Agent Palmer

WarGames is a classic 1983 American Cold War science-fiction film. The film is about hacker David Lightman, played by Matthew Broderick, who unknowingly hacks into the United States Military WOPR (War Operation Plan Response) computer when trying to get early access to some ProtoVision video games.

What is it about this movie that makes it a classic and one of my favorites? Is it the acting? The plot? The Lesson? The Nostalgia? It’s a wonderful combination of the acting, the plot, the lesson, and most recently the nostalgia that sets it apart for me.

Recently, I stumbled upon an amazing documentary housed in an equally brilliant site: Clouds Over Cuba which is hosted at www.cloudsovercuba.com. It’s been around for a while and was produced by The Martin Agency.

The documentary is an “interactive multimedia documentary” of the Cuban Missile Crisis, narrated by Matthew Modine, conceptualized by The Martin Agency and created by Brian Williams, Wade Alger, Joe Alexander, and Ben Tricklebank on behalf of The JFK Presidential Library.

Heavy Metal was released on Aug. 7, 1981. It was produced on a meager $9.3 million budget, but grossed nearly $20 million dollars during it’s initial theatrical release. Twenty-five years later, after some music industry scuffles about song rights, the film was re-released, as “Louder and Nastier than Ever,” in theaters on March 8, 1996 and later that year was released on VHS and Laserdisc, which sold over a million units. Five years after that in 2011, it was released on Blu-ray.

The film follows closely to the magazine it shares its title with, in that it was a film made up of 10 stories, although only nine were released. The only differentiating factor between the movie and the magazine, is that the movie is tied together with the Loc-Nar, while the magazine stories are not tied together at all in any given issue.

It’s a movie that changed film making, ushering in a new era of computers and as the film tagline said, “an adventure 65 million years in the making.” Jurassic Park was released on June 11, 1993 to rave reviews by critics and the public alike. This PG-13 movie captured the hearts and minds of everyone, their children and their inner childs.

The beginning narration to the “Making of” special was done by James Earl Jones, and he stated, “With Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg recalled from extinction the greatest creatures our planet has ever known. Reborn before our eyes were living, breathing dinosaurs.” I couldn’t have written it any better myself.