IT'S A WISE CHILD...: Saturday night I watched The Return (Возврашение), a recent Russian flick in which two boys go on a camping trip with their recently-returned, long-estranged father and his dark secrets. It's a small movie which punches far above its weight class due to the very true-to-life performances of the two boys, whose relationship undergoes multiple shifts in power dynamics over the course of the movie, and to the color-drenched cinematography. Russia looks just gorgeous here, alive and young and scary. The movie is shot in a way I realized I associate with contemporary horror movies: Everything is bleached or drenched, lots of sickly yellows and drained grays and deep, plush blues. The textures are so finely-notched that you can feel them under your fingertips.

On a moonlight night in the winter of 1835
the carriage of Marie Taglioni was halted by a Russian highwayman, and that enchanting creature was commanded to dance for this audience of one
upon a panther's skin spread over the snow beneath the stars. From this actuality arose the legend that, to keep alive the memory
of this adventure so precious to her, Taglioni formed the habit of placing a piece of artificial ice in her jewel casket or dressing table
melting among the sparkling stones, there was evoked a hint of the atmosphere of the starlit heavens over the ice-covered landscape.
--From Joseph Cornell's box construction Homage to the Romantic Ballet

cited in Dance Anecdotes: Stories from the Worlds of Ballet, Broadway, the Ballroom, and Modern Dance, ed. Mindy Aloff

ABSINTHE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER: The second video here is very, very fun. For TKB on the slight chance she hasn't seen it already.

"HOW ARE LOVE AND PITY RELATED?" Via... JWB?

NEW YORK TIMES STORY BINGO 2011. Not always quite on-target (the aura-cleansing one) and it's not like Fashion Week clothes are supposed to be off-the-rack wearable, but enough of this works that I will allow it. Via IP, but I'm adding this lady to the blogroll because she is funny and interesting and so are her commenters.

A PRIEST CONTEMPLATES GAGARIN'S FEAT. Via TKB.

KARL MARX MONUMENT DISMANTLED, TO BE REPLACED BY CHURCH: The Google machine tells me this is real. Via WAWIV; click through to the link-within-a-link:

The monument to Karl Marx at Sovetskaya Square in downtown Penza was dismantled as a cathedral will be erected instead of it, the Penza Diocese told Interfax.

"A part of the Savior Cathedral will occupy this part of the square; its construction is underway," the interviewee of the agency said. ...

The world's first monument to Marx was set up in Penza on May 1, 1918, but it broke down as it was made of clay.

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SHADES OF BLACK: Akashic Press has a demi-fascinating series of books called _________ Noir, where ________ is the name of a city or area. The idea is that each volume has stories which are in some sense "noir" and which capture some essential element of the setting. I've read almost all of Moscow Noir (didn't finish it because I somehow lost the book in a Whole Foods in Tenleytown, which is pretty much the least noir place in the entire world) and all of Indian Country Noir, so here are a couple thoughts on how those books differ. Wild overgeneralizations ahead!

Moscow Noir is basically roughed-up stories about roughed-up men, with the occasional girl in cheap lipstick. It has a lot of self-consciousness about its noir elements, a lot of explicit references to Hollywood. The men are all low-level thugs, life's losers, and the overall atmosphere is Tenement, Half-Drunk. I liked it a lot! Fans of LA Confidential might check it out.

Indian Country Noir is much more varied in tone. There are several revenge stories, and that revenge is often at least somewhat satisfying for the reader, as vs. Moscow Noir where revenge is always a failure which leaves the reader feeling thwarted and sad. The political elements, the specific nature of racism and oppression, are much more explicitly-named here than in the Russian book.

Native religion is a real, viable option for these characters, whereas Russian Orthodoxy is only mentioned in one story in Moscow Noir and is treated with a certain half-respectful acidity there. Several ICN stories are written as if Native religion is true, real, the actual story of the world. Sadly, I think if those stories received a contemporary genre classification they'd be called "magical realism," because mainstream lit-fic isn't allowed to believe in God or the gods anymore. On a perhaps-related note, peace is a more explicit theme in this book than in Moscow Noir, although I'm not sure it's ever presented as a real possibility.

You could say that the Moscow book is noir because what consistently fails is the protagonists' struggle for success or at least escape, and the Indian Country book is noir because what consistently fails is the protagonists' struggle to make peace. That's reductive, but I do think it might be a bit illuminating.

"Sasha [Gelich] had a hard time coming to faith. He was a Jew, a member of the Russian intelligentsia, and the whole idea confused him quite a lot. Zoya proselytized frequently to him, but he could not quite come into the Church. Once, I remember, he had been drinking. He was a great fan of drinking, a beautiful 'drinking artist.' Zoya said: 'Svetik, show Sasha your cross.' And I showed him the cross. The very next day he went to the priest."
--quoted in Doubly Chosen--man, those are the best parties.

