No, Dave....we lost her......

HOLY SHIT!  Soccer is awesome!

King of Kong is very good, and a good story.  Well worth your time, I just don't know if I'd use "essential," as a way to describe it.  The list I made wasn't a "Quick, name every documentary youknow!" list.  Every film on there in some way covers a different approach to non fiction filmmaking, either in aesthetic, technique, or execution.

Since I'm a documentary guy, I'll give you my essential Doc list as well:

Mr. Death
My Brother's Keeper
Twist of Faith
Capturing the Friedman's
The War Room
Gimme Shelter (featuring camera work by some kid named George Lucas)
The "Up" series by Michael Apted
Thin Blue Line
Dogtown and Z Boys
Jesus Camp
Spellbound
E-Dreams
Roger and Me
Vernon, Florida
Hoop Dreams
The Interrupters
Decline of Western Civilization (all 3)
Ken Burns Civil War
Why We Fight
When We Were Kings
Baraka
Woodstock
Fog of War
The Bridge
Hearts of Darkness
Overnight
Gates of Heaven
Marwencol
Dark Days
Z Channel
Kid Stays in the Picture
Dear Zachary (please check yourself into a 72 hour suicide watch immediately following this film)

Tara's a sweetheart.  Hell of a singer too.  For her husband's 40th birthday they had this huge party at their badass place.  While the party was outside she was inside with a piano player singing lounge classics for most of the night.

Chris Gore founded this old magazine called Film Threat, which in its day, was pretty good.  But once websites like Aint it Cool, Dark Horizons, and CHUD became the go to place for film news, Film Threat died a slow and painful death before becoming web exclusive itself.  He wrote, admittedly, a pretty solid film festival book called Ultimate Film Festival Survivor guide.  If you had films in Festivals in the late 90's/early Aughts, this book was pretty mandatory reading.  Now that Festivals have changed so thoroughly though, he clings to whatever bits of fame he can.  He appears regularly on G4, and at fringe industry parties making an ass out of himself.  I've met him a few times, and there was on time at the GPhoria Awards 2005, where he would drunkenly come up to me every 30 minutes and ask if Amy Earhart (star of Pink 5) was coming to the party or not.

He's fairly harmless these days, but if you ever need a sound bite from a gray hair dude in hipster clothes, he's your guy.

I used to play poker with Tara Strong's husband, who was also my realtor.

This summer Im going to try and set up a Kite Boarding lesson.  Its actually something Ive wanted to get into for a while now.

Ok, if the question is still valid I'm going to cast an upcoming character from Game of Thrones. 

Gerard Butler as Oberyn Martell.  Its not obvious casting, outside of being handy with a spear.  Depending on what you know of the character, there's some subtleties he could have fun with.

I always am fascinated with characters who have a "rule or be ruled," mentality.  They know the world is viscous, and that the only true way to defend yourself from it is to be in power and crush your enemies before they even realize they are your enemies.

I said this before and I'll say it again, it's not like any hardcore Comic fans were just dying to see an Avengers movie happen.   Aside from the initial Ultimates story arc, there hasn't been an Avengers centric storyline (not really counting House of M or Civil War, as that is more Marvel U wide than just Avengers) that was worth much of a damn in the last 20 years.  It honestly wasn't until I saw Iron Man as a movie that I thought that an Avengers movie might work.  Not because of the source material, but because of the interpretation.  With that said, I almost feel like they painted themselves into a corner a bit here.  I'm not sure I WANT to see Thanos.  But they almost HAVE to go bigger at this point, don't they?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanos