BCH

CIPC #92: Barque advertisement

October 30, 2018

Pretty much every time I talk about chess in advertisement, I point out that chess is used to symbolise intelligence and sophistication, but it has never been so blatantly obvious as today. It is a piece of advertisement for a Toronto based smokehouse which opened in 2011 and claims more refinement than your standard steak joint. To advertise this fact, they made a classy old fashioned poster featuring a carefully coiffed cow in what may be a smoking1 seated at a chess board. The bovine player looks askance at the viewer, as if inquiring what he might be staring at. Or maybe he’s just waiting for him to make a move.

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CIPC #91: Basil, the great mouse detective

October 23, 2018

When people talk about great Disney movies, they usually mention Fantasia, Toy story, The lion king – but no one ever mentions Basil, the great mouse detective1 and that’s a great shame, for it is a sublime film. It is based on a children’s book by Eve Titus which, as the name of the movie suggests, heavily draws inspiration from Sherlock Holmes and the imagery associated to him. The story is about Olivia Flaversham, an adorable little girl who lives happily with her father until he gets kidnapped. This is clearly a case for the great Baker Street detective and he, indeed, gets duly involved, together with Dawson, a former military mouse who2 just arrived in London after a long stay in Afghanistan. In their search, the terrific trio ends up in a big toy store at night. There, they walk over a chess board:

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CIPC #90: Zorro S2 E8, The flag of truce

October 16, 2018

What, oh what, did people do before the internet? Or, generally, before the rise of the computer? Hell, before cheap pocket editions of all the classical books where available in any reasonable book store? Apparently, they played chess. At least, this is what the tv series Zorro suggests; well-nigh every time we see Zorro in his downtime, he is playing the royal game. We have seen it twice before, we see it again today, and we might see it many more times. The episode currently under investigation is the eighth of the second season The flag of truce. The titles refers to the plan to allow rebel leader Joaquin Castenada to come to Los Angeles in order to meet the governor of California and discuss his grievances with him.

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CIPC #89: Vittel commercial

October 9, 2018

Can I go on a little rant for a moment? Well, this is my blog, so I most definitely can! So here I go: modern advertisement makes no sense. Usually, it is impossible to know what an ad is actually trying to sell to you before it explicitly tells you and even if it is not impossible, the scene has very little do to with what’s advertised. Case in point: a tv commercial for Vittel’s bottled water, showing some chess game in progress. It’s probably quite an important game, as many spectators are shown at some point. The guy in the following picture, who is leading the white pieces, seems to be suffering quite badly.

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CIPC #88: A talent for murder

October 2, 2018

And once more we end up in our wheelhouse: crime fiction. This time, we’ll talk about a British made-for-tv movie from 1984. Angela Lansbury plays Ann Royce McClain, a crime fiction author who has produced dozens of detective stories but now finds herself in the middle of the plot to one, as one of her heritage hungry relatives turns up dead in her garage. But long before that, we can see her in her wheelchair playing chess with her doctor and former lover Anthony Wainwright, played by the great Laurence Olivier. Those are some of the greatest names in the world of acting – together they have over a dozen Oscar nominations – so there is clearly a talent for acting here, but is there a talent for chess? Let’s investigate!

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CIPC #87: Sandra and Woo No.574, Intelligence in pets

September 25, 2018

One of the more popular webcomics at the moment – number twenty on this plausible-looking list – is Sandra and Woo, which tells off a girl and the highly anthropomorphised pet raccoon she and her father rescued from an abusive owner. By now, Powree, who does the drawing, and Oliver Knürzer, who does the writing, have together made over a thousand strips, mostly in the typical American newspaper comic style. Of particular interest to us CIPC’ers is the five hundred seventy fourth one, in which we are treated to the rare sight of a specimen of procyon lotor – and a rather nice specimen at that – playing chess.

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CIPC #86: Kunt U mij de weg naar Hamelen vertellen, mijnheer? E40, De zoon van Zwankezwaan

September 18, 2018

Whoever heard of a fantasy television series conceived as a sequel to a Grimm fairytale with a nine word title and 45 minutes episodes which are put on hold three or four times for a song? Well, now you all have! Can you tell me the way to Hamelin, sir?,1 for that is the translation of the horribly long title, was just such a show. Airing on Dutch television from 1972-76, it pertains to answer the question of what happened to the children of Hamelin after the pied piper lured them away. No matter how alluring the concept might be, it only becomes interesting for us at the beginning of one of the last episodes, we see two of the main characters, Bertram Bierenbroodspot2 (Rob de Nijs) and Hildebrandt Brom (Ab Hofstee), playing chess.

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CIPC #85: Professor T. S2 E10, Het DNA van een moordenaar

September 11, 2018

Here we go again. How many times have I spotlighted television series about detective?! The Mentalist, Midsomer Murders, Columbo – I have the impression that I’m barely talking about anything else! Is it just that crime fiction has sort of become the default genre for tv series or is chess more likely to be featured in it? Whatever the case, it’s time to go back to our wheelhouse. This time, we’ll be talking about the Flemish crime series Professor T., which is about professor of criminology Jasper Teerlinck (Koen De Bauw) and the cases he deals with. Is it good? I’m tempted to say no and, since there’s nothing stopping me, I’ll say no. Not that it’s horrible; it’s just in all respects slightly worse than its higher budgeted competitors named above.

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CIPC #84: Chess in literature

September 4, 2018

So far, I have only talked about books in the 15th instalment of the Chess in Popular Culture series, where I discussed a bunch of covers featuring chess. But it is famously impossible, or at least inadvisable, to judge a book by its cover and indeed many books with a chess inspired cover barely mention it while on the other hand many books are published in which chess is a major theme without board or pieces on the front. This time, we’ll focus on what’s in the book. As you are, of course, all connoisseurs of everything CIPC, there is no point in mentioning Arthur Conan Doyle’s scheming minds or Charles Dickens’ chess nuts. There is also no point in spotlighting books which are about chess, because then I’d have to talk about pretty much every scene, which is exhaustive for both you and me. So here’s what I’ll focus on: books in which chess is mentioned in one or two particular places in a more or less offhand fashion. Since this still leaves me with too large a scope to be exhaustive, I’ll just restrict myself to some books close at hand.

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CIPC #83: BLΛƆKPIИK, Ddu-du Ddu-du

August 28, 2018

No, I did not just have a stroke. There is a far more sinister reason for the weird title: K-pop! Yes, K-pop – the word that strikes fear in the hearts of men! Okay, maybe that’s not quite right. Maybe I should say K-pop – the word that strikes confusion in the hearts of men. Either because they don’t know what it means, or because they do know and are utterly baffled by its existence. For the blissfully unaware among you: K-pop is basically Korean pop music1 and also utterly incomprehensible. For one thing, there’s barely even the pretence that K-pop is about music; the visuals in the accompanying video and the choreography are much more important, which is probably why boy bands and girl groups dominate the scene. Another idiosyncrasy of the genre seems to be that the title of every song must be either English or gibberish. Today’s subjects chose the latter.

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