Category: Videos

Movies and music videos

Book: Frederik L. Schodt “Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics”

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At one point in my work, I had to closely engage with the manga and anime industry (in the entertainment field, it’s quite normal for different areas of the entertainment industry to overlap: many games and movies are based on anime, and vice versa). However, I could never say I was a fan of this genre (unlike my older daughters). In my childhood, we didn’t have many comics, let alone their Japanese form in the style of manga, and my exposure to anime was limited to a couple of animated films that were allowed on Soviet cinema screens. I vaguely remember two: Taro, the Dragon Boy (which I really liked as a kid) and, later on, Puss in Boots: Travels Around the World. But we didn’t even know back then that this was anime.

After a closer encounter with it, I decided at some point to study the subject in more depth. Some aspects seemed quite strange to me, as someone raised in a completely different culture. For instance, when we were preparing to launch World of Tanks in South Korea, our Korean office practically created all the training materials from scratch, and to me, these pages on the site looked wild — it was a huge scroll of content in the form of a manga-style comic. But that’s just how they’re accustomed to receiving information.

As I delved deeper into the topic, I learned many interesting facts that all anime fans know, but the average person probably hasn’t even heard of. For example, many well-known Western franchises either have Japanese roots or were simply “borrowed” from Japanese creators due to a rather unique approach to copyright at the time. Here are just a few prominent examples to give you an idea:

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Georgiy Daneliya “Nightmare on Tiptoes”

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koshmar

Georgiy Daneliya is one of the most prominent Soviet directors. I can’t say I love all his films, but his works like Walking the Streets of Moscow, Mimino, Kin-dza-dza!, Don’t Grieve!, Afonya, and Autumn Marathon are iconic, along with Gentlemen of Fortune, for which he wrote the script. And that’s not a complete list.

I once stumbled upon excerpts from his memoirs, but I didn’t pay them much attention until I saw a book called A Passenger Without a Ticket at a friend’s—a memoir by the director about his life. I got interested, started reading, and quickly got hooked.

I finished the book in a few days, and at the end, there was a note: “To be continued.” I thought that couldn’t be a coincidence, so I searched online and found that Georgiy Daneliya had actually written three memoirs, later combined into a single cycle, initially called Chito-Grito (when it was a two-part series) and later released as a single book titled Nightmare on Tiptoes.

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“Union of Salvation”

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soyus-spasenia

My wife and I watched Union of Salvation over the weekend.

The film was supposed to tell the story of the Decembrist uprising of 1825. It was these people who called themselves the “Union of Salvation,” intending to “save” Russia from autocracy—as they understood it.

The sets and costumes were great, and the actors weren’t bad. But the script was a big letdown. The entire movie was just a flurry of people and events. Characters come and go at lightning speed; you barely read a name before the next one appears. And for viewers unfamiliar with the history, these character names mean absolutely NOTHING.

Because there’s no explanation at all. If you haven’t read the history, the whole film boils down to “some random men want a revolution, bring out the troops, shout a bit, and die.”

There’s no clarity on what exactly they want, no explanation of why or how they want to achieve it. No motivation. No explanation of who these people are. It’s like the audience is expected to read a history textbook first and only then come to watch. Luckily, I remember some details of these events—not just the Soviet version that glorified the Decembrists as the first Russian revolutionaries who died for the people (even though they actually didn’t care much about the people).

Even the fact that the Union split into Northern and Southern Societies is mentioned so briefly it’s instantly forgotten. And this split wasn’t without reason. At some point, their ideas diverged significantly on what they wanted and the methods to get there, leading to the division.

So, I was deeply disappointed by the viewing. It’s beautiful, but disappointing due to poor directing, because even with some historical knowledge, I’d still want more than just visuals.

The soundtrack, though, was very impressive. I even listened to it several times afterward. They seamlessly blended in “Walking on Water” by Nautilus Pompilius (which is basically the film’s main theme) and even “Vladivostok 2000” by Mumiy Troll. The arrangements came out very interesting.

My rating: 2/5

Edward Ross “Filmish: A Graphic Journey Through Film”

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How badly I wanted to read this book! And how great my disappointment turned out to be! It’s much easier to list what’s wrong with this book than to find anything good about it.

In Russian the book is titled How Film Works: Theory and History of Cinema and was marketed as “an extensive study presented as a stylish and engaging comic.” But contrary to the title and description, it’s not about how cinema works at all. Frankly, the translators share some of the blame here, as the original title is Filmish: A Graphic Journey Through Film, which didn’t claim to be about how cinema works, nor about theory or history.

So what is it actually about? If I were to sum it up briefly, I’d say this: it’s a collection of completely unrelated paragraphs that try to appear as a scholarly article with deep insights. More often than not, these “insights” come from other people, whom the author frequently quotes throughout the book. This is criticism in its worst form, where the writer attempts to explain what the filmmaker intended to convey, or what they were thinking. But reality shows that often the filmmaker wasn’t thinking about anything of the sort (there’s a great example with the horse in the film Afonya, which Georgiy Daneliya wrote about in his memoirs).

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Life is Beautiful: I couldn’t make it

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It so happened that I had never watched Roberto Benigni’s film Life is Beautiful. I had heard of it, vaguely knew the plot, but had never seen it.

I decided to correct this, as I’ve never avoided the topic of Jews and Nazism — I’ve watched all the significant films and read many books on the subject.

But the film turned out to be different from what I expected. The first half is a sort of prelude, with nothing about Nazis. It’s about the main character — what he’s like in life. Both the character and Benigni’s acting style (he plays the lead role) were a bit irritating, but I managed to endure it, waiting for other developments.

However, as soon as the film started addressing the story of Jews and the concentration camp, I couldn’t take it anymore. Knowing how Jews were really treated and what happened in the camps, this buffoonery irritated me too much. It seemed to me that this couldn’t have happened in reality. In my opinion, it felt more like an insult to what actually happened.

Maybe I’m wrong, but at some point, I realized that I didn’t want to and couldn’t continue watching. I simply turned off the film, though I understand that many people love it (8.6 out of 10 on IMDB).