Tag: film-adaption

The Last of Us — Season Two

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I’ve watched the second season of The Last of Us. I was already very disappointed with the first one, though my wife liked it.

I watched this season with great difficulty. But by the end even Tanya said she doesn’t want to watch the next one.

My complaints are fairly straightforward. Bella Ramsey is a good actress, but she’s completely wrong for this role. And appearance isn’t even the main issue here. Although, yes, let’s briefly touch on looks too. I do want adaptations to resemble the characters we know from the games. And even Pedro Pascal, charismatic as he is, still doesn’t quite match my image of Joel. But Bella creates an entirely different perception of the character because she is fundamentally different. Dina in season two also doesn’t look like her in-game counterpart, but at least her personality fits. Anyway, after the first season I had already made peace with the visuals.

My main complaint is that the writers, together with Neil Druckmann, for some reason completely reworked the characters’ personalities and motivations. For the sake of flashy spectacle, they changed both the internal logic of the world and the characters’ actions.

The episode with a zombie army attacking Jackson may look impressive, but it’s illogical (fast zombies in such huge numbers would have wiped everyone out instantly), it doesn’t exist in the game or its logic, and it directly contradicts it — the area around Jackson is constantly cleared precisely to prevent any large horde from forming. Yet somehow they missed an entire army. And narratively, this episode is completely unnecessary, in my view. The game’s motivation works far better without any zombie armies.

From the very first episodes, Ellie is portrayed as a reckless, self-absorbed idiot who doesn’t care about rules and just does whatever she wants. And not only does no one put her in her place — everyone around her turns a blind eye to it (which, honestly, explains how they ended up with a horde right next door). And everything Ellie does afterward only reinforces this impression. She’s not a strong character with an internal code. She’s not someone who has to overcome herself to torture a person and then break down in tears afterward. All of that remained in the game and was effectively buried by the writers. In the series she’s just an extremely unpleasant fool — to the point where at some stage I actually found myself wishing she’d just get shot already and the show would end on that happy note.

All in all, I’m genuinely surprised that the creators are doing such a thorough job of undermining their own work. I won’t be watching any further — especially now that even watching it out of solidarity is no longer required.

Book: Alexey Dudarev “Dialog”

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Alexey Dudarev is a Belarusian playwright and screenwriter. My first encounter with his work (or at least what I thought was my first) happened during my final years of school, as his play Riadovyie (“The Rank and File”) was part of the Belarusian literature curriculum. Our school library handed out the book Dialog, which included this play among others. I read a lot during my school years, but I was cautious about unfamiliar authors, especially those who were part of the required reading list. However, the Belarusian literature curriculum often included real gems. Many years later, I couldn’t recall the details of Riadovyie, but I was left with warm feelings about it, as it had been a pleasant surprise.

Later on, I learned that Alexey Dudarev’s plays weren’t only famous in the BSSR; they were also performed in many theaters across the USSR, including the Maxim Gorky Bolshoi Drama Theater in Leningrad and the Central Academic Theater of the Soviet Army, among others. These performances featured actors who were well-known throughout the Soviet Union, including from films.

It wasn’t until even later that I found out Dudarev wrote the script for one of my favorite films, which nearly every Belarusian knows—Belye Rosy (“White Dew”). This simple yet profound story about the final days of a village being displaced to make way for the city’s expansion is filled with both humor and the drama of family relationships, as well as reflections on what is truly important in life. And what a cast—Nikolai Karachentsov, Vsevolod Sanaev, Stanislav Sadalsky, Galina Polskikh, Boris Novikov, and many others.

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Songs: Mark Bernes – “Where Does the Motherland Begin?”

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Despite all the triumphalism that has been built around Victory Day in recent decades, there are things I continue to love. One of them is the wartime songs by Mark Bernes. One of my favorites is “Where Does the Homeland Begin,” which plays over the credits of the four-part film “The Shield and the Sword” about the Russian intelligence officer Alexander Belov / Johann Weiss.

Incidentally, the film itself is also one of my favorite war movies. Yes, in some ways it can be considered propaganda, and not all episodes made sense to me even as a child, but I still love it madly and rewatch it every few years. The book on which it is based, on the one hand, reveals the characters better, but on the other hand, it’s quite heavy and tedious. The film turned out much better. And it was the first film in which the very young Oleg Yankovsky starred, by the way.

In modern Russia, one of Mark Bernes’ songs, “Do the Russians Want War,” has been banned. This says much more about the memory of real history than all the showy veterans and parades.

And the song “Where Does the Homeland Begin” remains one of the best to this day and is constantly playing on my playlist.

Here is that song in the closing scenes of the first episode of the film:

“Ten Little Indians”: On the Changing Titles of an Agatha Christie Novel

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Content note: This post examines the publication history of Agatha Christie’s novel and the evolution of its title and associated rhyme. To document that history accurately, it includes direct quotations of period wording that contains racial slurs. Such language is unacceptable in modern usage; it appears here only as part of quoted historical material, for context and analysis.

Today I’d like to talk a little about Agatha Christie — more precisely, about one of her most famous works, the novel “Ten Little Niggers“. In Russian, both the novel and the 1987 Soviet film adaptation by Stanislav Govorukhin are still known under the title Desyat negrityat (“Ten Little Negroes”). In Russian usage, the word negrityonok historically functioned as a neutral racial descriptor rather than a slur, which partly explains why the title remained unchanged in that cultural context.

