jennifer Garner in a big net and release her into the ocean. By which we mean ‘drown her.’”

So! A couple of things worth noting here, because I do discuss Smokin’ Aces a bit in this piece. First up, Joe Carnahan is pretty pissed off about the critical reception, as you can see from his blog, which is unfortunate, but far more interesting (and newsworthy) is that Smokin’ Aces is in Second Life!

Yep, they created a version of the Nomad hotel in the game and there’s, like, weapons and stuff to play a game called “Second Life Assassin.” I was momentarily thinking about booting up Second Life to give it a shot, but I didn’t as

a) I uninstalled Second Life recently
b) Thanks to Second Life’s rubbish client/controls, it’s almost certainly unplayable.

That’s just an educated guess, however! It could be, against all odds, wonderful. That’s so unlikely however that thinking about the amount of money that Universal will have sunk into the project has me rather annoyed. For a similar amount of cash I’m certain you could get a talented team to produce a short game (or even just a mod) that would be more worthwhile. I guess without Second Life they wouldn’t even think about making a game, though.

“Smokin’ Aces plays out like an adaptation of a Vertigo graphic novel that never was, with an uneasy mix of action, comedy, pathos and balls out weirdness that’s wrapped in such a heavy layer of constant tension that at points it’s difficult to catch your breath. That it manages to keep you on the edge of your seat is more a testament to Clint Mansell’s powerful score and some brilliant performances than it is to the plot, in which idiosyncratic hit men face off against each other and the F.B.I. to be the first to capture Buddy ‘Aces’ Israel (Jeremy Piven).”

This is an extended version of a review that should be in the print version of Exclaim!, which is hitting the newsstands on January 30th. In stark disagreement with every other critic out there (it seems like) I actually quite liked this, despite it being chock-a-block with flaws. It really is down the score and the frenetic direction, because the plot is hateful rubbish. If I was in the habit of giving scores, this would get a 3 out of 5. Not really for everyone.

I’ll probably have more to say about it in tomorrow’s Film Friday.

“Michel Kripalani is the senior games industry manager for Autodesk, overseeing aspects of Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya and Autodesk MotionBuilder from the perspective of a game developer.

Gamasutra caught up with Michel (and PR Specialist Shannon McPhee) at the recent Autodesk Backstage Pass press summit held in Montreal to discuss Autodesk’s acquisition of Alias (Toronto-based developer of Maya), the future of the games industry, and the future of Autodesk itself.”

Um, no disrespect to Michel but it’s rather hard to think of anything to say about this interview other than what I’ve already put on the page; it’s interesting if you are interested in Autodesk? Which you could be! And Michel was an excellent interviewee, so there’s that, too!

“So the question that usually comes with any film starring a WWE Wrestler is: ‘is it a Mr. Nanny or a They Live?’ With The Marine, WWE champion John Cena’s first big screen role, the question is: ‘did screenwriter Michelle Gallagher secretly construct the film as a tribute to the mid-’80s Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle (and funniest movie of all time) Commando?’”

What’s this, you may ask? Well, it’s the first of hopefully many film reviews for Exclaim! Magazine, a monthly music paper that bills itself as “Canada’s Music Authority”, and probably is! Like the NME or something but not rubbish and not weekly.

So you might go on to ask, “Why on earth would you review The Marine on DVD, Mathew?” Well the review explains! Essentially I just wanted 300 words to try and convince people to see Commando, which, not merely the funniest movie of all time, may be the culmination of all of humanity’s work. It’s just that excellent. ["If Matrix were here, he'd laugh too." - Ed.]

As tonight was the launch party for this issue (that I, um, didn’t attend, because I’m a shut-in) I suppose it’s fair game to post about the issue now. Yes, for this fine issue of Broken Pencil (which I haven’t actually seen in the flesh yet) I’m fairly prominent, contributing a lovely interview with Canadian filmmaker and all round excellent chap Jamie Travis (director of The Saddest Boy in the World) and a list article that features the top 20 indie games you should play. They are, in no particular order:

Dokutsu Monogatari (Cave Story), Gunroar, 9.05 (playable online in Java), Nethack, Defcon, Alien Hominid, Every Extend, Armjoe, Façade, Orisinal (the games are playable online in Flash), Samorost (playable online in Flash), Zookeeper (playable online in Flash, and it’s a new updated version!), Naked War, Porrasturvat, Ray Hound, Fate, Klass of ’99, Narbacular Drop, Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, and Cloud.

