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Wednesday, March 6, 2013
New Chess Movie with Kids to be Shot in Brownsville
Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2013
Hi everyone,
An independent movie about Brownsville chess with a story line that will resonate with locals is about to begin filming in Brownsville. “Endgame” tells the story of José, 11, who joins the school chess team and with the help of Coach Alvarado “embarks on a journey of self-discovery, team spirit and the importance of family,” Sandra Avila, the film’s co-producer and an Edinburg native, said from Los Angeles for an article by Gary Long in the Brownsville Herald. “It’s the kind of story that happens all the time in Brownsville,” Drue Brown, public information officer for the Brownsville Independent School District, said of the project.
Avila is working with BISD and Peter Goodman of the Brownsville Film Commission to secure shooting locations around Brownsville that will give the film a distinct local flavor. She also is looking for local sponsors and local talent.
“The whole goal is if we’re telling a local story, we want to tell it with local talent, both in front of and behind the camera,” Avila said. The production company, The Endgame Movie LLC, is seeking résumés from local residents to fill dozens of slots on the movie’s production crew.
Auditions will take place Saturday and Sunday at the Camille Playhouse. Filming is to start April 24 at locations around Brownsville. Avila said 20 to 25 speaking roles and about 150 roles as extras are available.
Rico Rodriguez, who is known for his role of Manny Delgado in the ABC sitcom “Modern Family,” has been engaged to play José. Efren Ramirez, best known for playing Pedro Sánchez in the 2004 indie film “Napoleon Dynamite,” has been similarly engaged to play Coach Alvarado, Avila said.
The chess grandmaster who walks about barefoot solving mysteries
Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2012
Hello everyone,
We found this lovely interview at Collider with Shawn Doyle who plays this grandmaster solving mysteries. Endgame is an original drama series, currently seen on Hulu at www.hulu.com/endgame and centering on brilliant chess master, Arkady Balagan (Shawn Doyle), who has become a prisoner in his luxury Vancouver hotel, terrified to step outside after being traumatized by the murder of his fiancée. To pay his bill, the arrogant, brilliant and charismatic Russian starts solving baffling mysteries, imagining events and scenarios in his head while using an unlikely band of hotel employees and chess fanatics to do his legwork.
During this recent exclusive phone interview with Collider, actor Shawn Doyle (from the hit HBO drama series Big Love) talked about his initial reluctance to sign on for the Canadian series, what finally spiked his interest in the show and character, finding the Russian dialect that best suited him, deciding to change his look for the role, having his own panic attack the first week of shooting, and how the fan support and loyalty has helped ease the pain of the show not being picked up for a second season. Check out what he had to say after the jump:
Collider: How did this show initially come about for you? Was it just an audition that was brought to you?
SHAWN DOYLE: No. In fact, I was just finishing up four season on Big Love and we were choosing to move back to Canada from L.A. I had some other opportunities for various series there, and then I got the script for Endgame, with this crazy Russian character who basically never leaves the same location. I read the synopsis and read the pilot, and there was no doubt that it was a good show, but I was moving to Toronto and didn’t foresee myself leaving my family and moving to Vancouver to shoot the show. Secondly, I thought I would be bored to tears, playing a character that was on the same sets for seven months, so I basically said no to the show. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, at the time, for those reasons. DOYLE: Well, I didn’t do a lot of research about the chess. I play a little bit of chess in life. We had chess experts on set when we needed to play, so I would rehearse the moves of any particular game, as if it were a dance. The chess really served as a metaphor for the fact that we all require strategy to get us out of the corners that we get backed into. That was the important element of what the chess was. In terms of him being a chess expert, that’s not something that I really focused a lot of time on. (Don't forget to read further at Collider.)
New episodes of Endgame will be available on Hulu, each Monday through March 26th.
Online petition to save the world chess champion's television show!
Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011
Hi everybody,
Okay, okay, don't be mad at us if you find the headline misleading. Nevertheless we just wonder aren't there enough people watching a detective show with a world chess champion?
Fans of the TV show, Endgame, which stars Patrick Gallagher, have gone online to petition to save the television show Endgame which Endgame started its 13-episode run in the spring but earlier this month its network, Showcase, announced it was not renewing the show.
A couple of fans immediately set up an online petition, as well as a page on Facebook, to get Showcase to change its mind.
Within two days they had more than 700 signatures and shortly after hit the 1,000 mark for the petition, which is at http://petol.org/endgame1. They have also set up an official site at www.saveendgame.com.
"I would have to encourage people who are on Facebook to not only sign the petition, but to also come to the page and become active," says Nikhi Cormier, who helped start the campaign. "Saving Endgame is completely doable, but we, the fans all have to stand together and speak up."
Endgame is set in a ritzy Vancouver hotel where something always goes wrong: murder, burglaries from the safe, hostage-taking. World chess champion Arkady Balagan (played by veteran actor Shawn Doyle) is a hotel resident who turns each mystery into a game. He is the only one capable of cracking the code, and he's always several moves ahead of the hotel's slow-on-the-draw security chief Hugo Lum, played by Gallagher.
