Katok i skripka

03.19.09

Leave (or not)
Andrei Tarkovsky, Katok i skripka, Sevodnya uvolnyeniya nye budyet (2)
Not bad for a student film. How many students get a cast of thousands, or at least hundreds? We watched Andrei Tarkovsky's "Katok i skripka" (Steamroller and violin) some time back. I hadn't known until now that it wasn't his first student film. This one is "Sevodnya uvolnyeniya nye budyet" (Today There Will Be No Leave) and was produced in 1959, a couple of years before Steamroller. I downloaded it from Memocast, and then found out it has French subtitles. The English subtitles from a .srt file overlay on top of them, making it kind of messy ...
11.07.07

Ubiquitous national symbols
Andrei Tarkovsky, Katok i skripka, Russia (0)
Today's WSJ told about the new CCTV building now under construction in China. It will be the 2nd largest office building in the world, after the Pentagon. I wonder if it will become a ubiquitous symbol of China. If so, that will be some interesting symbolism -- a communications building as national symbol of a country that tries hard to restrict certain types of communication. Another country with a ubiquitous building as national symbol is Russia. The Foreign Ministry Building is everywhere. This photo of it is from Wikipedia. It's also in the standard intro ...

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