Sounds good! Game over machine

Herc

--
Say you there! what day is it?

"Anthony P r e s s b u r g e r" wrote
Anyone know anything about this new film coming out called 'Game Over:
Kasparov and the machine'?
I hear it's great. Anyone actually seen it?

Check out this review of it.
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Variety.com - Reviews - Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine
Home Reviews - Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine Last Updated
Sep. 11, 2003, 9:11am PT


Posted: Tue., Sep. 9, 2003, 4:30pm PT

Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine (Docu)

An Odeon Films release of an Alliance Atlantis and
National Film Board of Canada production of a World Documentary Fund
film. Produced by Hal Vogel. Executive producers, Andre Singer, Andy
Thomson, Nick Fraser, Paul Trijbits, Tom Perlmutter, Eric Michel.
Directed by Vikram Jayanti.

With: Garry Kasparov, Frederic Friedel, Joel Benjamin, Murray
Campbell, Feng Hsuing-Tsu, John Searle, Steven Levy, Owen Williams,
Jeff Kisselhof.

By ROBERT KOEHLER

Vikram Jayanti's crackling "Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine"
plays on the psychology and paranoia of grandmaster chess in
chronicling the 1997 match between Russian world champ Garry
Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer. Though it never
disguises its sympathies for Kasparov and contempt for a powerful
corporation's machinations, docu is finally a speculation on the
limits of the human mind and how truth can never be fully known.
High drama will lead to strong international fest and B.O. interest,
with many ancillary games to follow.

Non-chess fans receive a compact backgrounder on Kasparov (first
seen painfully revisiting the Gotham site of the match) and his
triumphant career, including his dark-horse 1984 win over Anatoly
Karpov, which seemed to presage changes to come in the USSR The IBM
camp is repped by Deep Blue developers Murray Campbell and Feng
Hsuing-Tsu, as well as grandmaster Joel Benjamin, hired by the
company to create gaming scenarios for Deep Blue to play against
Kasparov.
The first contest in 1996 was by all accounts a convivial affair
designed as a creative science experiment, which Kasparov won
easily. In retrospect, it's easy to sense overconfidence contributed
to his undoing in the '97 rematch, but few could have foreseen the
extent to which the machine was to advance in a year, or how the
game would turn ugly and paranoid.

Jayanti's film cleverly -- if controversially -- lays out a scenario
that has less to do with the advance of computer science and more to
do with a nasty mix of bruised egos and corporate arrogance run
amok.Pacing of each game builds to an intense pulse as Kasparov
first wins, and then is so soundly defeated in game two that it
seems to weaken him psychologically. As Kasparov views it, Deep
Blue's winning moves transcended a machine's limits, raising the
specter of human intervention.

The pic runs with the accusation,
spicing it with visuals of other famous chess-playing "machines"
that turned out to be fronts for human players.

Though no proof of the charges is uncovered (and Benjamin, Campbell
and Feng are mum on the subject), others, such as reporter Jeff
Kisselhof, suggest IBM wanted to defeat Kasparov at all costs as
means to prove company's computer supremacy. Pic notes more than
once that IBM stock shot up 15% immediately after Kasparov retired
from the match.

Coda plays an unsettling note, as IBM is seen dismantling Deep Blue
after its victory, as if it existed solely to demoralize the champ,
and Kasparov stumbles through a horrific defeat to his old nemesis,
Karpov.

Production package, highlighted by David Hill's
hands-around-the-throat editing pace and Rob Lane's tense synth
score, pushes pic into the docu field's commercial penthouse.

Camera (Duart color, DV-to-35mm), Maryse Alberti; editor, David
Hill; music, Rob Lane; sound (Dolby Digital). Reviewed at Toronto
Film Festival (Real to Reel), Sept. 5, 2003. Running time: 87 MIN.