Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, whose members stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, has been sentenced to 18 years for seditious conspiracy. The sentence is the longest yet for a conviction on charges related to the 2021 uprising.
Kelly Meggs — a top Oath Keepers deputy from Florida who led the militia’s charge of the Capitol wearing a patch reading, “I’M Just Here For The Violence” — received a sentence of 12 years on the same sedition charge.
Rhodes was convicted last November of the plot to block, by force,...
Kelly Meggs — a top Oath Keepers deputy from Florida who led the militia’s charge of the Capitol wearing a patch reading, “I’M Just Here For The Violence” — received a sentence of 12 years on the same sedition charge.
Rhodes was convicted last November of the plot to block, by force,...
- 5/25/2023
- by Tim Dickinson
- Rollingstone.com
To understand modern Russia, it’s essential to understand the rise of gangster culture in the 90s, as traditional structures were eroded in favour of a lawless, wild East. In many ways Russia still maintains a gangster-like structure, right up to the higher echelons of the government. With Gypsy Son, directing duo Robert Mentov and Dwight Jantzi combine to recreate the murky, morally comprised world of the post-Soviet union, telling the story of a gangster reconciling his dark duty with religious guilt. Aided by a gorgeous film tone, lived-in supporting actors, an evocative use of light and colour and a mesmerising synth soundtrack, this short has a spiritual, holy feel despite the horror of its subject matter. Dn alum Mentov returns to tell us about setting the film in the 1990s, recreating Russia within Canada, finding new lighting sources at the last minute and being inspired by the Pusher series...
- 1/4/2023
- by Redmond Bacon
- Directors Notes
It may well be an unconscious impulse but the writers are directly or indirectly influenced by their socio-political millieu, even when opposing it, and you don’t need to be a Marxist to acknowledge that.
As Edward Said showed in his examination of ‘Orientalism’, or recent works showcasing the overt or covert politics of such literary figures as William Wordsworth (Jonathan Bate’s "Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World") and Jane Austen, politics can intrude into the poetic realm or comedies of manners — or other forms of fiction, too. And this can span the entire gamut from literary classics to pulp fiction.
The Cold War is a fitting example. As two contrasting systems of social and political organisation vied for global influence, the conflict for influencing hearts and minds underpinned the diplomatic and military manoeuvres.
Duncan White’s "Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War" (2019) offers...
As Edward Said showed in his examination of ‘Orientalism’, or recent works showcasing the overt or covert politics of such literary figures as William Wordsworth (Jonathan Bate’s "Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World") and Jane Austen, politics can intrude into the poetic realm or comedies of manners — or other forms of fiction, too. And this can span the entire gamut from literary classics to pulp fiction.
The Cold War is a fitting example. As two contrasting systems of social and political organisation vied for global influence, the conflict for influencing hearts and minds underpinned the diplomatic and military manoeuvres.
Duncan White’s "Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War" (2019) offers...
- 9/4/2022
- by Glamsham Bureau
- GlamSham
“What am I supposed to believe in if not communism?” Lyudmila stutters, drunk and disheveled, toward the end of Andrei Konchalovsky’s Dear Comrades!. A Stalin devotee and World War II veteran, she serves as a Communist Party official in her native Novocherkassk, a town in southern Ussr. But her unquestioning ideology suddenly wavers after a strike at the local factory is quelled with deadly force by the Kgb and Red Army forces. Seldom known outside Russia, the real-life massacre shook Novocherkassk on June 2, 1962, claiming the lives of 26 unarmed civilians. Dear Comrades! is a faithful and impeccably crafted exhumation of the tragedy—an event the Soviet Union kept secret until its dissolution in the early nineties. Konchalovsky has cited films such as Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1957 The Cranes Are Flying and Grigori Chukhray’s 1959 Ballad of a Soldier as stylistic reference points, and indeed—shot by Andrey Naidenov in stark, gorgeous...
- 2/2/2021
- MUBI
Above: Dear Comrades!After a week of four films a day, unhealthy amounts of coffee, and dangerously little sleep, the countless screenings you’ve been shuttled into tend to merge into one confused amalgam. You’ve watched enough films for creative pairings between the selection to start percolating, and a great double bill came about yesterday, as the Lido welcomed back Andrei Konchalovsky and his latest, Dear Comrades! I watched it as a storm raged over the Lido, the thunders roaring above the roof of the Sala Darsena, a fitting soundtrack for a film that unearthed a tragic chapter of Soviet history, and brought me back to another Golden Lion contender from a few days ago, Quo Vadis, Aida? Both Konchalovsky and Jasmila Žbanić’s films home in on unspeakable massacres, and follow women struggling to protect their families against the forces of History. Incidentally, both are also among the...
