Posts Tagged ‘Soviet Union’
Short Animated World
I've just discovered the Short Animated World blog, dedicated to chronicling all 100 entries on the recent Annecy Film Festival/Studio Magazine/Variety poll of thirty animation historians to establish the best animated films of all time. There's no original critical material, but each entry offers links and - in most cases - a streaming copy of [...]
The Red and the White
Csillagosok, katonák Hungary/USSR, 1967, black and white, 90 minsSuperficially, it's easy to see why the Soviet Union thought that Miklós Jancsó would be the man to direct a Hungarian-Soviet co-production commemorating the October Revolution's 50th anniversary. With My Way Home, made just eight years after the 1956 uprising, he'd portrayed a [...]
Derek Malcolm’s Century of Cinema
While researching something else (as is always the way), I stumbled upon former Guardian critic Derek Malcolm's A Century of Films - a survey of his personal Top 100, with a robust defence of each film's inclusion. And on glancing down the list again for the first time since 2001, I notice that nine of his choices came from central and eastern [...]
Iván Darvas RIP
I was out of the country at the time, so I initially missed this Guardian obituary of the Hungarian actor Iván Darvas (1925-2007) when it was published on 5 September - and even that was nearly two months late, as he actually died on 3 June, before this blog was even launched. I only knew Darvas from his lead roles in the two Károly Makk films [...]
Old Khottabych
Старик Хоттабыч Lenfilm, USSR, 1956, colour, 86 mins Director: Gennady Kazansky Writers: Lazar Lagin (based on his novel) Camera: Muzakir Shurukov Design: Isaak Kaplan, Berta Manevich Music: Nadezhda Simonyan Cast: Nikolai Volkov (Hassan Abdurrahman ibn Khottab), Alexei Litvinov (Volka), Gennadi Khudyakov (Zhenya), Lev [...]
The Cold Summer of 1953
Холодное лето пятьдесят третьего Mosfilm, USSR, 1988, colour, 100 mins Director: Alexander Proshkin Writer: Edgar Dubrovsky Camera: Boris Brozhovsky Editing: Yelena Mikhailova Design: Valery Filippov Music: Vladimir Martynov Cast: Valery Priyomykhov (Sergei Basargin, 'Chaff'), Anatoly Papanov [...]
Vassilisa the Beautiful
Василиса Прекрасная USSR, 1939, black and white, 72 minsThe second film by director Alexander Row (1906-1973), who throughout his four-decade career specialised almost exclusively in fairytale fantasies (long after they were dismissed as the second-class citizens of Soviet cinema), Vassilisa the Beautiful is based on a famous [...]