Category

Semnadcat' mgnovenij vesny

• 12.07.09
  Back to the earthy life, forward to danger
  Proshu Slova, Semnadcat' mgnovenij vesny (2)

  I still don't know what to call the 2nd category into which I'd put this scene. Up to this point Inna Churikova's character has always been dressed in 1970s business atire. She has a family life as well as a public life as town mayor, but she has never before put on a housedress. But in this scene she does, puts some stirring traditional music on the turntable and goes to work washing floors. I take it as a sort of getting herself back to the peasant roots of Mother Russia, to inspire some ...
  
  
• 12.05.09
  Floor washing
  Komissar, Nonna Mordyukova, Proshu Slova, Semnadcat' mgnovenij vesny, Vor (0)

  Last week I tried washing our kitchen floor the way I've seen it done in Russian movies. It's a way to do a good job of it, but it's not that easy. I haven't done enough of it to decide whether the method should help Russian women stay young and agile, or if it would age them prematurely. Last fall I took a one-night-a-week class in conversational Russian at MSU. In a session when our teacher, a young woman from Ukraine, was teaching us how to describe some household activities, I asked her if Russian woman really ...
  
  
• 11.03.09
  Tax Revolt
  Semnadcat' mgnovenij vesny (0)

  A guy on a plane in a 1979 Russian movie is reading a news magazine that has the headline "Tax Revolt!" on the cover. So who would be reading a magazine like that? A good guy or a bad guy? This is a science fiction movie based on a Stanislaw Lem novel. The U.S. seems to be the setting for this part of the film. The movie came out around the time of the Howard Jarvis tax revolt in California. I don't know what the Russian and Polish news media said about ...
  
  
• 10.13.09
  Party-Time
  Barbara Brylska, Beregis Avtomobilya, Eldar Ryazanov, Ironiya Sudba, Semnadcat' mgnovenij vesny, Sluzhebnyiy Roman, Voditel dlya Very, Vokzal dlya Dvoikh (1)

  I still haven't worked up enough nerve to finish watching Voditel dlya Very. Instead I took in something easy and watched parts of Ironya Sudba. I've watched it a few times already, but this time something caught my eye just a few seconds from the end of Part One. In most of the Eldar Ryazanov films I've seen, he works something about western communication technology into the film. In Vokzal dlya Voikh (1982) it was a VCR player. In Sluzhebnyy roman it was a built-in 8-track player in a car. ...
  
  
• 08.24.09
  A nicely done moment of spring
  Semnadcat' mgnovenij vesny (0)

  This scene towards the end of part 8 of "Seventeen Moments of Spring" is superb. Heinrich Mueller (played by Leonid Sergeyevich Bronevoy) is just now learning that the Russian agent they've been after is our hero, Stirlitz. He already had suspicions and had acted on them, but also didn't think Stirlitz really was the one. His coming to grips with his new knowledge is excellent acting. He's alternately surprised, disappointed, disbelieving, irritable, and more. It takes time for it all to sink in, and the movie doesn't rush. It gives us ...
  
  
• 08.11.09
  The bigger a liar I may appear
  Semnadcat' mgnovenij vesny (0)

  Interesting line: "What can I say... It's hard to be honest to the end, Pastor. And the more honest my answer is, the bigger liar I may appear to you." This line comes toward the end of a long dialog in part six of "Seventeen Moments of Spring." The English is slightly awkward, but that's how I found it on the subtitles from Memocast. I presume it's good enough, though I must confess that in this part of the dialogue I can't follow the spoken Russian except for a few isolated words. I ...
  
  
• 08.10.09
  Speaking in parables
  Kin-dza-dza, Semnadcat' mgnovenij vesny, Solaris (1)

  There is an amazing article by Josh Levin at Slate.com: "How is America Going to End? Five steps to totalitarian rule." It makes a lot of good points, even going to the trouble of pointing out FDR's authoritarian tendencies and abuses of power during the 1930s. The truly amazing part is how it managed to put out so many words without once mentioning Barak Obama's actions in the direction of totalitarianism. It mentions Bush & Cheney quite a bit, and gives a fairly balanced account of what they did and didn't do in the totalitarian direction. ...
  
  
• 08.01.09
  Mouthing off to the police on planet Pluke
  Semnadcat' mgnovenij vesny (1)

  I've uploaded my first YouTube video -- a scene from Kin-Dza-Dza. The ruckus between police Sgt. James Crowley and Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. reminded me of this scene. There has been talk about how it's important to be polite and respectful to police. If you mouth off, they might arrest you for disorderly conduct. In the movie, the people on Planet Pluke, whether Chatlanian or Patsaki, are respectful to the police, who are corrupt and expect bribes and who also expect the visible signs of respect you see at 00:45. But then Uncle Vova blows up at ...
  
  
• 07.30.09
  Denunciation
  Semnadcat' mgnovenij vesny (3)

  Alexander asked for some comments on Seventeen Moments of Spring. I've only watched the first four episodes so far, but our slow going is not because we don't like the film. We just don't get in as much movie-watching at this time of summer. I have been meaning to say something about this part in episode 3, though, though wasn't sure just how to say it without being misunderstood. And it may be that I misunderstand, too. The English subtitles are as follows: Looking at Werner who was standing near the coffin, Stirlitz only now realized how the ...
  
  
• 07.14.09
  Semnadcat’ mgnovenij vesny
  Semnadcat' mgnovenij vesny (3)

  Some time back I wrote about the lack of pipe organs in Russian films, and how the only one I had seen was associated with the bad guys. (Where bad guys = the Germans, in "Alexander Nevsky"). Now I've found another. But again, it's in a German church. The organist is shown here in a screen shot. This instance occurs in part 3 of "Seventeen Moments of Spring". (Wikipidia link here because it wasn't easy for me to find the article for that film, believe it or not.) The word mgnovenij in the title ...
  
  

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