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May 4, 2004
OGIC: Word Wars reviewed
Cinetrix has been fortunate enough to catch a Boston-area screening of Word Wars, the Scrabble documentary that premiered at Sundance this year. In January I interviewed the filmmakers, Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo, here and here. I still haven't seen the film myself, and Cinetrix's review makes me even grumpier about it:The journey to the nationals goes through a money game with inveterate gambler Matt at G.I. Joel's Bronx home [$1,000 rides on the best of 50 games straight], a tournament in Madfrost/Stamford [CT] that sees the first Speed Scrabble game in competition, and an event in One Veranda/Reno, Nevada. There are detours to the Hasbro headquarters in Providence, Rhode Island, and a Baltimore elementary school where Marlon extols the beauty of the game to a classroom of kids. Along the way our four heroes are up and down, hot and cold--Marlon even hits Tijuana for a little stress relief [ahem]--but their gaze never wavers from the $25,000 purse for first place. The final confrontation, scored to Miami Vice-style guitar heroics, is detailed play by play: Fischer and Spassky meet Rocky. Hack reviewers could be forgiven for pulling out the old "stand up and cheer" sobriquet. It's good stuff.
Eric and Julian, send a screener!
Posted May 4, 2004 7:46 AM
