What is the Budapest Gambit, you ask? Well, it’s a chess opening that apparently was able to draw top players into making mistakes only to lose the game. I think it’s an apt appraisal of Ian McDonald‘s Algorithms, a film about chess following three young players from India, which just so happens to be the birthplace of chess, as they vie for prominence in their home country and for a world championship. The catch with these young men is that they are all blind or are partially sighted. Picture that if you can. Chess, a game where there are 318,979,564,000 possible plays in the first four moves, being played by blind players. While these players can certainly be aided by technology that blind players in the past did not have access to, the undertaking is immense. Much is the task that McDonald undertakes in the documentation about three junior players. Read More →
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Jeremy’s Review: Stephen King Adapts His Own Novella in ‘A Good Marriage’
When you hear that Stephen King, the master of modern horror, is finally adapting one of his own works for the big screen, it’s easy to take notice. When you look at the principal two cast members of A Good Marriage in Joan Allen (who I adored in Searching for Bobby Fischer and The Ice Storm) and Anthony Lapaglia there something more to get excited about. Even though the last piece of fiction I read by King was Bag of Bones which was released in 1998, I still had high hopes for this project which is directed by Peter Askin whose documentary Trumbo was stunningly good. Does it lives up to its pedigree? Let’s take a look. Read More →
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