Belgian Chess History

If you were to ask some random schmuck from the streets to give an example of chess in popular culture, provided you do this at a point in time when there doesn’t just happen to be a massively popular chess-based series going on, chances are they’re going to answer Alice in Wonderland. But they’d be wrong! There is no mention of chess in Alice in Wonderland. The famous chess board appears in its sequel Through the looking-glass, and what Alice found there. However, some of the movie adaptations that appear every couple of years have fused both books together and include a chess scene. So, too, our subject for today.

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Few traces of it are left, but about a decade ago, Twilight was the biggest thing in the world. Millions and millions of copies of the books were sold in pretty much any language known to man and the movies were enormous box office successes. But at the same time, there was a huge backlash against it. The characters were deemed flat, old fashioned, creepy even. The story was condemned for being ridiculous. But, as has been pointed out to me recently, there is chess in it.

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After amusing ourselves with some light-weight television series and some comedies, we now turn to more serious matters once again. The serious matter at hand is a 1935 film Boris Karloff  in the double role of twin brothers Gregor and Anton de Berghman. They are members of an old noble family, and the subjects of a prophecy that foretells that when twins will be born in the family again, one of them will murder the other in the eponymical black room, a room in the old family castle that, because of this prophecy, has been walled off. Gregor rules over the local village, his brother Anton has recently come back at the request of his brother.

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We’ve had Tintin already on this blog, we’ve had Hercule Poirot, we’ve had Lucky Luke, we’ve had Devereaux. It’s time knock another famous fictional Belgian off the list: dr. Evil! He is the antagonist of the Austin Powers movies, a series of parodical films from the late nineties and the early nillies, starring Mike Myers in the title role, that of dr. Evil, and that of Fat Bastard as well. Today’s subject is the second instalment of the series. The plot is that Austin Powers’s famous mojo, which is irresistible to women, has been stolen. He has to go back in time to save it.

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