Kino Reticulator

Over at Cape Girardeau History and Photos, Ken Steinhoff posted a 1960s photo of a man wearing a straw cap of what I call the French Foreign Legion style.   It elicited some admiring comments. It also reminded me of another type of hat from the same era — A type of dress hat that I’ve [...]

The more I watch it, the more I regard Tot samyy Myunkhgauzen as one of the greatest films of all time. [Warning:  You might want to watch it before reading any more of this.] Tonight I’ve been re-watching this scene in which the Burgomeister (Igor Kvasha) tries to avoid testifying that his friend, Karl (Baron [...]

Last weekend I watched Neokonchennaya pyesa dlya mekhanicheskogo pianino again — the first time in maybe a year. The boy in the screen shot is playing a recording of what sounded like something from an Italian opera.  I don’t know much about opera, but I got to wondering what it is, and what it’s significance [...]

I’ve watched Pokrovskiye Vorota at least twice before, but on my latest watching, toward the end, I detected a fleeting smile from Lyudochka that I was sure I had seen before.   It comes just as she’s about to kiss Lev Khobotov (Anatoli Ravikovich) again.   It’s hard to capture in a screenshot, but it’s a little [...]

Now I wish I hadn’t put off watching Obyknovennoye Fascism (Ordinary Fascism) for so long. I didn’t expect something like this at all. Yes, it gives the leftwing version of the social origins Hitler and Nazism, which is pretty much the same story as you get in documentaries made in the United States. But it [...]

When I saw this young guy with the chipmunk jowls (the shorter of the two bridegrooms) I was sure I had finally found a film where Oleg Tabakov plays a sympathetic character. The film is “Из Ада в Ад” (“From hell into hell” or “From one hell into another”).  There is hardly any English-language information [...]

That sounds like Vladimir Vysotsky’s voice on that tape recorder, though his guitar is not strung as loosely as he sometimes had it. (Click through to go to a YouTube video of this scene, at 6:20). It seems that Ivan Grozny is starting to like to it. (He’s visiting from the 16th century, in the [...]

In the October 4 issue of The Weekly Standard, Thomas Swick tells about a literary cruise in the Aegean that included a reading list. (“Passenger’s List : Cruising the Aegean with a company of bibliophiles“) One passage toward the end reminded me of some Russian movies: But one morning I spent an hour in the [...]

This film (Mne Dvadsat Let) looks promising. To find it I had to paw through a bunch of 18th and 19th century costume dramas. At least that’s what they looked like from the screenshots. It seems I’ve gone through this routine several times in my search for a new-old film to watch — toss aside [...]