Anti Stab

“Less Lethal Ammo“, meet “Anti-Stab Knife“.

Ograblenie po…, part 2

As a kid i watched Ograblenie po… many times and i never really understood the meaning of the American part.

Well, now i see that i actually understood it correctly: Its point is that American movies have no meaning.

More Soviet Animation

Contact—This should be Ian Brown’s favorite animated film. The creators stole the theme from “Godfather” and based on it a short film about contact between an earthman and an alien. Avantgarde and funny.

Hedgehog in the Fog—The title says it all. If you think that it doesn’t say much, you are right. This beautiful short film has a lot of dialogue in Russian and it is translated, but don’t try to hard to understand the plot. Just enjoy the visuals.

There Once Was a Dog—before Russians and Ukrainians hated each other they made lovely colorful movies about each other. The fat wolf breaking through the fence is one of the most unforgettable moments of my childhood.

Film Film Film (part 1), Film Film Film (part 2)—Like “Ograblenie po…”, this is another masterpiece of “film about film”, a love poem to the cinema industry. The director running on the ceiling is another unforgettable childhood moment.

Ograblenie po…

OK, good—run and watch this on YouTube before it is removed for copyright reasons!

• Part 1: American-styled robbery
• Part 2: French-styled robbery
• Part 3: Italian-styled robbery
• Part 4: …-styled robbery (Untitled, Soviet)

This is one of the best Soviet animation films. It wonderfully parodies the styles of film in the respective countries. You don’t need to know any Russian to watch it. (There’s very little dialogue in it, and the version on YouTube has translation for all of it! Thank you, whoever you are.) I don’t need to add much more, you can read the rest in Wikipedia.

This film was shown very often on the Soviet TV. After i saw it many times, the censorship was quietly lifted from the final part, which parodies Soviet crime comedies and i remember very well how surprised i was when i saw it for the first time.

Bananas and Reality

I just watched Woody Allen’s Bananas, his second best after Crimes and Misdemeanors.

There’s that great scene, where the victorious rebel leader declares himself the new president and proclaims that the country’s new official language will be Swedish. His rebel collaborators immediately decide that he lost his mind.

And then i read this:

Malaysian row over word for ‘God’

A church and Christian newspaper in Malaysia are suing the government after it decreed that the word “Allah” can only be used by Muslims. (BBC)

Soviet Sherlock Holmes

New Zealand issues a commemorative coin with images of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and related characters.

The cool part: The characters’ appearance is copied from the Soviet movies about Sherlock Holmes!

Made My Cry – Faceless Cowards

Freedom itself was attacked this morning by Nicholas Cage.