One of the first pieces I wrote for RFGen was a love letter of sorts to movies that have video games as a central theme. The article was pretty well received, so much so that a couple of you were in favor of expanding the idea into a full-fledged movie watching club. I liked the idea, but wanted to focus mainly on pure games writing at the time. Well, here we are a year later; I've established myself on the site and with this great community, and I'm ready to revisit the concept. So it's with no small amount of excitement that I'm announcing the debut of the RFGeneration community movie discussion group (RF Cinema for short).
Before I started writing about video games, the majority of the writing I did was movie-related. I used to work at a movie theater when I was a teenager, and I would write reviews of all the free movies I got to see on my family website. Yep, my family was one of those who had their own private website. We're a bunch of dorks, what can I say? Anyway, it's something I've always enjoyed doing, and I figure this will not only give our lovely site yet another type of fun, unique content, it'll also give us an opportunity to look at some game flicks in a little more depth and introduce some good recommendations.
Instead of focusing strictly on non-game-based films as I did in my post last year, I'd like to broaden the scope a bit and cover not just films that use games as a backdrop, but also movies based on actual games (be they good, bad, or ugly), and even documentaries. As long as there are video games involved, they're welcome for consideration. And because I intend for this to be a community participation group much like our monthly community game playthroughs, I welcome recommendations for films you want to see us cover.
Initially, my plan is to use my monthly articles to highlight the previous month's film and announce what we'll be watching that month. However, it wouldn't be a community participation event without a place for discussion, so I've created this forum thread for that purpose. I'll use my articles to sum up the discussion from the group and provide thoughts for those who don't see or would rather not participate in the forum thread, but the more interaction we get the better it will be. For those concerned about spoilers, I'll likely keep my monthly articles spoiler-free or at the very least consider them on a case-by-case basis. But given that watching a film is a much shorter and easier time commitment than a full game playthrough, I'll leave the forum group open to them, albeit marked as such as a courtesy.
This is an experiment, so depending on the level of participation and feedback I'm totally open to changing the format or expanding the forum group as necessary. If you love the feature, hate the feature, or have an idea on how to make it better, we want to hear it. And although this will become the bulk of my monthly contribution to RFGen if the idea takes off, we occasionally have an open slot in our posting schedule, so I may volunteer to jump in every now and then to drop some pure games wisdom if I'm feeling particularly ambitious or have something special to talk about.
I know what you're thinking. "This sounds awesome, but tell us what we're watching already!" Gladly. To kick things off, I've chosen the oft-forgotten Brainscan. Released in good ole 1994, it stars Edward Furlong and T. Ryder Smith. Furlong buys a new VR horror game that is more intense than he expects. He's pretty stoked about his purchase until The Trickster shows up to urge him on in playing increasingly more brutal (and impossibly real) "levels." This is an apropos pick for the month of spooky Halloween festivities and will hopefully make a great inaugural community watch. It can be a bit tricky to find a physical copy in the wild these days, but I picked mine up in a pretty cheap combo disc, which I've linked to below, along with where it can be found digitally. If you find it somewhere else, please feel free to share the info.
I'm looking forward to exploring the wonderful (and sometimes laughably terrible) world of video game films with everyone. I'll have the first movie article up for my normal November post, but the forum thread is open for all starting today. Enjoy!
Brainscan (1994) Available from: Amazon - DVD - $11.88 Amazon Video - SD and HD rental $2.99-3.99 - SD and HD purchase $9.99-12.99 VUDU - SD rental $2.99 - SD purchase $9.99 iTunes - SD and HD rental from $3.99 - SD and HD purchase $9.99-12.99 Microsoft store - SD and HD rental $2.00-3.99 - SD and HD purchase $9.99-12.99 Netflix - DVD only
EHRMAGERD! I love Brainscan! I just watched it a few months ago. I love the Primus song that plays when Eddie first meets Trickster. Welcome to this World. GREAT music too, very reminiscent of John Carpenter's themes.
Sweet! This is going to be fun. Brainscan is a fun movie to watch, and has some great music. The OST was one of the first CDs that I purchased, and I listened to it a lot.
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