Computer Chess - the movie

[houston]

And happy to have finally met!

[houston]

Last day to contribute to Computer Chess - we're shooting and hope to make you guys proud!

http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/proj ... uter_chess

[JuLieN]

So, does someone have news about this project? Last update by Houston is six months old now.

[JuLieN]

*bump*

Ten months later... Has Houston given up, or what?

[Sven]

*bump*

Ten months later... Has Houston given up, or what?

There is a 3 minutes video on their site. It seems they are asking for donations to continue the project.

Sven

[JuLieN]

*bump*

Ten months later... Has Houston given up, or what?

There is a 3 minutes video on their site. It seems they are asking for donations to continue the project.

Sven

Haha, good video

Money guy: "is it a comedy?"
Producer: "err... well... I think it's kind of an existential comedy!"
Money guy: "a what?"

[gleperlier]

http://www.echiquierduroyrene.org/2014/ ... alski.html

Regards,

Gab

[duncan]

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/fe ... iew-berlin

[IanO]

This little film finally made its way to my local video store. Appropriately, it suffered the indignity of having lost its box on the shelves; I had to ask for it by name. The first thing that hits you is the medium; it was filmed on an ancient video camera, so it's mostly black and white, with lots of tape and NTSC video artifacts. That and the primitive text overlays and bad sound make this feel like found footage.

I recognized many analogues to the characters of the time. The opening scene features Ken Thompson's beard, and there was a David Levy, a David Kittinger, a Kathe Spracklen. The Papageorge character was awful and sleazy, freeloading and wandering the hotel looking for a place to sleep, boastful yet hiding his program's internals; I hope he wasn't based on any historic programmer. They raided the Goodwill Computer Museum for period hardware (and Goodwill for period clothing!), including a PET, a PDP-11 and a lovely folding teletype modem. Among the "Special Thanks" credits I saw David Levy, David Slate, and Alexy Root, but didn't recognize any names from this forum.

This is the kind of film that should be brought out at a USENIX convention or ICGA conference. I think it would be best viewed in a room full of those who were there at the time, open for heckling and reminiscing. I had many moments of recognition myself, both as a computer chess enthusiast of the period and former TD (oh, the spurt of adrenaline when you discover a room conflict!) Also many instances of crashes and weird moves as the programs step on bugs. And begging the TD for leniency to debug!

None of the chess in the movie is authentic (the deciding match is especially blunderful), but the DVD Extras include four computer games with short commentary: Kotok-McCarthy vs. ITEP 1966-7, Belle-Chess 4.6 WCCC 1977, David Levy-Chess 4.7 1978, and Cray Blitz-Belle WCCC 1983.

PS. The final scene makes this the second chess movie I've seen with gratuitous nudity.

[IanO]

PPS. Just discovered it has an alternate audio track with commentary by Murray Campbell! This has a lot more in-depth information for the computer chess enthusiast.

Also of interest is a new show "Halt and Catch Fire" dramatizing the first cloning of the IBM-PC.