I never thought I’d hear myself say that I’m really looking forward to seeing a movie about Chess. Yet here I am. Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine is making it’s way around and it sounds fantastic.
The good folks over at MetroMix give us the lowdown on this film:
No game of the intellect can be as thrilling or dramatic as chess. And “Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine,” which premieres this weekend at Facets Cinematheque, is one of the best films ever about that game, one of the most exciting, instructive and sheerly entertaining of all chess films. It recounts the history of grandmaster Garry Kasparov’s battles with the IBM chess-playing computer “Deep Blue” with such wit, skill and mounting excitement that we’re held enthralled throughout.
Kasparov is regarded by many as the greatest chess player of all time, and Deep Blue was designed to make thousands of decisions and projections with lightning speed and–with the help of its human handlers–to “play” chess. Having bested all human competitors in his historic, meteoric career–which saw him become the Soviet Junior Champion at 12, World Junior Champion and an International Grandmaster at 17 and World Champion at 22–the jocular, brilliant Kasparov takes on the computer and beats it.
Then comes the second match–and, both Kasparov and the film imply, something rotten from IBM, a global corporation with lots of money and stock prices riding on the games. The film shows us the war of nerves and checkmates between Kasparov and IBM and makes it as exciting as almost any recent sports drama around. But the ending, worthy of an Isaac Asimov science fiction story, is both ironic and, in its way profound; it raises numerous stimulating questions about man and the machine, artificial intelligence and the corporation (and the state) versus the individual.
Wow… sounds good. I don’t even play chess and I wanna see this one!
