At this point I was puzzled. This can’t be a Soviet movie from the 1960s, I thought. It’s a good movie with good acting and good cinematography, not like a lot of American movie crap. But that kid, a sympathetic character, is acting like a kid you might find in an American movie. I’m thinking of the younger brother in A River Runs Through It, for example. That kind of individualism, nonconformity, and resistance to authority is not something that would have been seen in a Soviet movie from those years. Or so I thought.

But from Wikipedia I learn this movie actually was considered subversive in Russia, and almost didn’t get released. It seems there is disagreement about just how it managed to get released, but it’s something that happened about the time that Khruschev was ousted.

This fairy tale is fun, but it wasn't until the 4th or 5th watching that I understood this part. Now I recognize it. It's a custom I've seen in many other Russian movies where those leaving as well as those seeing the travelers off sit down quietly for luck before ...

I'm trying to figure out if this footage of Van Cliburn shown on the TV in Pyat Vecherov is really from his famous 1958 visit to Russia for the Tchaikowsky Competition, or if it's from some later visit in the 1960s. Nothing in the movie or the clip says outright ...

The guy on the left is Robot Verter, according to the credits. No wonder he talks so slowly and walks so stiffly. BTW, is there any science fiction movie with talking robots who speak rapidly, perhaps slurring their words and cracking jokes? For that matter, ...

I'm trying to understand the premise of this joke. Are there people in the Russian Federation, even the southern parts, who don't know who Felix Dzerzhinsky was? The movie (Den Vyborov - Election Day) is hillarious. I've watched it several times already. In this scene Kamil (played ...

Rodnya isn't turning out to be very good. We've watched two thirds of it. It still has a half hour to redeem itself, but I don't have my hopes up. Nonna Mordukova had a lot of good roles in her career, but maybe she and her director didn't have any idea ...

This site will be useful: List of Russian animation subtitled in English. I learned about it from Alexander Sedov's LiveJournal blog, where he explains why it was Shakespeare's King Richard who knocked on the door of Savushkin, who didn't believe in miracles, and then took off on Savushkin's motorcycle.

To American ears, it's a bit strange for Tamara Vasilyevna (played by Ludmila Gerchenko) to be asking the question, "Do the workers like you?" It's not a strange thing to wonder about, but it's a strange thing to be asking an old boyfriend about, or to be asking ...

The latest issue of Smithsonian magazine has an article about "Sherlock Holmes' London." In the print edition there are photos of some of the actors who have played the role, with the caption: Holmes has enjoyed a stellar career on-screen (clockwise from top-left: portrayed by Basil Rathbone, 1939; Jeremy Brett, ...

С Новым  Годом! Before midnight we watched some of the music show that was on RTR Planeta. It has been a while since I watched one of those. This was a special one for New Year's. I was going to make a comment about how it's like the one that English Russia ...