Russian Language Hall of Fame

Expected to hate this with everyones reaction but actually found it enjoyable. First of all, so glad it's short haha. It takes a while to get going and it's not the best visually at first, the inside of the ship looks so shoddy. What this reminded me of initially oddly were the shows: Thunderbirds, Stingray and Captain Scarlet. The three of them are Marionette's shows set in space or the military. So like this they were low budget depictions of things that were supposed to be futuristic or high tech, which is a jarring juxtaposition. I find it very charming though like Doctor Who (which i'm not a fan of) is immensely popular now but a lot of it still looks silly and dated despite them having the budget to improve exactly for that reason, that whole aesthetic is deliberately built into it with the ridiculous looking Daleks and The Doctors weird suits and bowties. The robots, intercom system, pretty much everything in the sets were so "Saturday Morning Kids Show" to me, like some college pantomime group put the whole thing together with stuff they found in dumpsters Okay, i'm greatly exaggerating it looked nowhere near that cheap, but this is supposed to be complimentary anyway as it took me back to my childhood in a strong way. That's a big thing with space set shows and movies for me particulary B Movies, space exploration is supposed to be the peak of humanity venturing into somewhere we know so little about that complete dwarfes us so when it's dated my brain short circuits or something.

As soon as we landed on Venus with the practical effects and more detailed surroundings it became fantastic to look at though, something i definitely didn't expect considering how i found the inside of the ship. It kinda made me love it by default because it made me think of how fun and hilarious it must have been to construct and interact with all this ridiculous stuff would've been. Also while the monsters looked absurd the actual surface of the planet and weather conditions were very well done. And i found the monsters themselves hilarious anyway because there was absolutely no stakes coming from them, there's no way Marlon Brando could pretend he was scared of any of it and these dudes didn't even really try which i loved. The opening tentacle plant monster thing trying to eat that dude was one of the most pathetic feeling danger scenes i've ever seen which is why i loved it. I'm still not quite sure what i was watching here, whether those were genuine attempts at scary situations or if it was purely supposed to be funny and i kind of tuned out of the dialogue a lot so i'm sure i missed things. Either way it was just ridiculous fun. Also tuning out of the dialogue even though it wasn't deliberate probably made this better because there'd be random lines i'd catch that made zero sense and were hilarious out of context. Should have probably paid more attention but it was honestly difficult with all this nuts stuff going on.

I did struggle at times with this, the acting was mostly very bad at worst and bland at best (i also suspect there was some comedy i just didn't get because of the way it was performed and my aforementioned not following the dialogue all the time), and i'm not the biggest fan of Sci-Fi in the first place so was bored at times, mostly when they weren't dealing with hilarious monsters and conditions on Venus. It looked great and was a lot of fun at times too though. Thanks for nominating Cosmic, normally i wouldn't go within a million miles of something like this and i did enjoy it so i should probably keep more of an open mind.

I've seen very few Soviet/Russian films so i didn't have much choice but to blind nominate. Briefly considered a Tarkovsky or Sokurov but decided on this because i've seen praise for it yet only peripherally, i had absolutely no idea what this was about all i knew was some people think pretty highly of it. I'm glad i went for it as i thought it was fantastic, it's my favourite of the three films i've blind nominated for Hall of Fames by quite some way.

I do think it takes a bit to get going but it's already intriguing right away. The war is coming, you have adults entertaining kids by mimicking battles and neighbours both playfully and seriously threatening each other with the secret police. In just a few brief lines of dialogue it's already set up the current mood and thoughts of the people up really well. That's what i think it did better than anything showed us a collective view of what Soviet Russia was like just as it was going into its harshest period, and not just a small group of people, it was genuinely difficult to keep up with and at the same time it completely slowed down and meandered off into random side characters doing whatever they were doing whether it had any relevance to the plot or not. We see the people with power and some degree of comfort, the ones without and the ones in the middle albeit briefly often. I definitely didn't wrap my head round everything here but i think that's a good thing, both because it makes me want to learn more about it and most importantly it makes me want to see it again. I'll need to see it four or five more times to get who half of the characters were and what was going on in various scenes and if it held any significance outside of creating the feel of a town and a wide group of people. And i don't think you need to get everything he was going for to appreciate the film otherwise i imagine he'd have made it alot more conventionally, the gorgeous look and recreation of a specific time, and people, and culture was enough to drag me in. That's basically why i both love and hate period pieces, i have to be convinced i'm watching something at least somewhat accurate and i'm sure my ignorance of various times in history results in me unfairly maligning films because of it, but sometimes a films depiction just connects with you right and that's what i felt here. I mean it's not just that it feels like 30's Soviet Russia to me, it's that this absolutely doesn't feel like an 80's film, it feels like it was made much closer to the period in the 50's or something.

Thought this looked incredible. At first when it was in black and white it felt like it was going to be a slow, moody film and i thought yeah this had to be in black and white but then we were suddenly blasted with colour and the tempo immediately picked up with that. I loved that, one stylistic choice initially felt like the right one before i got a sample of the alternative and realized this is going to look good whichever we get. The colour shifts were nuts there's literally a scene in black and white but when Ivan looks out the window it's in colour. I'd have to watch it again to make sure because i've already forgot which scenes were in colour and which weren't, but i think the scenes the narrator was directly reflecting on in the "sad story" he was telling were in black and white and all the sidequests haha were in colour, curious if i've got that right. If i am then it would be a lot easier to sort out everything on rewatch by only watching the black and white scenes or the colour ones, probably isn't though. Actually nah i'm wrong because the vast majority of it was in black and white and it was divided much more evenly, well whatever it was great anyway. Think a lot of the Soviet films i've seen are purposefully ugly or maybe "harsh" is a better word and i appreciate that look a lot, but this i traditionally beautiful. Can see the shaky cam annoying some but i actually thought it really contributed to the authentic feel of the film. It sort of felt like we were the one with the shaky cam following the action before we see something interesting happening off to the side making us go and see what's going on over there. A steadier cam and more traditional cuts would've made it feel a lot more staged i feel, this way it felt like we were just travelling about a town documenting how these people lived. The dialogue was the same unless i just had a crappy subtitle file as the camera was seemingly focused on the important characters in that moment but the dialogue shown would often be the others by them or even passing randoms. It kind of reminded me of the episode of The Simpsons: 22 Short Films About Springfield in that we would see small parts of these characters before another character within that scene or at least nearby takes over and becomes the focus.


Anyway wish i had more to say but i don't, i may later though. Was planning on deleting my copy right away to make space but i'm going to keep it around and possibly rewatch some of it as it comes to me, as i do think this will stick in my head. I've not said anything about the characters, i did find them interesting. Like how the self-assured harshness Ivan operates under as a policeman conflicts with his unreciprocated feelings for the actress. But, i think i'd need to spend more time with them and wrap my head more around the structure to have anything interesting or conclusive to say about them. Either way i loved it, think it's the first potential favourite i've blind nommed Just a rewatch of The Cranes are Flying and a first watch of A Visitor To The Museum left now.