War Games, the quintessential geek movie of the 80s, is celebrating it’s 25th anniversary tonight with showings on the big screen. For those of you looking to relive the good old days of 300 baud phone-coupled analog modems and a military industrial complex unconcerned with security breaches that could wreak a nuclear holocaust kind of havoc with a simple game of tic-tac-toe, tonight’s your night. (Also, you’ll get to see a young Ally Sheedy and Matthew Broderick.)
I’ll be heading to the Tyson’s Corner location with a group from HacDC, but you can look up the closest theatre to you on Fathom Events website. (Unfortunately, it seems only theatres in VA are participating. I couldn’t find any in DC or the MD suburbs.) Tickets for most showings are still available online.
A decade ago, Ben Stanfield found himself at the intersection of politics and technology as he wandered nomadically around the country managing congressional races. But when he moved to DC 6 years ago, he found that the intersection had become, in the grand tradition of L’Enfant, a circle where politics and technology were joined by science, photography and a host of smaller side streets of interest. These days, he works as a Macintosh Server Administrator for a large governmental health institute in Bethesda. In his spare time, he’s an avid photographer, charter member at HacDC, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Columbia Heights Youth Club. In 2005 he founded of Draft Obama, a national grassroots movement to convince Barack Obama to run for President. Everything he writes here speaks for itself and not on behalf of any other group, organization, person, or any of his other personalities.
Would you like to play a game?
Think I might head to Burger King beforehand…I could really use a WOPR.
Classic movie! I saw this in the theater with my dad during the 80’s (which seem so long ago now).
My favorite quote: “Goddammit, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good!”
I liked “Oh that’s a load of shit! No no, not you sir.” In fact there were a few I liked enough oh so many years ago that I recorded them off the laserdisc.
Yes, that many years ago.
And here they all are!
The one thing I learned tonight at the showing, before the satellite died halfway through the film, is that a lot of those great lines (including the two quoted above) were actually improvised by the actors. Apparently the director liked that kinda thing.
Heather, so sorry to hear your satellite link died. At Tysons Corner, about 150 geeks (well, 150 people, some geeks, some young Matthew Broderick admirers) came out to see the movie, and we got to see the whole movie, although in pretty crappy conditions.
There was apparently no AC in our theatre, so by the end it was quite warm. And then the projectionist either fell asleep or just didn’t bother to bring up the house lights once the movie was over, so the audience was forced to stumble around in a completely dark theatre lighting the way with cell phones in order to see the aisles and stairs. Not quite the service I want when shelling out $10 to see a 25 year old movie.
at ballston, the manager-type person said that the satellite problem affected all of the theatres showing the movie, and not just ours. weird that tysons was able to see the whole thing. unless there was just a misunderstanding between the ballston employees and the people at fathom events.
now if there were only some way i could find out how the movie ends!
Weird, I was in Ballston, too. I wonder if any other theaters really were affected. And bstanfield — I would have killed for them to turn the A/C down in Ballston, it was like a friggin’ iceberg in there, even for a theater in July.
There were issues at Potomac Yard as well; it died right as they were getting set to leave the island and head back to the mainland. Fortunately the theater employee we talked to was nice enough to give us a full refund as well as two passes to another movie. Now if they could just keep the single-digit children out of the adult movies.