5 Favourite song in your native language?
I’m using every opportunity to share with people the existence of Shortparis. The group is watched over by Apollo. (more)
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Their cover of "Wolf hunt" by legendary soviet bard Vladimir Vysotsky. Honestly it would take me long to describe why this particular song and this theatre performance are important, but here is translation as well as original version (give it a listen, Vysotsky's voice is very distinctive).
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6 Most hated song in your native language?
Whatever it is that Morgenshtern or Instasamka (rappers?) do.
Portrait of Vladimir Vysotsky. canvas/oil ,140x140cm 2022
Портрет Владимира Высоцкого. холст/масло, 140x140см. 2022г.
Alexey Golovin, (b. 1977) Russian.
alfred and ivan are taking a road trip to his dacha in Moscow and during the ride he asks him if he wants to play his own music. alfred is legit offended ivan thinks he doesn't listen to russian music.
he goes "oh I'll play you my favorite Russian song right now!" and he plays American Boy by Kombinaciya. AND HE SINGS IT PERFECTLY. ivan is absolutely flabbergasted -- and to make it worse, alfred rolls the window down and YELLS THE SONG. then at a traffic stop, the people riding next to them begin singing along and alfred is having the TIME OF HIS LIFE while ivan wants to DIE.
On a cold December evening, being far from home, in the hotel "Ukraine" in Kyiv, Vladimir Vysotsky experienced a sudden attack of love longing and sent a telegram to his beloved Marina Vladi
we live in deathly emptiness,
try push against it — and pus will gush,
and we muffle fear with a piercing howl —
those at the front and in the back, as one.
and obligatory sacrifices,
our fathers hailed time and again,
have sealed the fate of our generation —
rid us of mind and memory and eyes.
Every once in a while the subject of digital necromancy and bad biopics will pop up and create a lot of discussion, and when it happens, a lot of the same subjects will be brought up repeatedly. However, there's one movie I came upon several months ago that combines "bringing dead actors back to life" and the disrespectful biopic in a completely unhinged way that I've never seen done elsewhere, but I never hear anybody on English-speaking parts of the internet bring it up because it's virtually unknown outside of Russian-speaking areas. Let me introduce you to a little movie called Vysotsky: Thank You for Being Alive.
First, some context on who the subject of this biopic is: Vladimir Vysotsky was a Russian singer/songwriter/poet/actor who was incredibly popular among much of the Soviet Union; you could consider him the Russian equivalent to John Lennon or Edith Piaf, all being artists, who - because they died relatively young - were elevated after their deaths to becoming cultural icons of almost mythical status.
So, in 2011, this movie was released, based on a screenplay and partially produced by Vysotsky's son, Nikita Vysotsky, and it tells a story about Vysotsky having a near-death experience while on tour in Uzbekistan in 1979 as KGB agents are spying on him. The producers apparently wanted viewers to see the "real" Vladimir Vysotsky, and to do that, they took a very... unique approach to his portrayal in the movie.
They had the actor who played Vysotsky go through six hours of makeup every day, then used CG on top of that (to what extent, I don't know, maybe it was just a general digital airbrushing, though I also heard some shots might have his face be entirely CG, but I can't confirm since there's not a lot of info about this movie in English), and then had Nikita Vysotsky dub the voice.
So far, not so unusual, other than the filmmakers being incredibly obsessive about making the actor look exactly like Vysotsky because they didn't think audiences would accept anything else.
Here's the batshit part: They didn't credit the actor, Sergey Bezrukov, upon release. They kept his involvement a secret. Instead, they credited Vladimir Vysotsky as playing himself.
It wasn't until the next year when Sergey Bezrukov admitted to playing Vysotsky, and apparently for a 2013 TV version they finally credited him. Also, this review from before the confession indicates that many people managed to figure out it was him all along. Still, that just goes to show that keeping it a secret was a pointless endeavor.
Maybe this movie is actually really good and tells this episode of Vysotsky's life in a factual, even-handed way, but I wouldn't be able to tell you since, again, not a lot of super-detailed info on Vysotsky in English that's easy to find. What I CAN say is that regardless of its quality, all those efforts pretty much go down the drain by the producers deciding not to credit the actual actor for a time. Pretending Vysotsky played himself feels like putting words in his mouth postmortem, it would be kinda like if I made a biopic about somebody and then at the end of the movie I put up a disclaimer being like "We held an Ouija board session and communicated with our subject's ghost who TOTALLY gave us the stamp of approval."
I haven't seen the whole film but from what I have seen, the use of all that makeup, CG, and dubbing plants the performance pretty firmly in the uncanny valley, and if I were a Russian who had grown up listening to Vysotsky's music and watching his acting roles, then saw this movie in a theater or on TV, I'd be creeped out and insulted at the notion that this is as good as the real deal.
