Piston. metal ball. Pallets. Bumpers, ramps, slings, traps and targets. It’s impossible to win. You can only try to collect as many points as possible and not let the ball fall into the hole between the tracks. But sooner or later it will still get there. “To an inexperienced player, playing pinball may seem like an uncontrollable chaos, but it is not, and the key to quality play is mastering the basic skills of controlling a ball that is moving fast across the playing field,” he says. Moscow Foosball Museum. And then: “Never underestimate the power of the silver ball, it has a habit of penetrating the heart of any person, regardless of age.”
It sounds like nonsense, but it’s the absolute truth. A rather strange apparatus filled with strange machines making strange noises and exploding with a whirlwind of light, it was a smaller replica of a pool table studded with pins (hence the “needle”) a few centuries ago, and in its evolution it was not only an electromechanical filler, but also a start button press. possessed a strange nature with magic that could intoxicate anyone. As a result, this simple arcade game has managed to inspire great albums (The Who’s rock opera “Tommy” with the central number “Pinball Wizard”, after which the masters of the game became known as magicians) and great books (“Pinball-1973”). “Haruki Murakami about hunting behind the old pinball machine before the sheep hunt).
Still from the movie Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game (2023)
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The pinball culture is, perhaps, largely based on attributing some kind of absurdity, excessive importance, excessive meaning to something quite primitive. This primitiveness probably made pinball an easy target for American politicians who at one point declared war on organized crime. For about a third of the 20th century, pinball was banned in New York City and many other major US cities under the pretext of fighting gambling (which, you know, was fed by the mob). However, pinball is not a game of chance. It’s not luck, it’s not luck, it’s skill that counts. In 1976, GQ reporter, author, and great pinball master Roger Sharp succeeded in proving this to the New York City Council.
He has been called “one of the world’s greatest players and one of the architects of competitive pinball”. He humbly calls himself a “historical footnote.” Almost half a century after showing off his skills in front of city council, a movie was made about him: “Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game.” Sharp is probably not the most obvious candidate for his own biography, but he should at least consider that a small but proud crowd of pinball fans will remember brothers Austin and Meredith Bragg for the rest of their lives.
Still from the movie Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game (2023)
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His pictures, like a pinball machine, seem to be something uncomplicated at first glance, that is, a biography and a biography, but the hero is not the most typical, but surprisingly clever. “Pinball” follows a similar path to Daisy Jones & The Six’s latest series about a fictional rock band copied from Fleetwood Mac: it mimics a feature-length documentary, sometimes incorporating excerpts from “interviews” with Sharpe himself that still permeates the neighbourhood. alternately animated scenes Half of the tape is in the form of a narrator invisible to the rest of the characters. And that, I must say, is a rather surprising idea: On-screen adult Sharp (played by Denis Boutsikaris, played by young Mike Feist) maneuvers through this story like a metal ball, not only enlivening the narrative (“the interviewer” is constantly pushing foosball out of him). back and not spreading thoughts across the tree), but it also helps avoid genre stereotypes by scolding “authors” for tricky tricks on the go (“Daisy Jones and The Six” is exactly what it lacks).
So even if you’ve never heard of pinball (and you’re wondering when a gunfight with paintballs will turn like this), it’s worth a shot with Pinball. Especially at the end, since “Pinball” is of course not a movie about pinball, but about the paths we choose.
Source: Gazeta
Brandon Hall is an author at “Social Bites”. He is a cultural aficionado who writes about the latest news and developments in the world of art, literature, music, and more. With a passion for the arts and a deep understanding of cultural trends, Brandon provides engaging and thought-provoking articles that keep his readers informed and up-to-date on the latest happenings in the cultural world.