Chekhov's Gun

It certainly looks lavish, but I have to wonder about Joe Wright and Tom Stoppard taking on Count Leo in this new adaptation of Anna Karenina.  The last foreign attempt was an American adaptation fifteen years ago with French actress Sophie Marceau cast in the lead role and Sean Bean as Count Vronsky.  Now we get a British version with Keira Knightley and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the lead roles and Jude Law as Anna's jilted husband. There really hasn't been a successful version of the novel.  The Soviet version from 1967 featured Tatyana Samojlova, best known for her role in The Cranes Are Flying .  There were earlier American attempts with Vivien Leigh in 1948 and Greta Garbo in 1935, but somehow Tolstoy's signature character has eluded actresses. I like Keira.  I thought she was great as Sabina Spielrein in A Dangerous Method , but she is a very intense actress, and the role of Anna requires someone with a more quiet passion.  Her attempt at Lar...

One of the most beautiful tellings of the Little Mermaid is this 1968 Soviet feature, русалочка , told from a contemporary point of view and in two different styles of animation.  My wife has long loved this version, although it doesn't make as much impact on our little one, who prefers the Disney version from a few years back.  Here is Rusalochka with English subtitles.

Nikolai Nikogosyan appeared to have many stories to tell when I saw him interviewed on the History Channel the other night.   Well into his 90s, Nikolai still looks spry and alert.  It was just too bad the host didn't see fit to translate what he had to say.  Instead, he showed a few of his more famous bronze castings. Fortunately, there is this piece from Passport magazine , noting his 90th birthday in 2008.  Nikogosyan's work can be found all through the former Imperium.  Perhaps his most famous work is that associated with the New Building of the Moscow University, which he started back in the 50s.  I like his beautiful stone sculpture of Maya Plisetskaya pictured above.  He also has a wonderful hand for painting. Much of his Soviet era work remains in place.  His contemporary pieces break free from the bonds set at the time.  Here is the artist at work .

"I'm a Karamazov... when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful." I had been looking for a nice copy of The Brothers Karamazov , the only one of Dostoevsky's "Big Four" I haven't read.  The first English translation was by Constance Garnett, published in 1912, and served as the standard for decades.  I was tempted to track down a first edition of the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation from 1990, which received glowing reviews like this one from the New York Times.  But, this Folio Society edition, translated by David Magarshak, is a real beauty, replete with its own slipcase. The volume dates from 1964.  Magarshak may not make the words "sing," as the reviewer raved of the P/V translation, but his translation is generally regarded as the most accurate.   The Folio Society updated this edition in 2008 ...

We found ourselves watching  Полёты во сне и наяву  the other night, featuring Oleg Yankovsky and Lyudmila Gurchenko.  The film dates to 1983 with Yankovsky's character, Sergei, having a hard time coming to terms with his 40th birthday.  The architecture studio where Gurchenko's character, Larisa, worked reminded me a lot like the one my wife shared with colleagues when I first came to Vilnius in 1994.  

I was watching a History channel special on Socialist Realism art of the Soviet Union and this was one of the grand canvases that is now stuffed away in the Tretyakov State Gallery .  The painter was Fyodor Shurpin and he had a wonderful eye for detail, right down to the secret service black car on the road to Stalin's right.  To the left, one sees a row of combines turning over the field of golden wheat, which became symbolic of Stalin's Soviet Union.  Утро нашей Родины is from 1949, with Stalin radiating a post-war confidence.  It is also known as  Dawn of our Fatherland and other titles. Shurpin was one of the better artists to carry over from the pre-war years.  The narrator pointed out how socialist realist art changed dramatically as a result of the war, becoming much more static and propagandist in appearance.  He pointed to two stops along the Moscow subway as an example of this divide.  Here, Shurpin essentially transposes Stalin fo...

Here are a few tantalizing clips from the title story in this early collection, A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia .  Wolves have figured heavily into the Russian imagination, but Pelevin twists this metamorphosis into an existential experience not much unlike those encountered in his book, The Life of Insects .  It is less a parable, as say Bulgakov's classic Heart of a Dog , than it is an invocation of a return to a natural order.  Ultimately, Pelevin through his first person, Sasha, finds himself having to encounter another werewolf in a battle for his life.