- 9/8/2020
- MUBI
Ask a certain crowd of people what the defining MTV show of their childhood was, and it’s not Trl, or Real World or Jersey Shore. It’s Daria. Though Ms. Morgendorffer had been seen on Beavis and Butt-Head before, the March 3, 1997, premiere of Daria proved that the two shows couldn’t be more different. Let’s take a fond trip back to Lawndale for a closer look at the best animated misanthrope of the ‘90s.
1. B&B-h creator Mike Judge had no involvement in Daria …
Judge agreed to release the character, but that’s where his involvement with the show ended.
1. B&B-h creator Mike Judge had no involvement in Daria …
Judge agreed to release the character, but that’s where his involvement with the show ended.
- 3/3/2017
- by Alex Heigl
- PEOPLE.com
This post originally appeared on Entertainment Weekly.
Whether he’s reading to kids at the White House, hitting up local bookstores on Black Friday, or giving recommendations to his daughters, President Barack Obama may as well be known as the Commander in Books.
Potus is an avid reader and recently spoke to the New York Times about the significant, informative and inspirational role literature has played in his presidency, crediting books for allowing him to “slow down and get perspective.” With his presidency coming to an end this Friday, EW looked back at Obama’s lit picks over the years...
Whether he’s reading to kids at the White House, hitting up local bookstores on Black Friday, or giving recommendations to his daughters, President Barack Obama may as well be known as the Commander in Books.
Potus is an avid reader and recently spoke to the New York Times about the significant, informative and inspirational role literature has played in his presidency, crediting books for allowing him to “slow down and get perspective.” With his presidency coming to an end this Friday, EW looked back at Obama’s lit picks over the years...
- 1/19/2017
- by Mark Marino
- PEOPLE.com
The Americans, Season 3, Episode 11: “One Day In The Life Of Anton Baklanov”
Written by Stephen Schiff & Tracey Scott Wilson
Directed by Andrew Bernstein
Airs Wednesdays at 10pm (Et) on FX
Even when The Americans slows down, it never lets up the tension. This week’s episode, “One Day In The Life Of Anton Baklanov,” tempers the pace after the shocking reveal of last week’s “Stingers,” but the relationships between the characters remain no less taut. The claustrophobic focus on the relationship between Paige and her parents in the last third of “Stingers” is replaced by a broader look at lesser developed characters in the series’ universe, allowing the viewer more time with stories which seem equally worthy of being told.
The most notable of these is the tale of the episode’s titular character, who gets, on top of more screen time, a place in a title which...
Written by Stephen Schiff & Tracey Scott Wilson
Directed by Andrew Bernstein
Airs Wednesdays at 10pm (Et) on FX
Even when The Americans slows down, it never lets up the tension. This week’s episode, “One Day In The Life Of Anton Baklanov,” tempers the pace after the shocking reveal of last week’s “Stingers,” but the relationships between the characters remain no less taut. The claustrophobic focus on the relationship between Paige and her parents in the last third of “Stingers” is replaced by a broader look at lesser developed characters in the series’ universe, allowing the viewer more time with stories which seem equally worthy of being told.
The most notable of these is the tale of the episode’s titular character, who gets, on top of more screen time, a place in a title which...
- 4/9/2015
- by Max Joseph
- SoundOnSight
Following a lengthy wait, Seventh Son has finally made its way to theaters. The epic fantasy centers on a professional spook (Jeff Bridges), who takes a dashing young apprentice (Ben Barnes) under his wing as the two prepare to face the end of the world. Together they square off against Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore) and her army of deadly minions.
Directed by Sergei Bodrov, Seventh Son is based on the novel The Spook’s Apprentice by Joseph Delaney.
At a recent New York press conference for the film - Bridges, Moore and Barnes discussed their personal connections to their roles and how themes of fate and destiny have played out off-screen.
This film talks a lot about destiny and fate. How much has fate played a role in your lives?