The effect looks fine in some angles and lighting conditions, but otherwise it's generally weird-looking. The face is overly smooth, Bezrukov clearly couldn't emote much underneath all that makeup, and the dubbed voice doesn't always match the facial expressions, or lack thereof. It doesn't help that this movie is REALLY brightly lit and saturated as if it was shot by a 2000's video game developer who just figured out how to do bloom effects, so there's really not much the film could do to obscure the face. The creepiness is something you have to see in motion to feel, just posting pictures wouldn't get across what I mean, so if you do want to see it, the movie has been uploaded here.
Being on something of Vladimir Vysotsky translation kick I have translated «Москва – Одесса» / “Moscow to Odessa” (Spotify, Youtube) into English and made it singable! Lyrics below the cut:
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Again I fly from Moscow to Odessa!
My plane is stuck again on the concrete
And here comes our stewardess, god bless her, blue-clad contessa
Reliable as the whole civilian fleet.
In Murmansk the clouds are thinning out
And Ashgabat waits in the open air
Open are Kyiv, and Kharkov, Chisinau
And Lvov is too—but I don’t need to go there!
They tell me, “There’s not a chance today
Don’t count upon the heavens to be nice!”
And sure enough, they’re saying no express flights to Odessa
The runway’s covered hopelessly in ice!
In Leningrad the snow is melting fast
But why should I for Leningrad declare?
In Tbilisi as always it is warm—
They grow tea there, but I don’t need to go there!
I hear: last flight to Rostov is departing!
But it’s Odessa that’s where I need to be!
But where I need to go—landing lights aren’t restarting
And so the flight is once again delayed!
Where I go, the streets are clad in white
And tomorrow there will be heavy snow
And somewhere else it is all clear and bright
I’m sure that’s nice—but I don’t need to go there!
Here you can’t fly out—and there you can’t fly in
It’s so unfair, I know only defeat
But the stewardess, she dully invites us to board
Reliable as the whole civilian fleet.
You can go to anywhere on the map
To a place that no reward could get me to bear
The port of Vladivostok has been breached
Paris has too—but I don’t need to go there!
Lift off, the sky is clearing, our destination nearing
The liner’s engine working hard and shrill
I’m just on pins and needles, they’ll reroute any minute
Of all their reasons I have had my fill!
Where I go, it’s impenetrable fog
And tomorrow is still more heavy snowfall!
They’ve opened London, Delhi, even Prague
It’s all good now—but I don’t need to go there!
Do I laugh or cry now, delayed again and how now,
And very soon we will our past selves meet
Led swiftly in reverse by the stewardess, our miss Odessa
Who looks just like the whole civilian fleet.
Departures delayed till eight again!
And the weary masses can only accept it!
I’m sick to death of waiting, damn it all!
And I’m flying to wherever they will have me!
I’m sick to death of waiting, damn it all!
I am flying to wherever they will have me.
Чуть помедленнее кони, чуть помедленнее
Вы тугую не слушайте плеть
Но что-то кони мне попались привередливые
И дожить не успел мне допеть не успеть
Я коней напою, я куплет допою
Хоть немного еще постою на краю
dir. Michel was Adapted from the 🇷🇺 Aleksandr Kuprin novel Olesya. Russian version of it was filmed in 1971.
🎭The Blonde Witch is played by Marina Vlady, actress, singer, activist, writer…Vlady was married to Soviet poet/songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky and she has wrote a book about their relationship.
The movie has a beautiful soundtrack (theme tune for my podcast) and it was composed by French Norbert Glanzberg. He was also notable for some famous songs of Édith Piaf.🎼
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🌲The writer Kuprin wrote this book when fell in love of the nature and woods in a hunting trip.
📽️ Brulard, a French civil engineer on assignment in Sweden for a lumber company meets Ina, a local nature-girl type, falls in love, has an affair, tries to convert her to “civilization”, but ends up…no spoilers here.
🔥Movie was filmed in the locations (Dalarna, Mora) where Swedish witch trials were furious in the 17th century. The witch trial in Mora and Älvdalen 1668-1669 is the most famous Swedish witch trial because a famous illustration was made of it in Germany. This kind of prints had huge influence in the Europe and this particular one was even known in Massachusetts Salem at the time.
There were only few cases in 🇸🇪 when the “witch “ was burned alive so this drawing is incorrect. The convicted were beheaded in Sweden like in the Finland trials.
🐴“Funny” detail: Even the famous decoration, Mora’s wooden horse (Dalahästen) was banned, because witches were believed to be using them for the flight to the Satan’s orgies.
👨⚖️🇫🇮The witch “hunter” in Mora was Finnish Lorentz Creutz. As chairman of the Witchcraft Commission, Creutz took it upon himself to save Sweden from the devil’s grip. As head of the Witchcraft Commission, Creutz was ruthless because he was convinced of the correctness of his own actions. He was a man who never doubted.In two weeks the commission heard a total of two hundred defendants and witnesses. It sentenced to death the 16 inhabitants of Mora and the six inhabitants of Älvdalen. In addition, dozens of people were sentenced to various flogging and church punishments. The youngest 22 children had to stand in the church with a whip in their hand for three Sundays in a row and sit in a separate room during the year's services.(Lappalainen 2018)⛪️