Slow moving and NOT visually appealing.

Frankly I think this is the worst major motion picture (major meaning top actors and director) ever made. I can remember seeing this opening weekend at my local twin and the theater was nearly full. Well let me tell you I never saw such a mass exodus in my life (and I witnessed the same with Exorcist II: The Heretic).

This was a boring, ugly movie. Your movie is titled for a game and then Altman deliberately keeps the viewer out of the loop to the rules of the game thus taking away any suspense whatsoever as to who would win or lose.

The OP is correct - Everything about this movie is bland. It's a sea of white. Not very visually exciting after the first five minutes.

The soundtrack is horrible. One of the worst scores I have ever heard.

And, yes, the blurring of the outer edge of the lens was not provocative or surreal as Altman intended - it was a huge distraction. It looked like the lens had been smeared with Vasoline.

The characters are uninteresting and given little to nothing to do. Newman looks like he wishes he were anywhere else as he doesn't even attempt to give a performance here.

Just because Altman tried different things here doesn't make it the masterpiece some think it is. You need coherency in your script, something the film lacks greatly. How about some interesting moments? The only worthwhile scene is when Newman dumps the body of his pregnant wife into the water. At least it got the camera out of the dreary town where most of the film takes place.

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Hmm, well, you are certainly not alone in your feelings about this movie (as evidenced by the responses to the thread thus far) but I would disagree at least with your assertion that the film isn't visually appealing. Certainly it isn't beautiful in the way that, say, Barry Lyndon or Days of Heaven or something like that is, but I think the ice-covered landscape, the strange city and the "hotel" with it strange glass and steel structures are visually arresting if not traditionally "beautiful." In a way it reminds me of Michelangelo's Red Desert in that respect; in that film, Antonioni shows you things like factories, communications towers, fog on a harbor and steam and smoke being ejected from refineries and the film nevertheless takes on a sort of perverse beauty because of it. It goes against everything we're told is traditionally beautiful, but it works and engages the eye. I think of Quintet in a similar way, and I think the production design on this film is some of the most interesting I've seen.