ISO Russian movie & music recommendations

[Emily Saunders]

With regards to movies, a popular "Blokbastr" that came out not too  
long ago and is based on a book by a popular spy novel writer is  
Turetsky Gambit.  Don't know if this is available in the U.S. or not.   
Also fairly recently is Nochnoi Dozor -- a freaky-weird sci-fi action  
flick that was in select U.S. movie houses under the name Nightwatch.   
There was also a fairly popular flick with a mafia? plot called "Bumer"  
which I haven't seen, but it seemed to have a following of sorts.

It may also be of interest to know something about "Goblin  
Translations" of big-time Hollywood films.  The guy who used to do the  
voice-over dubbing of Hollywood flicks back in the '80's when they were  
all low quality and black market has begun to put out alternative  
translations of big name films.  Basically he takes movies like Matrix  
and The Lord of the Rings and dubs over alternative plots and dialog.   
In some cases he even plays with the background music and graphics.  So  
for example the background music for Sauron's tower of Baradur is Alan  
Parson's Project "Eye in the Sky" and in the Matrix the main characters  
are all escapees from a lunatic asylum.  The language is, naturally,  
not the cleanest and is chock full of slang, which is likely to go over  
most student's heads.  But knowing about these translations can  
potentially increase your coolness in the eyes of high schoolers.

What would be a lot of fun, I imagine, would be to get some recordings  
of certain T.V. shows -- if you have a friend who could manage it.   
There's one particular program -- and the exact name is escaping me at  
the moment -- that I think is called Zapretnaya Zona.  The premise is  
that someone writes into the show with a particular mystery -- where  
does their wife go every day between 9 and 10 or why are the lightbulbs  
in their podezd being stolen?  And the show's producers put in some  
hidden cameras to solve the mystery.  One gets the feeling that a lot  
of these stories are staged because the solution to the problem tends  
to get quite wacky and convoluted, but the twists and turns would  
definitely catch the interest of viewers and there are many different  
levels to the stories that could serve for conversational practice in  
Russian.

Anyway, just a few ideas.

Regards,

Emily Saunders

On Jul 14, 2006, at 9:51 AM, Devin Browne wrote:

> Hi all -- Having been out of the Russian loop for about a decade, I'm
> looking for recommendations of movies and music I can share with my  
> high
> school students.  Current (or fairly current) movies go over better w/  
> my
> students.
>
> Regarding music, I'd love to hear what your take is on current Russian
> hip-hop.  I've searched a little on the 'net and, well, I've been a  
> little
> disappointed.  Detsl seems like he made a splash a few years ago and is
> fairly well produced -- is he still in the mix these days?  Are there  
> any
> other hip hop artists in Russia that I should be aware of?
>
> Thanks,
> Devin
>
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