BCH

CIPC #149: Gravity Falls, S1 E11: Little Dipper

December 10, 2019

Gravity Falls is a critically acclaimed cartoon show produced by Disney about twelve-year-old twins Mabel and Dipper, who spend the summer holidays with their great-uncle — or gruncle, as they call him — Stan in the eponymous town. This town happens to be a hotspot for all sorts of paranormal and superhuman activities, and of course the siblings have to investigate them all. In the particular episode I will discuss today, the magic MacGuffin du jour is a crystal that makes things bigger if light falls through it in one direction and smaller if it falls through it in the other direction. But before they discover this, the two siblings can be seen playing chess:

Read more

CIPC #148: US marines advertisement

December 3, 2019

The US military has many detractors all over the world, but none could possibly make them look sillier than they did themselves, from what I understand around 1986, in the commercial we will talk about today. It looks more like a trailer for some upcoming fantasy movie than a commercial for work in a modern military corps. In fact, it reminds me quite a bit of the fabled Maradonia trailers1: there are honest-to-God knights on horseback, an evil queen, flaming swords, and an epic soundtrack — but most of all, it has a chess theme! Everything to lure naive young men into the army, I guess.

Read more

CIPC #147: Giving the devil her due, Vol.1

November 26, 2019

At the very beginning of Giving the devil her due, a webcomic1 by D. S. Newman and Magaly Abarca, a certain David gets run over by a truck. He dies, but before his death is finalised, he gets to play his traditional game of chess against Azrael, the angel of death.2 In a rare twist on this classical theme, the grim reaper himself promises to serve him for the rest of his life if he manages to win. This is where the real plot twist happens: it turns out that death, despite several centuries of practice against millions of opponents, is not very good at chess and he loses against our protagonist, who turns out to be a sixth grade state champion. At least that’s what he claims, but I don’t believe it.

Read more

CIPC #146: Wolfen

November 19, 2019

Wolfen is a supernatural thriller from 1981, mainly known for starring Albert Finney. The plot starts in a very standard fashion: people are being murdered in New York and when an extremely rich business magnate is killed, former police captain Dewey Wilson is called back out of retirement. The police collect some hairs on the crime scenes which are identified by a zoologist they consult as being wolf hairs. But since when are there wolves in New York? Has this perhaps not been staged somehow? They arrest a member of a suspected terrorism cell. We get a shot of him being interrogated through what is probably supposed to be a one-way mirror1 in front of which is a chess board:

Read more

CIPC #145: Chess book cover galore

November 12, 2019

It was a long time ago. It was a simpler time then and there was a certain sincerity to the world, born of simplicity more than of innocence. There was still a glimmer of optimism alive in your servant. Yes, in my previous blog post about book covers, I made a footnote that chess book were ‘obviously’ excluded. My reasoning was that chess books are usually written by people who are knowledgable about chess and therefore pick a reasonable position for their cover. In fact, most chess books are about openings and then you can just stick some tabiya on the front and be done with it. Alas, once again, I overestimated the care people put into their work.

Read more

CIPC #144: Rivron, Het caravan kookboek

November 5, 2019

It’s a — it’s a cookbook! When I started this blog, I was expecting many things. I knew there would be films, comic books, and TV-series. I expected there would be music videos, some book covers, the odd painting perhaps. What I most definitely did not expect was a cookbook. A cookbook! Cookbooks contain recipes, not chess scenes; pictures of cheesecakes, not chess boards. At least, that is what I thought, until Het caravan kookboek [originally titled Caravan cookbook]1 was brought to my attention. There, on page 110, to the left of a recipe for olives with garlic, chilli, and parsley, we see two pictures of some guys at a chessboard.

Read more

CIPC #143: Stone, Impending mate & Mated

October 29, 2019

Some twenty years ago, there was a regular contributor to the magazine Chess writing under the name C. P. Ravilious. He mainly wrote a column called Collectors’ corner, which had all sorts of interesting stories and pictures from the early history of chess, but sometimes he contributed standalone articles about similar topics and it is via one of those that I first encountered today’s subject: two engravings after pictures by Frank Stone. Apparently, these engravings were highly popular in chess circles somewhere around 1840. Why, I don’t know, because the art is nothing special and the pun is cheesier than a giant wheel of Gouda, but perhaps people were just so starved for anything chess-themed to hang on the wall of their club that they were willing to take anything.1

Read more

CIPC #142: Nero Vol.143, De dood van Bompa

October 22, 2019

Nero is, or was at least, incredibly famous in Flanders and completely unknown outside of it. It is a comic with a cast of colourful characters, like Adhemar, the baby who lectures at Oxford, Abraham Tuizentfloot, the long-bearded pirate who fought at Trafalgar and Abukir, Petoetje, an adopted Papuan prince who became a pop star after dancing on his head, and many, many more. It was the brainchild of Marc Sleen who wrote and mostly drew the series for over fifty years and for more than 160 (one hundred sixty!) volumes: enough to gain a place in the Guinness world record book for longest running comic series drawn by the same person. Volume 143, De dood van Bompa [Bompa’s death], is the last instalment of a trilogy about Nero’s grandfather. It deals with his dead and the war between good and evil for his soul. In strip 28 we see him stuck in limbo:1

Read more

CIPC #141: La Bayadère (bis)

October 15, 2019

‘Wait!’ I hear you exclaim, ‘La Bayadère? Didn’t you talk about that before?’ I did! In fact, it is the same Makarova adaptation of Petipa’s choreography that I’ll be talking about today – but this time it’s the Royal Opera House, with Ovsyanikov conducting and Rojo, Acosta, and Nuñez doing the dancing. Since the choreography is the same, there is also some chess but, of course, a different production means a different chess scene.1 This is what the second scene of the first act looks like this time:

Read more

CIPC #140: Final move

October 8, 2019

One thing I haven’t done yet this year, is commenting on a chess-themed movie. More than a hundred blog posts ago, I commented on Lang leve de koningin and shortly before that on Knight moves. And for today, I found another one! It’s called Final move, the tag-line is ‘your next move may be your last’ and the ‘i’ in ‘final’ is a white queen which has been shot in the head, as you can see below. There’s going to be murder, action, suspense, and most of all chess. The cover promises us David Carradine, of Kill Bill fame, and Matt Schulze, from The fast and the furious. Let’s do this!

Read more

Pages:«1...567891011...23»

Recently added tournaments

Pentecost tournament, Ghent

1947

Liège vs. Dutch Limburg, Visé

1946

East Flanders vs. Antwerp, Ledeberg

1946

Devos vs. Soultanbeieff, Brussels

1946

Brussels vs. Brabant, Brussels

1946

Cercle Colle quadrangular, Brussels

1946

Belgian championship, Brussels

1944

Pentecost tournament, Ghent

1945