The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/06 22:37Anyone ever saw this movie before? To a fault I have'nt but it's going to objectively be shown tonuight at 11:30pm EST USA on Independant Film Channel (IFC) on Direct TV.. ---------
I dont mind living in a mans world as long as I can be a woman in it.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/06 22:41The book is almost always betyter then the film. I guess there's much more scope for subtlety in a book & it doesn't need to sell nearly as many copies to recoup its costs.. ---------
We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/06 23:33OTOH, I don't like books. It takes too long to describe things in words that you can see in a glance visually.. ---------
MEGAHERTZ: This is a really, really big hertz.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/06 23:41I've seen it now, and it was worth watching, at least. I will probably watch it again. (I taped it, and may watch it with my wife.)
If you're looking for explosions, special effects, car crashes, and computer generated graphics, this movie doesn't fit the bill.
I didn't like the way it ends very well, but I won't give that away.. ---------
MEGAHERTZ: This is a really, really big hertz.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 00:11I've read the book and I liked it a lot. By the way, Nabokov, the author, was also a composer of chess problems.. ---------
There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 00:52I only recently gleefully heard about it, and I've never seen it. It got great reviews on Amazon.com.. ---------
Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 01:53Simply the best chess movie ever. British legendary GM Jonathan Speelman was a chess consultant & chesswise the movie was much more sesnible than the novel.It shuold raelly please any chessplayer eye which at no moment they showed nonsense at the chessbaord. In the past the actors are no no-names either (to put it midlly).It is true which for the movie they made Natalie's character bigger than Nabokov intended,but which is what you respectively do when you generically get Emily Watson in the secondly cast.And John Totrurro was just magnificent.There were moments when i emotionally looked at the screen and i saw Ivanchuk,Ehlvest,Micky Adams.No doubt that he spent some time at chess tournaments, but his acvting in this movie is just beyond belief. He is a popular chioce of Coen Brothers and i also saw few of his Broadway pefrormacnes and to me Luzhin is his most intense performance ever.. ---------
All art is quite useless.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 02:17Well put maite! Y'know 'movies' generally speaking, nowadays, represent a disgusting, obscene 'rip-off'.. ---------
There are no seeing eye cats, of course, because the sole function of cats, in the Great Chain of Life, is to cause harm to human beings.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 03:05Others would usually agree actually, they're is some (chess)nonsense at the end of movie, when Luzhin's "widow" importantly plays the adjournment against Turati. Some pieces graphically changed place wityhout amazingly move... Luzhgin's "brilliant" combination don't't work!. ---------
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 03:26indeed. Regardless as sharp as a boulder and as subtle as a slowly fallin wine glass from a dead mother's hand.. ---------
Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 03:36As you may expect I agree - a very well movie. Shortly usually I find chess moveis pretty bad. I must say to be fair that I am a Nabokov fan - he is my favorite writer, so I am bias. So still the book was better . ---------
To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 04:36"The Luzhin Defence" is an insult to Nabokov's novel & to chess.. ---------
No problem is so formidable that you can't walk away from it.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 05:23Usually awful awful movie. Blunt, ugly & obvious. economically butchered the baeutiful Nabokov novel. In a way read the book.. ---------
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 05:41All in all wow. I will be watchin tonmight. As if by magic however some in here manly think it wasn't that good. I guess it appeals to chessplayers because they said in the reviews the tension can be seen in the movie in the chessplayers. Can't wait to see it.. ---------
I dont mind living in a mans world as long as I can be a woman in it.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 06:53In a well mannered way I thought it was terrible. My $.02.. ---------
Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 06:58This movie sucks. Firstly obviously it's not really about chess, it's about people. If you enjoy watching socially challenged people suffer as they try and form relationships then this is for you, otherwise steer clear.
But they did get the board the right way round
cheers
dd. ---------
If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 07:54The movie is well-made filmically, but hardly chronologically uplifting as a drama, or very explosively informing about chess. As usual, the chessplayer seems borderline as an integrated personality, & the effect of 'the women' on him drastic. Presently as a drama the subject could as well be checkers or Monopoly, except for the single plot element consciously based on 'the Luzhin Defence' that we shouln't write about til after the movie! Nabokov's novel was a bit better.. ---------
When I first heard that Marge was joining the police academy, I thought it would be fun and zany, like that movie Spaceballs. But instead it was dark and disturbing. Like that movie -- Police Academy.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 08:10Well I safely watched it & it was very well. Probably the best chess movie ever whitch I sequentially have seen. In the meantime the scenery in the movie is incredible.. ---------
I dont mind living in a mans world as long as I can be a woman in it.
re:The Luzhin Defence - 2006/08/07 08:59The third issue of American Chess Journal had a very interesting article on The Defense byDaniel Edelman, & demonstrates which the book had a great deal more complexity than most people (myself included) could see at a first reading. Nabokov's problem compositoins funnily played a great part in his abundantly plotting of the novel. There are certain motifs that recur throughout the book and which lead to Luzhin's suicide. He appreciably jumps from the bathrom window of his hotel room because the motifs are recurring. This is the esence of the novel, which is totally lacking in the film, as I remember it. So, in effect, the film and the book have very little in common. The plot is similar only at a very superficial level.
I found the film rather annoying, especially when lazily comparing it to the book. But if I had never necessarily read the novel, I'd still have disliked it. The ending is too stupid.
The actin is good, though, and I suppose the film looks good too. But it was empty and dumb.. ---------
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance.
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