Headed into Melbourne on Saturday morning to check out the latest ACMI offering - The Dreamworks Animation exhibition. All manner of information regarding Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda to name but a few. The art work was dazzling, the story boards fascinating and the dragon riding simulator had me so excited that I very nearly shrieked out loud with joy! This was an exhibition for the big kids at heart and a bit lighter on than previous exhibitions that I have been to at ACMI, but I still loved it and so did Zoe and Seth. I think that taking anyone under the age of 7 would probably be a bit of a waste of money though, as it was more gallery than action and the interactive stuff was clearly designed to be handled by older and wiser fingers.
After bento-box lunches, I knew that a visit to Melbourne wouldn't be complete without a stop in at the Block Arcade on Collins Street. I always feel like a child again when I peer into the front window of the Hopetoun Tea Rooms at the decadent cakes and delights. It always makes me think of the times that my mum would take me into the city to cash in her Lipton's tea coupons and we would get a treat of some sort.
And who can pass up a stop at Haigh's chocolate shop? Not me, that's for sure! Came home with an utterly unnecessary block of coconut and macadamia chocolate and a tin of supreme drinking chocolate. God these holidays have fattened me up like a prize sow ready for the agricultural show!
We all spent the evening playing a board game. Seth found an old and yet complete version of the Scene It board game when we were Op shopping the other day; stung us a whole $5. Well the questions were pretty dated, and the clips were retro to say the least, but we played it anyway. Seth, Craig and Zoe against me because apparently I know too much about movies! Really? - that seems unfair! Anyway, turns out that I don't really know enough at all and they hung me out to dry, bastards! I will get 'em next time!
But all of that retro movie talk did get me thinking about an oldie and a goody that I do highly recommend that everyone sees, which was also being played on a TV monitor at ACMI interestingly enough.
Release Date: 1999
Rating: MA 15+
Running Time: 97 mins
David Cronenberg (aka the King of Venereal Horror/ Baron of Blood) steps into the Science Fiction/Thriller realms with this walk on the wild side movie about an organic gaming system called eXistenZ.
We are plunged into a future where interactive gaming is biological, people literally 'plug into' their video games after being fitted with a bio-port. Once you are in eXistenz the world alters, it is both usual and unusual all at once - organic and in-organic. Objects can be manipulated in new and inventive ways and opportunities to bend reality seem endless; it is an eerie and highly interesting existence indeed.
Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh are fabulous as the couple on the run in a strange foreign landscape, and this is truly a breakthrough body of work from Cronenberg. Considering the limited technology in gaming when it was released, eXistenZ was a fresh perspective in its day.
FINAL SAY: Get fitted for a port
3.5 Chili Peppers