It is one of my life time ambitions to go to Comic-Con in the States - I am a complete movie/TV buff and nothing makes me happier that combining my two hobbies technology and Movies. So I thought as my blog this week I would give you a run down on my favourite Tech movies & TV Shows for you to check out this weekend.
Minority Report - Released in 2002 this science fiction movie was directed by the fantastic Steven Spielberg and was loosely based on the short story ‘The Minority Report’ by Philip K Dick.
In 2054, an experimental Washington, D.C. police force called Precrime has completely neutralized murder in the city. Precrime employs three "precogs", mutated humans with precognition to view murders that occur in the future; the officers of Precrime then analyze and interpret their visions to track down and stop the murder before it happens. John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is chief of the force, working under its director Lamar Burgess, however, he hides the fact that he is addicted to an illegal psychoactive drug called neuroin since the disappearance of his son Sean, which also caused his wife Lara to leave him leading to all kinds of trouble. I won’t give away anymore but I will say to watch out for the eyeball transplant scene - yuck!!
This movie has to have your full attention all the time as it can get quite confusing but definitely worth putting in the work.
Matrix - One of the best trilogies’s of all time. The film describes a future in which reality as perceived by humans is actually the Matrix: a simulated reality created by sentient machines in order to pacify and subdue the human population, while their bodies’ heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source. Upon learning this, computer programmer “Neo” is drawn into a rebellion against the machines, involving other people who have been freed from the “dream world” and into reality. The film contains many references to the cyberpunk and hacker subcultures; philosophical and religious ideas; and homage’s to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Hong Kong action cinema, Spaghetti Westerns, dystopian fiction, and Japanese animation.
Make sure you have all 3 movies & a whole day before you start to watch as you will want to view them all in one sitting.
War Games – The film follows David Lightman (Broderick), a young hacker who unwittingly accesses WOPR, a United States military supercomputer programmed to predict possible outcomes of nuclear war. Lightman gets WOPR to run a nuclear war simulation, originally believing it to be a computer game. The simulation causes a national nuclear missile scare and nearly starts World War III.
Classic movie must see movie!
IT Crowd - Set in the offices of Reynholm Industries, a fictional British corporation in central London. It focuses on the shenanigans of the three-strong IT support team located in a dingy, untidy and unkempt basement – a great contrast to the shining modern architecture and stunning London views enjoyed by the rest of the organisation. The obscurity surrounding what the company does serves as a running gag throughout the series – all that is known is that the company bought and sold ITV and once made part-year profits of "eighteen hundred billion billion". The team consists of a dynamic go-getter - Jen, a genius -Moss and a workshy Irish man - Roy.
Such a fun TV show and I will promise that if you have an IT dept or know people in IT you will know a Moss, Roy and a Jen.
24 - An American serial drama television series starring Kiefer Sutherland as federal agent Jack Bauer. The show is presented in the semblance of real time, with each 24-episode season covering 24 hours in the life of Bauer.
Bauer is the only character to have appeared in all eight seasons, as well as appearing in every episode of the series. The series begins with him working for the Los Angeles based Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU), for whom he is characterized as a highly proficient agent, but one taking an "ends justify the means" approach regardless of the perceived morality of some of his actions. Throughout the series most of the main plot elements unfold like a political thriller. A typical plot has Jack Bauer racing against the clock as he attempts to thwart multiple terrorist plots, including presidential assassination attempts, nuclear, biological and chemical threats, cyber attacks, as well as conspiracies dealing with government and corporate corruption.
The writers of 24 clearly don’t come from an IT background as their outrageous use of IT ‘lingo’ drives true IT geeks daft. You can’t send anything to a screen and who knows what opening a socket will do?? But the tech toys and gadgets make it worth watching if you can get past all the gushy scenes and emotions that the Americans do so well.