"A chess player turned gumshoe? It's hard not to approach Endgame without a dollop of scepticism. The good news is that the series does not dwell on the chess bit," Scott Stinson wrote in The National Post. "Balagan doesn't apply chess gambits to his cases, but he does apply smarts."
The fans say ratings within Canada do not tell the whole story. In the case of Endgame, it has attracted viewers from far away, even though the show is not broadcast on regular TV channels and fans have to find other means to watch, such as streaming online video.
"The viewership of the show is worldwide. Some viewers go through extreme trouble to find a way to watch an episode outside of Canada," says Sabrina Thomas, Cormier's partner in the campaign.
For his part, Gallagher is gratified by the fans' support. "What amazes me is how many people from Europe, the U.S., South America and all over the world are writing in. We didn't even air outside Canada. We were very proud of it," he said.
I will fly today to Moscow to participate in two chess tournaments, the Moscow Open and the Aeroflot Open. You can see my tournament and event schedule on the right column of this blog.
Before those tournaments, I've been training a lot, and recommend you do the same.
To help you start training, I suggest you brush up on your chess endgame technique. Are you 100% sure you know how to mate a lone King with only a Bishop and a Knight? It's actually quite difficult. Try to mate a friend (or yourself if you can make yourself have split personalities). If you can't, watch the following 5-minute tutorial, then try again. If it works, and I've taught you something, please post a short comment about it below!
New chess biography on Bobby Fischer releasing on Feb 1
Chess news and chess trivia blog (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011
Hello Everyone,
A splendid new book on the chess great who stole our hearts is set to release on February 1, 2011. The book is Endgame: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Bobby Fischer by Frank Brady, (Crown). The Mozart of the chessboard is inseparable from the monster of paranoid egotism in this fascinating biography. Brady (Citizen Welles), founding publisher of Chess Life magazine and a friend of Fischer, gives a richly detailed account of the impoverished Brooklyn wunderkind's sensational opening - he was history's first 15-year-old grandmaster - and the 1972 match with Boris Spassky, in which Fischer captivated the world with his brilliant play and towering tantrums. Brady's chronicle of Fischer's graceless endgame is just as engrossing, as the chess superstar sinks into poverty after rejecting million-dollar matches; flirts with cults; and becomes, though himself Jewish, a raving anti-Semite and conspiracy theorist. Brady offers an insightful study of Fischer's obsessively honed gifts - his evocative description of the 13-year-old prodigy's legendary 'Game of the Century,' with its seemingly suicidal queen sacrifice, will stir even nonadepts--and a clear-eyed, slightly appalled portrait of his growing paranoia. One senses a connection: the pattern-seeking faculties that could discern distant, obscure checkmates went berserk when trained on the chaos of everyday existence, finding in every reversal not random misfortune but the subtle moves of hidden opponents. Brady gives us a vivid, tragic narrative of a life that became a chess game.
Here is also an interview with Frank Brody conducted by Publishers Weekly.
Bobby Fischer was the only chess champion the man in the street could name. Why did he captivate us?
He's a rags-to-riches story. He was an impoverished Brooklyn high school dropout who seemed totally uncultured; how could he play such an intellectually demanding game? And he was David against the Soviet Union's Goliath. Chess was the Soviet game; America's game was baseball. He beat them at their game, and became a cold war hero.
He believed the Soviets were conspiring against him. Any truth to that?
Well, even paranoids have enemies. They did have a secret laboratory with psychologists and grandmasters studying Bobby. He thought they were plotting to assassinate him, but we can't prove that.
Fischer threw epic tantrums at his 1972 championship match with Boris Spassky—over lighting, chess sets, orange juice, audience noise. Were his antics a ploy?
I don't think so. Bobby looked upon chess as a great art. When he played, he was like Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall. He wanted silence, respect, proper lighting; he didn't want people with candy wrappers in the audience.
In later years his behavior was grotesque and hateful. Although he was Jewish, he became a raving anti-Semite and called for mass killings of American Jews. What brought that on?
The New York chess community was highly Jewish during his early career, and he felt that he was not getting enough respect. So he made this illogical jump, "I don't like Jews because the Jews control the money in chess, and I'm not getting any." It was irrational. Then he stumbled upon The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the famous anti-Semitic tract, and bought it as nonfiction.
You knew Fischer in his salad days. What were your impressions?
I had dinners with him, and if there was a lull in the conversation he'd pull out his pocket chess set. He'd be eating and analyzing games. I saw him do it in the street as he was walking; he'd pull out his chess set and start moving the pieces. I liked him. I found him interesting and generous. When I was broke, he said, "Can I lend you some money?"—my brother didn't even do that.
What do chess aficionados see in Fischer?
I played him many times; I call him the Mozart of chess. His chess was crystalline, perfect—not murky or hidden, like some players, where suddenly they spring a trap. You could see what he was doing, but you couldn't resist it, it was so powerful.
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12th Women's World Chess Champion
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