Movies

WarGames

In the movie WarGames, the programmer of the WOPR computer left a backdoor login. When the main character guesses it, all Hell breaks loose.

Housing prices in Phoenix have skyrocketed with the influx of Californians. With their excess cash, they are “California-ing” the houses including the addition of concrete block fencing in front of the house, and sometimes all the way across the front of the property, albeit a low one.

The movie “Arrival” (2016), in spite of its sometimes slow progress, has intrigued me for some time. After watching my BlueRay copy for the n’th time, I did some digging and came up with both the original story and also the screenplay.

Back when I was a working stiff – nine and a half months ago – I would watch movies on “pad” devices, iPad at first then Android later, during long airplane flights. Depending on the pad’s capacity, I could carry a dozen movies and a couple of seasons of “Rumpole of the Bailey”, one of my favorite British TV series. Most of these movies and TV episodes were “ripped” (copied) from DVDs we own. In many cases, the purchased media contained extras. These include trailers, behind the scenes segments and, on occasion, a version of the movie narrated by the director, cinematographer, producer and other insiders. Those are fun!

Last night, I watched “Wise Blood” (1979 film production) as derived from the Flannery O’Conner novel of the same name. I say derived because the time of the story has been changed and, after watching the film, I suspect other changes and omissions, enough that Flannery, were she still alive, might want to distance herself from this production.

Number one in my list is this series from HBO.