Jeff Bridges: Destiny and fate? You guys wanna go first on that one?
Ben Barnes: Nobody wants to go first on that!
Directed by Sergei Bodrov, Seventh Son is based on the novel The Spook’s Apprentice by Joseph Delaney.
At a recent New York press conference for the film - Bridges, Moore and Barnes discussed their personal connections to their roles and how themes of fate and destiny have played out off-screen.
This film talks a lot about destiny and fate. How much has fate played a role in your lives?
Jeff Bridges: Destiny and fate? You guys wanna go first on that one?
Ben Barnes: Nobody wants to go first on that!
- 2/6/2015
- by Justine Browning
- LRMonline.com
When Jeff Bridges agreed to play a mystical warrior in the action-fantasy Seventh Son, he brought director Sergei Bodrov a quote by Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: "If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" "I thought that was something we could bring to the film,"
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- 2/3/2015
- by Ashley Lee
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Cinema has always liked telling a good life story, and all kinds of biography – from the humblest to the starriest – have been given a filmic going-over. The Guardian and Observer's critics pick the 10 best in a very crowded field
• Top 10 animated movies
• Top 10 silent movies
• Top 10 sports movies
• Top 10 film noir
• Top 10 musicals
• Top 10 martial arts movies
• More Guardian and Observer critics' top 10s
10. Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
This is the most radical of all biopics. It does exactly what it promises, breaking the Canadian pianist's intense and troubled life into concentrated fragments. Reassembly is left to the viewer. When he began working on the screenplay with Don McKellar, the writer-director François Girard recognised the pitfalls of the genre. "There are many traps," he said. "The main temptation is to try to cram everything about a life into one film. What you need is a radical idea...
• Top 10 animated movies
• Top 10 silent movies
• Top 10 sports movies
• Top 10 film noir
• Top 10 musicals
• Top 10 martial arts movies
• More Guardian and Observer critics' top 10s
10. Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
This is the most radical of all biopics. It does exactly what it promises, breaking the Canadian pianist's intense and troubled life into concentrated fragments. Reassembly is left to the viewer. When he began working on the screenplay with Don McKellar, the writer-director François Girard recognised the pitfalls of the genre. "There are many traps," he said. "The main temptation is to try to cram everything about a life into one film. What you need is a radical idea...
- 12/12/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
Elitist and pretentious, or an endangered species? Whatever your feelings, there's no doubt that arthouse movies are among the finest ever made. Here the Guardian and Observer critics pick the 10 best
• Top 10 romantic movies
• Top 10 action movies
• Top 10 comedy movies
• Top 10 horror movies
• Top 10 sci-fi movies
• Top 10 crime movies
Peter Bradshaw on art movies
This is a red rag to a number of different bulls. Lovers of what are called arthouse movies resent the label for being derisive and philistine. And those who detest it bristle at the implication that there is no artistry or intelligence in mainstream entertainment.
For many, the stereotypical arthouse film is Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin was a classic art film from the 1920s and Luis Buñuel investigated cinema's potential for surreality like no one before or since. The Italian neorealists applied the severity of art to a representation...
• Top 10 romantic movies
• Top 10 action movies
• Top 10 comedy movies
• Top 10 horror movies
• Top 10 sci-fi movies
• Top 10 crime movies
Peter Bradshaw on art movies
This is a red rag to a number of different bulls. Lovers of what are called arthouse movies resent the label for being derisive and philistine. And those who detest it bristle at the implication that there is no artistry or intelligence in mainstream entertainment.
For many, the stereotypical arthouse film is Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin was a classic art film from the 1920s and Luis Buñuel investigated cinema's potential for surreality like no one before or since. The Italian neorealists applied the severity of art to a representation...
- 10/21/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
‘The Fifth Estate’ movie review: ‘Tasty’ but ‘opaque’ version of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange (photo: Daniel Brühl as Daniel Domscheit-Berg and Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange in ‘The Fifth Estate’) Late in the game during The Fifth Estate, Twilight director Bill Condon’s long-awaited return to helming real movies, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) glowers at close confidante Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) and hisses, “How much time you can spend with a person and still have no idea who they are.” If only Condon knew we’d be wondering the same thing about the tasty, if opaque, version of Assange he’s asking us to consider. Condon and screenwriter Josh Singer (who adapted WikiLeaks books by Domscheit-Berg and The Guardian journalists Luke Harding and David Leigh) practically luxuriate in the mysterious and contradictory motives that make Assange such a fascinating character, until we realize all The Fifth Estate has to...
