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Alan Turing Biopic Trailer Released (imdb.com)
74 points by b2themax 4349 days ago
4 comments

This is going to be wonderful for the popular appreciation of the history of computation.

But inaccurate in the specifics (eg, the Bombe, the machine depicted, was not Turing complete, and if you were to stretch the definition of "computer" to what Bombes could do, it was far from the first), and bitterly insulting in its likely omission of many of the other figures involved (especially the Poles).

I'm looking forward to it.

The trailer never characterizes the Bombe as a computer, CumberTuring calls it a machine for decryption.

It could be worse: the last time Hollywood took a crack at this story ("Enigma"), they invented a mathematician, gave him Turing's accomplishments, but made him not gay, and the only Pole on screen was a baddie.

I don't have particularly high hopes for this one, though. I don't find CumberTuring's performance in the trailer engaging- he's playing Generic Cumberbatch Character #9. Keira Knightley just looks like Keira Knightley, not a woman in 1943.

> The trailer never characterizes the Bombe as a computer...

...except for the text in the trailer @ 1:19-1:21 that says "They had to create the world's first computer."

'Enigma' the novel by Robert Harris on which that movie was based, is superb though. Definitely makes 1943 seem like 1943.

Another book worth reading is David Kahn's historical account 'Seizing the Enigma.'

The screenplay for this movie was ranked number one on the 2011 Black List, an annual compilation of Hollywood executives' favorite unproduced scripts:

http://files.blcklst.com/2011_black_list.pdf

Had to stop a minute in - as we all the know the story, the damned trailer does an excellent job of spoiling everything...
If the story stop you from watching a movie, it probably wasn't worth watching to being with :)
If you have watched the trailer, then you would've watched the movie.