American Go E-Journal » Go Spotting

“The Row,” a brand-new short film about life and death, prominently features go. The 16-minute film stars Vondie Curtis-Hall as a prison warden who plays a final game of go with death row inmate Demetrius Grosse. The film is directed by Philiane Phang. “The filmmakers had chosen a game they thought reflected the situation, but wanted help with some equipment, showing the actors how to play the stones and such,” reports AGA president Andy Okun, who is acknowledged in the film credits.  The game depicted was the famous Honinbo Sansa Kashio Rigen triple ko game from 1582, with its suggestion of stalemate and ill fortune. 

The opening title montage for Starz’ new scifi, noir-spy series Counterpart is arresting: One black stone on a spotless white go board separates into two stones, which then divide into numerous black and white stones across an endless board. This theme repeats throughout the rest of the series in both explicit and suggestive patterns, intimating that while the conflict you’re about to witness originates from a rigid black and white ideology, it is best played by the intuitive, shifting strategies of go.

Go players are taught early to “see the whole board.” That is nearly impossible in Counterpart, as the “board” grows and shrinks throughout the series, even as the acquisition and defense (or knowledge of ) territory remain essential.

The first episode, “The Crossing,” opens with a go game between the story’s central protagonist, Howard Silk (J.K. Simmons), and his friend Andrei (Silk is playing black, Andrei white)  in progress at an outdoor cafe in Berlin (above).

And it just gets better from there; there are several references to go and go memorabilia (including books), throughout the season’s episodes.

In episode 5, Shaking the Tree,  Silk –a heretofore weak player– nearly bests Andre (left). This is integral to the story as it tells us something important about this Silk (yes, there is more than one. I did mention this a scifi spy tale, right?) different from his counterpart.

According to cinematographer Martin Rhue, go was always integral to the show’s writers, which is why the game’s motif was incorporated into the title sequence.

Rhue confesses neither he nor Counterpart‘s creator /producer Justin Marks actually play go…yet.

But Rhue said a true go player would stage the board for each shot, as well as instruct the actors on how to handle the stones. Rhue did not know whether past famous games were  staged on the board or just a game from the contracted go player’s personal past.

If your are fond of noirish (scifi) spy tales reminiscent of le Carré’s Smiley’s People, as well as go, Counterpart – which wraps up its first season on Sunday, April 1 — might be just the series for you.
- Charles “Doc” Sade

In the January 10 edition of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, there is an article by Elyse Graham called “Adventures in Fine Hall: The weirdness of math’s golden age.”  She writes of the hijinks of the great mathematicians of the 1930s gathering in the Princeton University Mathematics Department and the Institute of Advanced Studies: Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, Kurt Friedrich Gödel, Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl.

Speaking of Fine Hall, the center of mathematics at Princeton, she writes, “To blow off steam, many students got into games, as players and creators both…. During the day, a visitor to the common room might see the nation’s mathematical brain trust absorbed in games of Go, bridge, double solitaire, or chess, played classic or whimsical variants.” She also writes that “A favorite was a double-blind variant of chess called Kriegspiel,” which Terry Benson has adapted for go at his Crazy Go nights each year at the U.S. Go Congress. “The boast went out that Fine Hall ‘could produce a champion in any game that was played sitting down.’”
- Ted Terpstra
photo (l-r): Luther Eisenhart, Albert Einstein and Walther Mayer

Go makes a split-second appearance in the music video for the Japanese girl rock band “Band-Maid” in their new song “Domination.”  “Go board seen at 1:06 in the song,” reports Todd Dahlquist.

The premise of Netflix’s new sci-fi show Altered Carbon is simple: After 250  years of suspended animation a prisoner is returned to the world with exactly one chance to save his life – he must solve a “mind-bending” murder. And, oh, by the way, his consciousness has been digitized, downloaded  and stored in the “cortical stacks” implanted in the spine of his new body.

AC‘s central protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, is of Japanese descent and sometimes plays go. In a flashback during Nora Inu (#7 – between the 40th and 42nd minute) Kovacs plays go with his sister as they talk. The ‘board’ presented here is a roll-up, either vinyl/cloth (or the futuristic equivalent), though the go-ke appear to be chestnut. The game in progress presented, however, appears believable. Toward the end of Rage in Heaven (#9) a goban is featured on camera twice; it appears this is a “set piece,” although a character picks up and plays with a stone. The same table goban in Rage in Heaven appears at the beginning of season 1′s final episode, The Killers (#10.)

The future Altered Carbon depicts is less than optimistic; think the bluesy, morose zeitgeist of Blade Runner, as opposed to the love letter to humanity that was Interstellar. Altered Carbon is based on the Richard Morgan novel of the same name, his first book in the Takeshi Kovacs cyberpunk trilogy.

- Charles “Doc” Sade

In the opening montage of “Counterpart”, a new sci-fi thriller television series on Starz, “there is part of a stylized go board grid with black and white stones appearing on it,” reports Joe Maia. “I’m guessing this might suggest that go will appear regularly, though briefly if the first episode is any guide, on the show.” 

An espionage, sci-fi thriller with a metaphysical twist, “Counterpart” tells the story of Howard Silk (J.K. Simmons), a lowly cog in a bureaucratic UN agency who is turning the last corner of a life filled with regret, when he discovers the agency he works for is guarding a secret: a crossing to a parallel dimension. Through Howard and his “counterpart” on the other side, the show navigates themes of identity, idealism, what ifs, and lost love. Check out a trailer here.

“In the first scene, Simmons is is sitting outside with another man, with an almost finished go game in front of them,” says Maia. “They talk about other things, and make only a mention or two about the game. Later in the episode, Simmons is again seated across from the same man, again with an almost finished go game in front of them. I was interrupted so I was unable to watch the last 20 minutes of the episode, so I do not know if there were additional scenes with go in them. I could not tell if the games looked real or not. The camera angle did not allow a full view of the board.”

“Counterpart” premieres on Starz on January 21.