- 10/3/2013
- by Mark Keizer
- Alt Film Guide
'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan' Director Nicholas Meyer Is Writing a Cold War Space Race TV Series
Primeridian Entertainment announced today that it will be producing and financing a new television series about the post-World War II space race between the United States and the Ussr. The project will purportedly span the time between the collapse of Nazi Germany through the 1960s, covering the contentious competition between the two superpowers and their technological successes and failures. The newly launched company, who at Cannes announced a feature about Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn to be written and directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh ("The Stoning of Soraya M."), have hired Nicholas Meyer to write the pilot. Meyer, who was nominated for an Academy Award for adapting his own novel to screen for 1976 Sherlock Holmes film "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution," directed "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," though he only received screenplay credit for the latter. The yet untitled TV project has several expert advisors on board.
- 6/25/2013
- by Julia Selinger
- Indiewire
Primeridian Entertainment has tapped Star Trek vet Nicholas Meyer to script the pilot and treatment for an untitled TV series about the space race between the U.S. and Ussr, spanning the end of WWII through the 1960s. The neophyte banner has optioned the rights to Matthew Brzezinski’s Red Moon Rising: Sputnik And The Hidden Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age for the project and is also in talks to enlist Cold War experts like Sergei Khrushchev, son of Nikita Khrushchev, to consult. Series will focus on the competition between superpowers as both countries attempt to build on the Nazis’ V-2 designs to grow their own space programs. Primeridian is led by Arcadiy Golubovich and Tim O’Hair, who at Cannes launched a feature project based on the life of Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. They’ll produce and finance the untitled space project themselves. The shingle has also tapped...
- 6/25/2013
- by THE DEADLINE TEAM
- Deadline TV
The Kings of Rome
Le Grisbi Productions and Dcm Productions are teaming for the feature "The Kings Of Rome" from a script by Don MacPherson ("Fleming").
The drama follows an American investigator sent to Rome to collect a debt. There, he gets sucked into a Dantean underworld of corruption, sex and murder that reaches to the highest echelons of the Vatican. [Source: Deadline]
Untitled Alexander Solzhenitsyn Biopic
Primeridian Entertainment has hired Cyrus Nowrasteh to write and direct a feature film based on the life of Soviet dissident and author Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
The company has optioned rights to D.M. Thomas’ biography "Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life." Nowrasteh will write the script with his wife, Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh. [Source: Variety]
Untitled James Gray Project
Rt Features is set to produce an untitled sci-fi thriller from filmmaker James Gray. Gray will direct and co-wrote the original script with "Fringe" scribe Ethan Gross. [Source: Variety]...
Le Grisbi Productions and Dcm Productions are teaming for the feature "The Kings Of Rome" from a script by Don MacPherson ("Fleming").
The drama follows an American investigator sent to Rome to collect a debt. There, he gets sucked into a Dantean underworld of corruption, sex and murder that reaches to the highest echelons of the Vatican. [Source: Deadline]
Untitled Alexander Solzhenitsyn Biopic
Primeridian Entertainment has hired Cyrus Nowrasteh to write and direct a feature film based on the life of Soviet dissident and author Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
The company has optioned rights to D.M. Thomas’ biography "Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life." Nowrasteh will write the script with his wife, Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh. [Source: Variety]
Untitled James Gray Project
Rt Features is set to produce an untitled sci-fi thriller from filmmaker James Gray. Gray will direct and co-wrote the original script with "Fringe" scribe Ethan Gross. [Source: Variety]...
