It's been a long time coming, but video games have finally landed their own documentary in the Zach Braff-produced feature Video Games: The Movie. Video Games presents an overview of the history of video games, as well as a look into their impact in popular culture and daily life, from their humble beginnings as pixelated moving squares manipulated by joysticks to being a huge entertainment industry that stretches worldwide and has branched into every form of consumer media.
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Zach Braff, Chris Hardwick, Chloe Dykstra, Donald Faison, as well as techies, gamers, and other game industry types appear in interviews to discuss the growth of gaming culture around the world.
The film makes its limited release debut this Friday at the Frida, but Saturday, July 19th is the Frida's Video Game Day, where the Frida will be celebrating video games in all sorts of ways, like having classic miniaturized home game consoles and arcade cabinets available for play, a cosplay contest and local band The Grinning Ghosts playing a set of their gloomy, garage rock tunes. The classic games come to the Frida courtesy of Southern California Classic Collectors, who bring the retro video games to the party all over LA, San Diego and the IE whenever possible.
Admission for this event is $10 for students, but cosplayers get in for $7 if you can believe it; but this is just for Saturday's event, Video Games runs at the Frida until Thursday July 24. And if you can't get enough vintage video games after this, Sunday at the Frida you can catch a matinee showing of young moptop-haired Matthew Broderick in the '80s classic War Games, presented with Spanish subtitles for the habla folks.
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Aimee Murillo is calendar editor and frequently covers film and previously contributed to the OCW’s long-running fashion column, Trendzilla. Don’t ask her what her favorite movie is unless you want to hear her lengthy defense of Showgirls.