russia
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Nostalgia For the Too-Well-Remembered ’90s
Filmdom’s current fixation on the 1990s was, of course, inevitable. Just enough time has passed for the nostalgia to fully kick in among Gen X-and-older producers and consumers, and the results are everywhere, from Captain Marvel down. Plus, it is the last era that plausibly reads as “present day” (by 1994, hip-hop, Tarantino, CGI and Starbucks were all mainstream) without the plot-ruining omnipresence of smartphones. It makes sense that the same mechanisms would be at work all over the world. The most curious iteration of the ’90s revival, however, must be taking place in Russia, where more and more films […]
by Michael Idov on Sep 4, 2019 -
Stray Links 9/1-9/5: Tarantino’s 35mm Prints, Dead Russians and Teddy Bear Detectives
The future of 35mm rep cinema, a personal history of cinephilia as mediated by changing archival access, how the garbage heap of “hot takes” colonizes the internet and more in this week’s round-up of assorted reading: • Quentin Tarantino has owned Los Angeles’ beloved New Beverly Cinema since 2007; now he plans to take over programming himself, drawing extensively upon his private collection of prints. Talking with the LA Weekly‘s Chuck Wilson, Tarantino repeatedly goes off on the crappiness of DCP, including this gem: I have all three Sergio Leone Clint Eastwood movies in I.B. Technicolor. Magnificent looking. I just […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 5, 2014 -
Alexei Balabanov, Cargo 200
ALEKSEI POLUYAN IN DIRECTOR ALEXEI BALABANOV’S CARGO 200. COURTESY DISINFORMATION COMPANY. Though he only decided he wanted to be a filmmaker in his late twenties, Alexei Balabanov has made up for lost time by creating a body of work that has made him both Russia’s most interesting auteur and one of its most commercially successful directors. Born in Sverdlovsk in 1959, Balabanov studied translation at the Gorky Pedagogical University and then spent a few years working as an interpreter for the Russian Army in the Middle East and Africa. It was only at the age of 28 that he signed […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 2, 2009