- 5/17/2013
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
New film production and financing entity Primeridian Entertainment has set Cyrus Nowrasteh to direct a bipoic of famed Soviet dissident and Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Russian film producer, actor and director Arcadiy Golubovich and producer Tim O'Hair are launching their venture in Cannes, with an eye to investing in and producing two to four films a year. Primeridian is represented by CAA. Photos: 'The Bling Ring' Steals the Spotlight at Cannes Premiere A Solzhenitsyn biopic is a natural fit for Primeridian, considering Golubovich's roots. Primeridian has optioned the rights to D.M. Thomas' acclaimed biography Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A
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- 5/17/2013
- by Pamela McClintock
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Primeridian Entertainment has hired Cyrus Nowrasteh to write and direct a film on Soviet dissident and Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Producing will be Primeridian’s Arcadiy Golubovich and Tim O’Hair, who’ll provide equity financing for their first feature under the banner. They’ve optioned D.M. Thomas’ Orwell Prize-winning biography Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century In His Life. Nowrasteh, who last helmed The Stoning Of Soriah M and whose TV work includes The Day Reagan Was Shot and the controversial Path to 9/11, will write the script with wife Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh. They just adapted Anne Rice’s Christ The Lord. “It’s a privilege to tell the courageous story of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,” said the director. “Millions suffered and died in the Soviet labor camps. As a survivor, he resolved to tell the world about it. The power of his pen, despite the suppression of his work and...
- 5/17/2013
- by MIKE FLEMING JR
- Deadline
Greedy, villainous, grasping … Richard Gere's character in Arbitrage is a nasty piece of work. Which seems to draw us in
The rogue financier played by Richard Gere in Arbitrage is a pretty bad chap. All he cares about is amassing wealth and status, and, when things go wrong, saving his own skin. Yet although he plunders, deceives and betrays, the audience is invited to root for him. Such are his charisma and magnetism that the invitation proves irresistible. In this film, the villain is the hero. His daughter, its paragon of virtue, is a bit of an anaemic bore. His antagonist, a maverick detective, is more engaging than her, but to make him so, he too is given a sinful side: he himself is prepared to transgress in order to get his man.
Arbitrage's success in glamorising evil has attracted comment; but of course the film's achievement in...
The rogue financier played by Richard Gere in Arbitrage is a pretty bad chap. All he cares about is amassing wealth and status, and, when things go wrong, saving his own skin. Yet although he plunders, deceives and betrays, the audience is invited to root for him. Such are his charisma and magnetism that the invitation proves irresistible. In this film, the villain is the hero. His daughter, its paragon of virtue, is a bit of an anaemic bore. His antagonist, a maverick detective, is more engaging than her, but to make him so, he too is given a sinful side: he himself is prepared to transgress in order to get his man.
Arbitrage's success in glamorising evil has attracted comment; but of course the film's achievement in...
- 3/4/2013
- by David Cox
- The Guardian - Film News
Striking Russian opera singer and wife of Mstislav Rostropovich, she was made an 'unperson' during the Soviet era
The soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, who has died aged 86, coloured her performances of opera, and especially of Russian song, so beautifully that full comprehension was not essential for enjoyment. Of course, once you did understand the words, you realised how much meaning she brought to them.
Possessed of a striking physical presence with lustrous dark hair, she was such a natural actor that she became the star of her generation at the Bolshoi opera company in Moscow, forging artistic relationships with the stage director Boris Pokrovsky and the conductor Alexander Melik-Pashaev. And – appropriately for a performer who sang with all the skill of an instrumentalist – for more than half a century she was married to Mstislav Rostropovich, not just a great cellist, but also a considerable conductor and pianist.
Their marriage – her third...
The soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, who has died aged 86, coloured her performances of opera, and especially of Russian song, so beautifully that full comprehension was not essential for enjoyment. Of course, once you did understand the words, you realised how much meaning she brought to them.
Possessed of a striking physical presence with lustrous dark hair, she was such a natural actor that she became the star of her generation at the Bolshoi opera company in Moscow, forging artistic relationships with the stage director Boris Pokrovsky and the conductor Alexander Melik-Pashaev. And – appropriately for a performer who sang with all the skill of an instrumentalist – for more than half a century she was married to Mstislav Rostropovich, not just a great cellist, but also a considerable conductor and pianist.
Their marriage – her third...
- 12/11/2012
- by Tully Potter
- The Guardian - Film News
The American documentarist Alison Klayman had unequalled access to Ai Weiwei during the time he was working on the Bird's Nest stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and staging his large So Sorry exhibition in Munich, and her excellent film is a lively, informative, funny and inspirational portrait of a courageous, charismatic, highly original man. He comes across as a gregarious, unpompous, comic version of the Soviet dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Drawing on interviews with his wife, mother, brother, numerous people from the art world in China and elsewhere and the man himself, Klayman deals with every aspect of his career as architect, photographer, conceptual artist, social critic, blogger, tweeter and gadfly extraordinaire.
