This is the first letter in the first series of what will be an ongoing installment of correspondences between Scout Tafoya and Veronika Ferdman on the topic of Soviet cinema. Each series will be organized around a theme—director, genre, time period, mood or more whimsical connectors such as color or season. In short, the writers reserve the right to let Soviet cinema be their muse and guide the orientation of the letter writing. For this inaugural dispatch from the celluloid wonders of the Soviet bloc the subject can best be described as love in a time of discontent.Dear Veronika,I’m excited to be writing to you about the many, many undiscovered, unsung gems hiding in the vast canon of Russian cinema. There’s so much to cover that it’s frankly a little overwhelming to me. A whole world of movies I’ve never heard of just waiting to be watched.
- 9/28/2015
- by Scout Tafoya
- MUBI
Sean Penn: Honorary César goes Hollywood – again (photo: Sean Penn in '21 Grams') Sean Penn, 54, will receive the 2015 Honorary César (César d'Honneur), the French Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Crafts has announced. That means the French Academy's powers-that-be are once again trying to make the Prix César ceremony relevant to the American media. Their tactic is to hand out the career award to a widely known and relatively young – i.e., media friendly – Hollywood celebrity. (Scroll down for more such examples.) In the words of the French Academy, Honorary César 2015 recipient Sean Penn is a "living legend" and "a stand-alone icon in American cinema." It has also hailed the two-time Best Actor Oscar winner as a "mythical actor, a politically active personality and an exceptional director." Penn will be honored at the César Awards ceremony on Feb. 20, 2015. Sean Penn movies Sean Penn movies range from the teen comedy...
- 1/28/2015
- by Steve Montgomery
- Alt Film Guide
Russian movie star Tatiana Samoilova dead at 80; known as ‘the Russian Audrey Hepburn,’ Samoilova was best remembered for Cannes winner ‘The Cranes Are Flying’ (photo: Tatiana Samoilova in ‘The Cranes Are Flying’) Russian film star Tatiana Samoilova, best remembered for playing the female lead in Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1957 romantic drama The Cranes Are Flying, died of heart complications at Moscow’s Botkin Hospital late night on May 4, 2014 — the day the Leningrad-born (now St. Petersburg) actress turned 80. Samoilova, who had been suffering from coronary heart disease and hypertension, had been hospitalized the previous day. The daughter of iconic stage and film actor Yevgeny Samoilov, among whose credits was the title role in a 1954 production of Hamlet and several leads in highly popular movies made during World War II, Tatiana Samoilova studied ballet at Moscow’s prestigious Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko music theater. Beginning in 1953, she took acting lessons for three years...
- 5/6/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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