I first encountered this work in childhood — not through the book, but through Stanislav Govorukhin’s 1987 film adaptation, released in Russian as Desyat negrityat (and often referred to in English as Ten Little Indians). I saw it a year later, while vacationing at the seaside with my parents. The film was being shown at the resort cinema, and if I remember correctly, my younger brother and I even went without our parents.

I remember how that closed-circle mystery (Christie specialized in exactly that kind of structure), combined with an excellent cast and the oppressive atmosphere of the production, made an indelible impression on me. It didn’t exactly frighten me, but it was impossible to look away as, over the course of the story, nearly all the main characters disappear one by one. And yet — what could an eleven-year-old boy, which is what I was at the time, really understand of it? Back then I looked like this (not exactly a heartthrob, of course, but still reasonably presentable):

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Book: Ilya Ilf, Yevgeny Petrov “The Golden Calf”

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Earlier, I wrote that I had decided to reread the duology about Ostap Bender, which I had previously read only as a teenager. After finishing the “most complete” version of The Twelve Chairs, I picked up a similar edition of the second novel, The Golden Calf. This one is also presented as “The complete version of the novel without omissions or cuts.”

According to legend, the authors hadn’t planned to write a second novel—the first was self-contained, and Ostap Bender dies at the end. The authors even claimed they flipped a coin to decide whether he would live or die. But after the wild success of the first book, it would have been odd if they hadn’t gone ahead with a sequel. Although there is an opinion that the continuation had been planned much earlier, and the rest is just a neat and officially supported legend.

In the first novel, there were two main characters—Kisa Vorobyaninov and Ostap Bender himself. But it was clear who was playing the first violin, who was the thinker and driving force in the duo. Without Ostap, Kisa likely wouldn’t have recovered a single chair. That’s why the second book has no connection to the “leader of the Russian nobility” and instead puts the resurrected Ostap fully in the spotlight, now accompanied by new helpers who are significantly more useful (though still no match for him). As for his death, Ostap mentions it only in passing: someone did try to kill him, but brave Soviet medicine managed to save his life. The only reminder is a clearly visible scar from a razor cut on his neck.

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Book: Ilya Ilf, Yevgeni Petrov “The Twelve Chairs”

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The first time I read the books about Ostap Bender was in my teenage years. I don’t think that’s the best age for such reading, but the book was on our shelf, I had heard a lot about it, and I already liked the film version of The Twelve Chairs directed by Mark Zakharov. Probably because of the songs — but still, I liked it.

I remember that I read both The Twelve Chairs and The Little Golden Calf back to back. I really enjoyed the first book, while the sequel left me with a feeling of melancholy. That impression of the duology stayed with me for years. However, I recently decided to reread them as an adult, to see how my perception might have changed.

Looking at the editions currently available, I came across an expanded version titled “the most complete edition.” That piqued my interest, so I chose to read that one.

In case someone out there either doesn’t remember or has never heard of this book (which would be hard to believe), here’s a brief summary. The setting is the 1920s. A former nobleman, Ippolit Matveyevich Vorobyaninov, lives a modest life as a registry office clerk when he suddenly learns that during the revolution, his mother-in-law hid the family jewels inside one of the chairs from their noble furniture set. He throws himself into a frantic search — and is unexpectedly joined by a stranger, Ostap Bender. In reality, it’s Ostap who takes the lead in the hunt. Thanks to his wit and the skill of a “great schemer,” he masterfully navigates even the trickiest situations. Poor Ippolit Matveyevich is hardly a match for him.

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Book Adaptations (Akunin and Beyond)

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Today, I would like not just to make a post but to invite a discussion on the topic of book adaptations. However, I will focus only on the adaptations of one specific series: The Adventures of Erast Fandorin by Boris Akunin.

Boris Akunin is one of my favorite authors. I have not read all of his works, nor do I enjoy all of them equally. However, the Erast Fandorin series is, in my humble opinion, the best he has written. Today, I will not discuss which novels I like more or less. Instead, I will share my thoughts on the three existing adaptations.

It all began with the film (and later mini-series) Azazel, an adaptation of the very first novel in the series. In fact, I watched the film before I started reading Akunin’s books. At the time, everyone around me was talking about this new and trendy writer, Boris Akunin, and I dislike following trends just because they are popular. But I really enjoyed the film, and almost immediately after watching it, I read the book and became completely immersed in the series, devouring one novel after another.

The series currently consists of 15 books, plus an additional one about Masa, a Japanese servant and partner of Erast Fandorin. Adaptations have been made of the first novel (Azazel, or The Winter Queen in English translation), the second (Turkish Gambit), and, somewhat surprisingly, the sixth (The State Counsellor).

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Christopher Buckley “Thank You for Smoking”

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I don’t even remember why I decided to watch Thank You for Smoking, starring Aaron Eckhart. But the film absolutely blew me away: the main character is a lobbyist for the tobacco industry. Everyone hates him and sees him as another Goebbels, yet he participates in all the talk shows with a charming smile and almost always manages to sway the audience’s opinion.

I’ve watched this film about five or six times, and I recommend it to friends. For a long time, I wanted to read the novel on which the film is based. I even started reading the Russian translation, but I dropped it after about ten pages because it was so poorly translated. So, in the end, I read the book in its original language.

Of course, when you’ve watched a movie so many times and love it, you can’t help but compare the book to the adaptation. In the case of Thank You for Smoking, the differences are quite significant.

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