Andrew Bujalski's Computer Chess getting a UK release courtesy of Eureka Entertainment

We suspect this news might appeal to fans of Wes Anderson features, it is certainly going to annoy a few people because this won't be out on DVD and Blu-ray until 2014, but we digress.

Eureka Entertainment have announced that they have acquired all UK and Eire rights to Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess, which had its debut in January at the Sundance Film Festival.

Produced by Houston King and Alex Lipschultz, this stars Patrick Riester, Myles Paige, James Curry, Robin Schwartz, Gerald Peary and Wiley Wiggins.

Expect a UK theatrical release soon, and home formats next year as part of The Masters of Cinema series.

Quote:
“The UK has been great to me and my films in the past,” states Computer Chess director Andrew Bujalski, “and I couldn’t be more delighted to be bringing Computer Chess there with the (intimidatingly named!) Masters of Cinema Series. I hope that means that THEY’VE mastered cinema — I’m still, uh, working on that... And my education certainly wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t try to make at least one bizarre, left-field, mindbender movie — Computer Chess is that. I’m eager to get it to British audiences.”
Synopsis and trailer follow...

A boldly intelligent ensemble comedy with a feel and atmosphere that surpass easy comparison, this film takes place in the early-1980s over the course of a weekend conference where a group of obsessive software programmers have convened to pit their latest refinements in machine-chess and the still-developing field of artificial intelligence against an assembly of human chess masters.

It is a portrait not only of the crazy and surreal relationships that come to pass between the abundance of characters who participate in the weekend event, but of the very era of early computing itself, and of the first, rudimentary video games, and if that weren’t enough of the hopes and insecurities that persisted through the film’s retro digital age into the present-day, that semi-virtual, hyper-social, maybe-kind-of-dehumanised landscape that, let’s face it, is our very own 2013.

If that still weren’t enough: it’s also one of the wittiest, most shift-and-cringe-in-your-seat, and entirely LOL-hilarious movies of recent times.