The Archives

• 11.19.07
  Mimino
  Movies (0)

  Tonight we finished watching Mimino, a 1977 Russian movie. (We hardly ever have time enough to watch one of these movies in one sitting.) It's a variation on the tale of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse, except that the country mouse is a Georgian aircraft pilot whose nickname is Mimino, the city is Moscow, and the country mouse ends up being friends with an Armenian truck driver. I see (not from the movie) that Mimino means "sparrow hawk," which gives me extra reason to like him. The name Macketai-meshe-kiakiak also means sparrow hawk -- Black Sparrow Hawk, ...
  
  
• 09.06.07
  Depuis qu’Otar est parti…(2)
  Depuis qu'Otar est parti (0)

  We finished watching it tonight. It's an excellent film -- one of the best. I'll be watching this one again, and not just for the language lessons. (So far I still rate Vozvrashcheniye as the best Russian language film I've seen. Not even Tarkovsky's films top it, though I haven't yet watched all of those.) And there is a 3rd language in Since Otar left, and it is Georgian. The three main actresses all do wonderful work, but I would have thought that requiring fluency in French, Russian, AND Georgian would have constricted the pool of ...
  
  
• 09.05.07
  Depuis qu’Otar est parti…
  Depuis qu'Otar est parti, France, Georgia (0)

  We started watching this one tonight. So far it's a good movie no matter what language the characters are speaking -- heading towards a Netflix rating of 5 from me -- but are we sure the only two languages being spoken are French and Russian? So far it seems the granddaughter tends to speak French and the mother Russian. The grandma speaks French with her beloved son, and Russian with some of her friends/family. (The sweet grandma defends Stalin and her hard, antagonistic daughter calls him a murderer.) There's ...
  
  

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