This is an amazing new medium that has been held back by some appalling film-making. Only in the last few months, with films like "Girls named Jane" and "French Democracy", has machinima been embraced by writers and directors with some talent. "Deviation" is a clever piece that uses sharp dialog and a reflexive attention to the clichés of the first person shooter to simultaneously address the false freedom of game characters to act as they want (is a game really a narrative? or is it free of narrative?) and the near impossibility to free ourselves from the master narratives of our community and culture. Can anyone watch this and not think of Iraq? Of course, some of these questions follow from shooting the film in Counter Strike, but similar genre challenges are emerging that are shot in The Sims or The Movies. These are all major tools in the democratization of cinema and will be turning Hollywood upside down within the decade.
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