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 [...]
It wasn’t easy to watch some parts of Love and Doves while listening to Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. (Not that I was doing the two simultaneously.) Diamond explains how many epidemic diseases have arisen in human societies where people live in agricultural communities in close contact with domestic animals.
Maybe Alexander Mikhailov’s character was a one-of-a-kind, though. At least I had never before seen mouth-to-mouth contact with doves. Maybe it’s best that the actor hadn’t had a chance to read Diamond’s book before playing his role.
That very good Munchausen movieThe 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 [...] |
Una furtiva lagrimaLast 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 [...] |
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Yelena Koreneva’s smile gave her awayI’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 [...] |
Mikhail Ramm and Yuri KhashchevatskiNow 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 [...] |
Из Ада в АдWhen 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 [...] |
Vladimir Vysotsky and Ivan the TerribleThat 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 [...] |
Twentysomething lost in booksIn 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 [...] |
Mne Dvadtsat LetThis 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 [...] |
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Reticulator on See-thru dress hats
Hi, Alexander. Sounds like maybe that word vorot is a cognate of the one in Pokrovsky Vorota. I can at...Alexander on See-thru dress hats
// One thing we didn’t have in the U.S. (unfortunately) is the kind of Ukrainian shirt the Khrushchev and Ignatevich...David on Padded doors
When I was younger (during the 70's) I was in a doctor's office that had orange padding on the door...Jack on Padded doors
I am reading Robert Ludlum's "Tristan Betrayal." He mentions these doors. Says they were to prevent ease dropping...Num Lock on Party-Time
This phonograph is fully transistorized and was sold in Soviet Union under brand name "Accord". http://rw6ase.narod.ru/000/rez1/akkord201.html