During an extended visit to Soviet Russia in the Brezhnev era of stagnation, on several occasions I was asked by acquaintances of only a casual nature whether or not I believe in God. Why, I wondered, would anyone on the streets of Moscow in the 1970s care about my personal religious life? This had never been a topic of interest in the United States, except, if ever, among close friends.
--from the introduction to Doubly Chosen: Jewish Identity, The Soviet Intelligentsia, And the Russian Orthodox Church; Judith Deutsch Kornblatt says as much about where in America she lived--or rather, where she didn't live--as about Russia....

"PHILOSOPHERS," 1917.

MOSFILM UPLOADS CELLULOID CLASSICS TO YOUTUBE. Via TKB.

Russian film lovers can explore a treasure trove of Soviet films as legendary movie studio Mosfilm has posted dozens of its most famous films on YouTube for anyone to watch for free.

The films, legendary for many Russians but often little known in the West, include the comedies of Georgian-Russian director Georgi Daneliya, “Gentlemen of Fortune” and “Mimino”; “The White Sun Of The Desert,” a much-loved adventure story set in Central Asia that is always watched by cosmonauts before a space launch; and classic melodramas such as Eldar Ryazanov’s “A Cruel Romance” with Nikita Mikhalkov and “A Railway Station for Two” starring the late Lyudmila Gurchenko.

Every week, the studio will upload five new films onto the channel, the studio said in an official press release, and expects to have 200 by the end of the year.

Other films uploaded include “Andrei Rublev” and “The Mirror,” two works by one of Russia’s greatest art-house directors, Andrei Tarkovsky.

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"ALL THE FROGS CROAK BEFORE THE STORM: DOSTOEVSKY VS. TOLSTOY ON HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONS." Worth it regardless of what you make of the author's own position.

MOONLIGHT ENCORES: I checked out My Sergei, Ekaterina Gordeeva's memoir of her brief, happy marriage to Sergei Grinkov, because I'd heard that it was a window on to life, marriage, and dating in the late days of the Soviet Union and especially the Soviet sports machine. The book is so focused and so simply, cleanly-written that it doesn't actually illuminate the cultural context as much as I'd hoped, but it's a limpid portrayal of true love and the journey toward adulthood.

It's also quite candid. To take maybe the most obvious example, Gordeeva describes her plans to abort her child. Her mother and her priest basically talk/manipulate her out of it, and Daria becomes her most precious and lasting reminder of Sergei after his death. Ordinarily I would wonder what it must feel like to read that one's mother seriously considered abortion, but Gordeeva's love for her daughter (as a person in her own right, not solely a memento of lost love) shines through so clearly. The message, to the extent that there is one, is not only that children are a blessing but that it's later than you think.

There are also really detailed, lovely descriptions of the emotions behind the programs of Gordeeva and Grinkov's last year. I can't wait to watch or re-watch them with the insight Gordeeva provided.

"Johnny, you're drunk!"

I wasn't drunk, just a cheap date. Galina let loose with a stream of insults, screaming at the top of her lungs about how disrespectful and shameful I was.

"How Russian can you get?" she said before pushing me inside. "Showing up at the ballet drunk, with a whore."
--Johnny Weir, Welcome to My World

I can confidently say that if you think you might want to read this awesome book, you definitely should. I want to rewatch several of his competitive programs now that I've read his thoughts on how they were developed and what it felt like to skate them.

THE MOST RUSSIAN HEADLINE EVER. Via AC.

PLEASE ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF...: Early on, I was convinced that Synetic Theater's adaptation of The Master and Margarita (showing at the Shakespeare Theater's Lansburgh through December 12, so go now!) would never work. Synetic, which typically does wordless dance/movement adaptations of classic texts, had two big things working against them: Their production has words, and takes place in front of an audience.

Both of these factors served to make the early parts of The Master feel really intensely unsubtle. Without the full context of Bulgakov's prose (which okay, I've only read in translation, but work with me here, people) and the privacy of one's own skull, the discussion of belief in God and the "seventh proof of God" (the Devil exists, therefore God must) felt heavy-handed.

However, by the end of the night I was once again completely on board with Synetic. Their total commitment to the portrayal of Soviet Moscow as a nightmare carnival probably had some personal resonance (much of the troop is made up of Georgian immigrants) and certainly had immense, sinister visual flair. They capture the novel's musical quality, in which motifs return and change key. They play up the Song of Songs aspect of Margarita's search for her Master, which I don't think I even noticed when I read the novel. And they hit hard on the Orwellian aspects of the novel, like the shifts in meaning of the final uses of the word "peace."

A really good, strongly horror-influenced, deeply Christian (or, more accurately, shaped around the space where Christianity would be) production. Recommended.