Here’s an interesting observation about pop culture in 2021: there hasn’t been a book craze in quite a while. Some twenty years ago, there was…
CIPC #218: Frauenarzt Dr. Prätorius
Sad news for the lovers of early music: we’re not talking about the iconic German music theorist and composer from around 1700. Instead, we are…
CIPC #215: The tempest
Shakespeare — a name to conjure with! Yes, the immortal bard is finally appearing on my blog. That he was going to appear was pretty…
CIPC #214: Dracula A. D. 1972
There are very few stories that have been adapted to the big screen as often as Bram Stoker’s late nineteenth century gothic horror novel Dracula.…
CIPC #211: 8×8: A chess sonata in 8 movements
We have encountered Marcel Duchamp before on this blog, seated on a roof somewhere in Paris, playing chess with Man Ray. Today, we are dealing…
CIPC #199: Alice in Wonderland
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…
CIPC #197: The twilight saga: Breaking dawn – part 1
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…
CIPC #193: The black room
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…
CIPC #192: Austin Powers: The spy who shagged me
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…
CIPC #189: Bill & Ted’s excellent adventure
For a brief period of time a the very end of the eighties and in the beginning of the nineties, Bill & Ted were big.…