Category

TV

• 10.02.08
  Interesting cops
  TV (2)

  I'm finally getting back to watching and blogging movies some more. I started this TV movie back in August, and just now watched segments up to the end of part 3. It's quite good, and it's making me take back some of what I said about portrayals of the police in Soviet-era cops 'n robbers shows. I've often explained how, in Brilliantovaya Ruka and others, the police are portrayed as omniscient and virtuous. Vokzal dlya dvoikh is a slight exception, but that one isn't a cops 'n robbers show. Mesto Vstreachi is interesting in that it ...
  
  
• 01.21.08
  Russian movie categories
  Movies, TV (0)

  As a public service, I should make a database that categorizes Russian movies in useful and important ways: Proto-bolshevik revolutionary -- In pre-revolutionary Russia, there is the odd character who tinkers with explosives, befriends a youngster, is arrested and beaten by the police, and perhaps has some noble words about truth for the youngster to remember as he is hauled away. The Childhood of Maxim Gorky Siberiade (One movie recently seen on RTR-Planeta that had three of them who conducted some caper on behalf of the motherland and were then hauled away to be executed by the ungrateful czarist government.) Andrei Rublev -- The setting ...
  
  
• 01.17.08
  Smile, you’re on RTR Planeta
  TV (0)

  It's at least two years ago that I started watching Russian Internet TV -- mostly RTR Planeta. I watch it in spurts. There are weeks or months at a time when I just don't have time or there is too much network congestion. It seems there have been some changes since I started. The female news anchors/program hosts smile now. Back then, I remarked on how they seemed to be all business -- though just as they signed off they might give a very quick, almost shy smile. I remember reading some time ago about how ...
  
  
• 12.24.07
  Traffic safety
  Movies, TV (0)

  Several months ago I was asking about bicycle touring in Russia. Someone on the phred bicycle touring list said drivers there tend to be careful because nobody has insurance. It's an interesting idea. Here's another one along those lines, posted over at Cafe Hayek: My George Mason University colleague Gordon Tullock famously remarked that the best way for government to reduce the number of traffic fatalities is for it to mandate that a sharp steel dagger be mounted on the steering column of each vehicle and pointed directly at each driver's heart. Forget about all other regulations and mandates; ...
  
  
• 12.18.07
  Russia inward or outward
  TV (0)

  Here's a BBC article about "Russia's deep suspicions of the west". The author, Rupert Wingfield Hayes, seemed to find that the Cyrillic highway signs made Russia unfriendly for foreign tourists. I'm not quite sure what he expects. If I ever got to do the bicycle tour in Russia that I'd like to do, I really wouldn't care to have English language signs as a crutch. If I want to read highway signs in English, I can do that at home. I don't need foreign travel for that. He also makes some other points that make ...
  
  
• 12.09.07
  Easterns
  Movies, TV (0)

  Every once in a while I try to watch whatever is on RTR-Planeta to get a dose of Russian. Every once in an even greater while the internet is uncongested enough that I can watch a non-news program. After one one of those rare occasions a few weeks ago I told my wife I had seen a show that looked like our old TV westerns. It started with a young family traveling by horse-drawn wagon across a dry wilderness, the man with gun walking alongside the wagon until he was captured by some of the natives. ...
  
  
• 09.04.07
  Stop it from happening again
  TV (0)

  Interesting closing paragraph to a WSJ article about the new Museum of the Soviet Occupation in Georgia: The story goes that Vladimir Putin considered the display highly provocative and asked President Saakashvili why Georgia would do such a thing. After all, the most prominent butchers were themselves Georgian, such as Stalin and Beria. Mr. Saakashvili responded that the Russians were free to open a museum about how Georgia had oppressed them. The Georgian no doubt knew well that such an exhibition would offend his menacing northern neighbor with a former KGB officer at its helm, but he went ahead anyway. Perhaps ...
  
  

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