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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!tekecs!orca!davidl
From: davidl@orca.UUCP (David Levine)
Newsgroups: net.movies
Subject: War Games (no spoilers)
Message-ID: <1426@orca.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-Jul-83 03:59:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: orca.1426
Posted: Fri Jul 22 03:59:03 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jul-83 21:20:44 EDT
Lines: 58

I  just  returned from the late show of "War Games" and it  seems 
only appropriate to do a little late-night dialing-in, so I think 
I'll send in a quick review and some observations before I go  to 
bed.

I liked it a lot!  In fact, it was better than I'd expected after 
reading about it on the net.   I particularly liked the fact that 
it  made  you laugh and cry without the more manipulative  heart-
string pulling of "E.T."  It had realistic bits (for example, the 
jeep bit... in many other movies the jeep would have been able to 
do  that  without undue problems,  but here it  caused  realistic 
effects,  given strengths of materials) that made it  believable, 
and  the  unrealistic aspects of the computers (such as the  fact 
that modems in the film were more melodious than they really are) 
were acceptable given the intended audience.   I think this  film 
compares  very  favorably with "E.T."  How does it  compare  with 
RotJ?  I'll reserve judgement until I've seen RotJ again.

Now on to the nitpicking details we are all so fond of...

That the kid had eight-inch disk drives I find  acceptable.   The 
larger drives are older technology and therefore cheaper.   I'm a 
little  less willing to accept the fact that he had a fast Diablo 
printer  (OK,  we  only  heard it,  but  Diablo  got  credit  for 
providing  hardware...),  especially since he was using an olive-
drab  (Army surplus???) acoustic modem.   (He was at about 38,400 
baud, but that issue's been dealt with elsewhere...)

Did  you notice that the President's phone number  was  "dit-dit-
dit-daah"  (the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth,  the "Victory" 
symphony)?   I  also  caught  the  bit  about  the  prophylactic-
recycling facility (somebody else pointed that bit out on the net 
a while ago).

Was  the  Professor's cryptic comment about  "See  path.   Follow 
path,  find gate,  open gate," some sort of unix-wizard  in-joke?  
Or am I reading too much into that?

It  is  entirely  believable (not to mention  necessary  for  the 
audience)  that  a high-school hacker should have a  voice  synth 
hooked up to the input from the modem.  It's also reasonable that 
the  Government  should have a voice synth on their  big  whopper 
computer.    But  the  same  voice?   Again,  necessary  for  the 
audience's comprehension.

Some  of  the  above comments may seem a  little  cryptic  (jeep, 
Professor,  whopper)  but I'm just trying to avoid putting in any 
spoilers.  I HATE spoilers.

Now, how about a nice game of chess?



  -- David D. Levine   (...decvax!teklabs!tekecs!davidl)        [UUCP]
                       (...tekecs!davidl.tektronix@rand-relay)  [ARPA]

P.S. While driving home from the movie, I thought of a fiendishly 
simple way to steal someone's password in Un*x...