The movie is equally good on his formative childhood and adolescence in exile to a distant part of China as the son of the despised modernist poet Ai Qing, as well as on his 12 years in America where he developed his art,...
The movie is equally good on his formative childhood and adolescence in exile to a distant part of China as the son of the despised modernist poet Ai Qing, as well as on his 12 years in America where he developed his art,...
- 8/11/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
He is the great Russian director who once shot a whole film in a single take. Aleksandr Sokurov talks to Steve Rose about Soviet spies, fallen dictators – and how he got Putin to fund his latest work
At the end of a challenging conversation that, conducted via a translator, strains my intellectual faculties to their limit but barely flexes his, Aleksandr Sokurov makes an astounding statement. "I'm a very literary person, not so much a cinematographic person. I don't really like cinema very much."
Pardon? He doesn't like cinema very much? That's like hearing David Attenborough say he's never really liked animals. Here is a man who was persecuted by the communists for his films; the man who gave us a miraculous feature conducted in one single, unbroken shot, 2002's Russian Ark; the man who is the custodian of Russia's great cinematic heritage. What would he have done if he did like cinema?...
At the end of a challenging conversation that, conducted via a translator, strains my intellectual faculties to their limit but barely flexes his, Aleksandr Sokurov makes an astounding statement. "I'm a very literary person, not so much a cinematographic person. I don't really like cinema very much."
Pardon? He doesn't like cinema very much? That's like hearing David Attenborough say he's never really liked animals. Here is a man who was persecuted by the communists for his films; the man who gave us a miraculous feature conducted in one single, unbroken shot, 2002's Russian Ark; the man who is the custodian of Russia's great cinematic heritage. What would he have done if he did like cinema?...
- 11/15/2011
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Slavomir Rawicz never actually made the epic trek described in his classic book The Long Walk, but Peter Weir's movie version is utterly convincing
My generation growing up during second world war and the early years of the cold war first learnt to hate the Germans and Japanese, then to discover that our believed wartime allies from the Soviet Union were just as bad and the benevolent, paternal Stalin was as monstrous as Hitler.
There was a literature at our disposal during the postwar decade to help us understand that change, significantly Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Orwell's Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty- Four, and the symposium The God That Failed written by former communists. To these were added in the mid-1950s an international bestseller, The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz, a Polish army officer captured by Russians in September 1939 when Germany and the Soviet Union carved up his country,...
My generation growing up during second world war and the early years of the cold war first learnt to hate the Germans and Japanese, then to discover that our believed wartime allies from the Soviet Union were just as bad and the benevolent, paternal Stalin was as monstrous as Hitler.
There was a literature at our disposal during the postwar decade to help us understand that change, significantly Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Orwell's Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty- Four, and the symposium The God That Failed written by former communists. To these were added in the mid-1950s an international bestseller, The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz, a Polish army officer captured by Russians in September 1939 when Germany and the Soviet Union carved up his country,...
- 12/26/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966
Viewers and critics always have their personal favourites, but some films achieve a masterpiece status that becomes unanimously agreed upon – something that's undoubtedly true of Andrei Rublev, even though it's a film that people often feel they don't, or won't get. It is 205 minutes long (in its fullest version), in Russian, and in black and white. Few characters are clearly identified, little actually happens, and what does happen isn't necessarily in chronological order. Its subject is a 15th-century icon painter and national hero, yet we never see him paint, nor does he do anything heroic. In many of the film's episodes, he is not present at all, and in the latter stages, he takes a vow of silence. But in a sense, there is nothing to "get" about Andrei Rublev. It is not a film that needs to be processed or even understood, only experienced and wondered at.
Viewers and critics always have their personal favourites, but some films achieve a masterpiece status that becomes unanimously agreed upon – something that's undoubtedly true of Andrei Rublev, even though it's a film that people often feel they don't, or won't get. It is 205 minutes long (in its fullest version), in Russian, and in black and white. Few characters are clearly identified, little actually happens, and what does happen isn't necessarily in chronological order. Its subject is a 15th-century icon painter and national hero, yet we never see him paint, nor does he do anything heroic. In many of the film's episodes, he is not present at all, and in the latter stages, he takes a vow of silence. But in a sense, there is nothing to "get" about Andrei Rublev. It is not a film that needs to be processed or even understood, only experienced and wondered at.