Not so much a definitive list as the first 20 games that came to mind that I like that are sufficiently varied in style and genre. You can read my explanations on why I picked them if you pick up the issue! (Available for purchase at the Broken Pencil website.)

Edit 25th January 2007: I’ve added some information to let you know which of the games are playable online in Java or flash and therefore definitely won’t contravene a “Don’t play games on our PC because it messes it up” rule. Hopefully. Oh, and I’m suddenly annoyed that I forgot all about the wonderful games from Eyemaze, such as Tontie. Oh well! There’s always next time.

“While Wario Ware: Smooth Moves may well be astonishingly short and have some terrible design oversights in the multiplayer mode, it is, without a doubt, the most fun I’ve had on the Nintendo Wii so far, and shows off the machine’s potential remakably.

Perhaps it merely had to be over so quickly to maintain such a concentrated level of joy, I don’t know; but if you cherish quality over quantity, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves is essential.”

Before anyone starts on me, yes, I’m well aware that the Wario Ware titles are always really short, but Wario Ware: Smooth Moves was over in about 3 hours, and that’s disappointing, no matter what way you cut it. It’s really, really good though.

“It’s generally a given that the new year that we’ve just entered is 2007 A.D, but for Xbox 360 owners it looks like we’re going to have to come to terms with living in 1 A.G.: After Gears.

Announced at CES as having sold an astounding 2.7 million copies worldwide, there can be few Xbox 360 owners that haven’t played Gears of War at least once, and I sincerely doubt that there are many that, uninterested in its unusual take on the third-person shooter, would be hungry for Lost Planet, a new third-person shooter that joins a marketplace already crowded with other top quality titles such as Rainbow Six: Vegas.”

Lost Planet seems to be a sort of “love it or hate it” kind of game; people are loving it for really being “videogamey” or they’re hating it for being unrealistic.

Personally I don’t love it or hate it; I consider it a pretty bad missed opportunity, though. Like Capcom’s similarly flawed P.N.03, whoever designed the controls was clearly under the impression that they were clever, streamlined and comfortable to use, when they’re actually absurdly clunky and frustrating.

Oh well. At least you can run and shoot at the same time in Lost Planet.

“This Film Is Not Yet Rated is rated (oh the irony!) at least fairly highly by the critics. Now’s Deirdre Swain asks, however ‘Aside from being a nifty coup, what does revealing the raters themselves accomplish?’ Which reminds us of The Golden Globes: Hollywood’s Dirty Little Secret, the documentary that reveals the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to be a bunch of star-obsessed nobodies. The answer to Deirdre’s question? Well, probably not much, but it’s good to know, don’t you think?”

I particularly wanted to mention The Golden Globes: Hollywood’s Dirty Little Secret in this post because the Golden Globes was on recently, and when you know how weird the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are, the fact that stars always thank them specifically in their acceptance speeches seems incredibly creepy. There’s only about 90 of them, they all write for completely inane, meaningless publications, and they demand that each individual member gets a photo with the stars on their lavish, freebie-filled junkets. Weirdos.

I guess (and so early in my career!) I’ve just made sure that I’ll never join their ranks. Thank goodness.

Goodness! What on earth could this article be about?

Well, it’s about the Wii and PS3 launches! Because I wasn’t about to stand outside in the pouring rain with food poisoning (the PS3 launch) or get up early on a Sunday morning (the Wii launch) and only get the GamesIndustry.biz articles out if it, no sir.

It’s funny to think now, actually, how easy it is to get a PS3 and how badly the launch basically backfired for everyone (that includes Sony, not just the re-sellers.) I’m rather glad I didn’t get caught up in the madness; $2000 profit sounded too good to be true. I suppose a fair number of folks still made out like gangbusters, though.

The issue is available as a PDF at the Game Reactor website, and you know, this might actually be the last piece of work I had to archive! I should celebrate somehow. I do suppose the website will get a lot quieter now, too. Oh well.