12:43 PM
It's been a great weekend at the Wisconsin Film Festival. Outside of great films, the most notable thing was that nearly every movie I attended was sold out--even films being shown in the 1500+ seat Orpheum theater. At a screening of the Thai musical Mon-Rak Transistor, people were sitting on the floor in the back and aisles of the the theater. I'm suspecting that a) next year the festival will have either more showings or more theaters involved to absorb some of this growth, and b) I'll be getting my tickets they day the day they go on sale (there were at least two movies I missed out on--one an obscure Iranian flick--because I waited a week.)

The best film I saw all last weekend came late last night at a packed showing of Breath Control: A History of the Human Beat Box. I've always found beatbox amazing, ever since seeing the Fat Boys on television way back in the day. But it was fantastic to see one master beatboxer after another, and the documentary took me beyond simple respect for musical ability and respirative stamina to get a real sense of history and context for the artform. Afterward the filmmaker, a UW grad, held a great Q-and-A session which led to the highpoint of the screening when he busted out some live beatbox with Joe Random from the audience.

Yesterday at the festival JP and Zusty and I went to an incredibly inspirational talk given by the CEO of gameLab--makers of Junkbot and many other fine games. He had a lot of phenomenally good things to say about games and about how they make them (prototyping!) and even gave the closest thing I've ever heard to a working definition for "fun" in games: "a satisfactory level of interactivity". Of course, "satisfactory" is still subjective, but it's a step in the right direction. Afterward, the three of us hung out and talked with him about indy games and the difficulties they're facing in the current environment. We were there almost two hours, but I wish it could have been longer.