Friday, July 25, 2008

Shall We Play A Game?

I saw WarGames last night on the big screen, and it was a treat. A solitary one, too, since I couldn't find anyone to go with. Hell, it was hard to find someone at work who had heard of the damn movie(which is celebrating it's 25th anniversary, making me old).

When I arrived at the theater, the audience was mostly mid-thirty-somethings with wedding rings, beer bellies, bald spots and - sigh - children. Though the kids were a little endearing; like watching a geek-torch passing.

There was a small technical hiccup in about three-quarters through(which prompted the expected Joshua jokes), but I didn't mind since that gave me an unexpected bathroom break.

Seeing the old-school computer hardware -- floppy disks, modems, green terminal text -- was interesting. I can only imagine how fantastic this all seemed in 1983.

In a behind-the-scenes feature that aired before the movie, Mathew Broderick revealed that for the two small scenes where he plays Galaga in a *gasp* arcade(a true relic of the times), the producers of the movie bought him a Galaga machine and put it in his trailer. He also had to learn how to type(no one had computers then). Galaga got a lot more of his attention then typing.

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