- 10/20/2010
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Polish film star forced into exile by the communist authorities
By the mid-1960s Elzbieta Czyzewska, who has died aged 72, was considered one of the brightest stars of film, theatre and television in Poland. However, she became persona non grata in her own country, only a few months after she was celebrated as the "pride of her generation" on the cover of a Polish magazine.
In 1965 she was appearing in a Warsaw production of Arthur Miller's autobiographical play After the Fall, in the role apparently based on Marilyn Monroe. In the audience was the American journalist David Halberstam, a correspondent for the New York Times, who had interviewed Czyzewska the day before. The pair married that year but Halberstam was expelled from Poland by the authorities for writing articles that criticised the communist regime. The government also condemned Czyzewska for marrying a "Zionist intellectual", and she left to join...
By the mid-1960s Elzbieta Czyzewska, who has died aged 72, was considered one of the brightest stars of film, theatre and television in Poland. However, she became persona non grata in her own country, only a few months after she was celebrated as the "pride of her generation" on the cover of a Polish magazine.
In 1965 she was appearing in a Warsaw production of Arthur Miller's autobiographical play After the Fall, in the role apparently based on Marilyn Monroe. In the audience was the American journalist David Halberstam, a correspondent for the New York Times, who had interviewed Czyzewska the day before. The pair married that year but Halberstam was expelled from Poland by the authorities for writing articles that criticised the communist regime. The government also condemned Czyzewska for marrying a "Zionist intellectual", and she left to join...
- 7/7/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Nobel Prize-winning writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn has died at the age of 89.
The Russian writer passed away on Sunday from heart failure, according to reports.
Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, before being exiled from the Soviet Union for his portrayals of life in the country's labour camps.
He became widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century for his efforts since settling in the U.S. in 1974, following the backlash of his narrative The Gulag Archipelago.
Solzhenitsyn is survived by his wife, Natalya, and his three sons, Stepan, Ignat and Yermolai.
The Russian writer passed away on Sunday from heart failure, according to reports.
Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, before being exiled from the Soviet Union for his portrayals of life in the country's labour camps.
He became widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century for his efforts since settling in the U.S. in 1974, following the backlash of his narrative The Gulag Archipelago.
Solzhenitsyn is survived by his wife, Natalya, and his three sons, Stepan, Ignat and Yermolai.
- 8/4/2008
- WENN
MOSCOW -- Go channel surfing in Russia with the sound on mute and you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching television in Los Angeles, Chicago or New York: The same shows and familiar-looking sitcoms and reality programs play across the terrestrial and satellite stations here.
Daytime, peak time and through the night, Russian television executives are programming the most popular U.S. shows in their original -- albeit Russian-dubbed -- versions or Russian-made adaptations of the formats.
Night owl? The late-evening schedules are peppered with American shows: "Friends", "The Sopranos", "Six Feet Under" and "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" are among those found across national and regional channels.
In the early morning, there's First Channel at 4:20 a.m. with "The Dead Zone". Afternoon time slots bring "Smallville" on CTC Network. A littler later, at 6:30 p.m., Domashny airs "ER."
Primetime tends to be dominated by such Russian-made drama serials as Ren-TV's popular military comedy "Soldati" (Soldiers) or the sort of ratings-grabbing specials pubcaster Rossiya has made popular in the past couple of years, including an adaptation of Soviet novelist Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" or the adaptation of Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "The First Circle". But increasingly, Russian adaptations of U.S.
Daytime, peak time and through the night, Russian television executives are programming the most popular U.S. shows in their original -- albeit Russian-dubbed -- versions or Russian-made adaptations of the formats.
Night owl? The late-evening schedules are peppered with American shows: "Friends", "The Sopranos", "Six Feet Under" and "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" are among those found across national and regional channels.
In the early morning, there's First Channel at 4:20 a.m. with "The Dead Zone". Afternoon time slots bring "Smallville" on CTC Network. A littler later, at 6:30 p.m., Domashny airs "ER."
Primetime tends to be dominated by such Russian-made drama serials as Ren-TV's popular military comedy "Soldati" (Soldiers) or the sort of ratings-grabbing specials pubcaster Rossiya has made popular in the past couple of years, including an adaptation of Soviet novelist Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" or the adaptation of Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "The First Circle". But increasingly, Russian adaptations of U.S.
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