The King of Kong is my favorite movie of the year so far, and one of my favorite documentaries of all time. It may be hard to find a theater showing the film where you are, but do anything in your power to see it. Seth Gordon, the director of that robo-excellent flick is rapidly becoming a pretty hot commodity in Hollywood. As Monika told you, he intends to direct a fictionalized version of Kong, with actors like Johnny Depp and Edward Norton on the filmmaker's wish list. He's attached to direct a project called The Only Living Boy in New York. And now The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Gordon is in final negotiations to direct Four Christmases, a holiday comedy with Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon. I'm not sure how he's going to have time to do it all.

Four Christmases is based on a screenplay by first-timers Matt Allen and Caleb Wilson, and will follow a young married couple (Vaughn and Witherspoon), each half of which has divorced parents. They struggle to attend...you guessed it...four Christmas Day celebrations, one for each parent, and somehow maintain their sanity. Christmases has been in the works for several years. It was set up with an intended December 2004 release date, but went into turnaround when it conflicted with the release of the Tim Allen vehicle Christmas with the Kranks. Then Adam Shankman was scheduled to direct, but chose to do Hairspray instead. When he left, Shrek director Vicky Jenson came on board, but "a deal never materialized." So now we've got Gordon at the helm, and I couldn't be happier. If Christmas is half the film Kong is, I'll love the crap out of it.

I had a ball watching The King of Kong at a mega-packed SXSW screening last March, and I even commented to one of the filmmakers about how amusing a "fictional" movie his documentary would make. He told me that the wheels were already turning in that department, and now we have some further news to share. According to Variety, New Line has hired actor / screenwriter Michael Bacall to turn Seth Gordon's human interest doco into a "fictional" feature film. (He wrote the little-seen but not half-bad Bookies.) So if you'd like to sit down and compare the fact-based documentary next to the "jazzed up" comedy version, you'll be able to do just that in a year or two.

For those new to the Kong thing, it's the story of video game one-upmanship that's as entertaining as it is absurd. Mr. Bacall has a lot to work with here: The history of video games, the trivial-yet-passionate competition and a whole bunch of colorfully geeky characters. Picturehouse will be releasing The King of Kong (now with the unnecessary subtitle A Fistful of Quarters) later this year, and New Line looks to be on the fast-track with the make-believe version. Mr. Gordon has been invited to direct this version as well, so that's a good thing. And for those who think Donkey Kong is a silly thing to compete over, I have just one word for you: Golf.

I'm utterly amazed at how a few astute filmmakers can take a story so slight, so silly and so trivial ... and turn it into a 90-minute documentary that's as fascinating as something that Ken Burns put together. Yes, The King of Kong is a documentary about bragging rights among video game geeks -- a topic so nerdy I hesitate to even mention how fascinated I was by the flick's subject matter -- but it's also as compelling, colorful and entertaining as any of the "human interest" documentaries of the past five years. If you liked Spellbound, Word Wars and Wordplay (or any other enthusiast-friendly documentary), you're going to have a ball with The King of Kong, and if you're about my age (let's say mid-30s) and you remember the earliest days of video gaming with much enthusiasm, I'd bet you a thousand quarters that you'll get a huge kick out of the flick.

The story in a nutshell: Back in the mid-80s, a video game mega-guru named Billy Mitchell set the all-time world record for Donkey Kong. (Donkey Kong, you'll remember, is the game in which Mario made his debut while trying to rescue the princess from a grumpy giant ape.) Mitchell's record remained uncontested until 2006, which is when a mild-mannered family man called Steve Weibe broke the all-time high -- but when he submitted his score to the "official" gaming commission, it was denied because Steve racked up all his points on a home-based machine. Apparently the only way to truly claim the record is to play the Donkey Kong machine that's inside a specific Funland location. But that didn't stop Mitchell from submitting his own video-taped record -- and that score WAS accepted as yet another new world's record.