The Queen’s Gambit Is the Forrest Gump of ChessIt knocks you out with its lush costume design and production, while its beautiful white heroine slips unscathed past the roiling traumas of the era.
ByJane Hu
past is prologue
The Reasons To Not Like IkeAs the new Eisenhower Memorial opens, a more measured examination of the 34th president and his legacy is appropriate.
Cold War Is a Stunning Love StoryPawel Pawlikowski’s follow up to the Oscar-winning Ida is a passionate heartbreaker told through music and across decades.
Russian Hockey on Brooklyn Ice? A Miracle!
Feeling nostalgic for the Cold War? Then head to Brooklyn this weekend for a completely un-ironic celebration of one of the reddest symbols of Communism the Soviet Red Army hockey team. An exhibition game at the Aviator Sports and Recreation complex Sunday is meant to recognize the 50th anniversary of the USSR’s first Olympic gold medal in ice hockey. And though the team is perhaps the most historically unpopular one ever assembled — among Americans, at the very least — you wouldn’t know it from the publicity material for the game, which could have been published in Krushchev-era Pravda. “Historically, Russia and the former Soviet Union have produced some of the strongest, most talented and admired hockey players the world has known,” says a blurb on Aviator’s Website. Organizer Alexander Vasiliyev insists that the game is completely void of politics and that the fans who attend — 90 percent of whom he estimates will be Russian — would agree with him. “These are really sports people,” he says. “They don’t care about the politics. They care about hockey.” Even, apparently, commie hockey. —Joe DeLessio
50th Anniversary of the First Victory of Team USSR at the Olympic Games [Aviator Sports]