procrastinating

I am supposed to be working on my annotated bibliography, and i am actually. But it involves reading large amounts of Lapteva’s 900 page book, which is armful to the health in substantial quantities. So for time to time I need to take rests from Lapteva’s encyclopaedic narrative to enjoy less dense fare.
So over the past few days, while trying to finish up this awful bibliography, I have watched a series of films, provided courtesy of the pirate, and also courtesy of the various airlines I have been sitting on recently. As for the airlines, British Airways films are MUCH better than those on Air France. Due to this difference, I was subjected to the latest Asterix film earlier this week. One was ok, but now they are not even remotely funny. Nor would I say that les Brigades du Tigre really merited an international audience.
The pirates films have been a bit more inspiring. Breakfast on Pluto is brilliant, and I recommend it highly. It was completely different than what I expected, but maybe that is because I didn’t read the description on the back of the film case very carefully. It is a bit like Transamerica, but Northern Irish and a lot better. The Devil Wears Prada made me laugh very hard, even though the copy I got was dubbed in Russian, despite its claim to the contrary. Meryl Streep is excellent…you never know whether to sympathise with her character or not. Of course I will not argue that the film constitutes great art, but it is exactly the sort of entertainment I have been enjoying indulging in over the past few days.
I have also gone through a series of Russian films, having got one of those compilations where you get 8 films on 1 DVD. They seem to only produce those here in Moscow, I have never seen such DVD combos elsewhere. They are only good for Russian films, as they never come with dual language sound tracks, and I really do prefer to hear things in the original, rather than dubbed over by a monotone Russian male voice.
So I watched that great hit of the summer, прорыв. It is yet another one of those easy-to-understand movies about the war in Chechnya. The good guys are blond and clean-shaven (although some have moustaches) and the bad guys are swarthy and have beards. The good guys are always heroic and honest and willing to die for mother Russia, and the bad guys are treacherous. The good guys have standard uniforms and the bad guys have tracksuits and trainers with green scarves tied around their head and covered in Arabic writing. The good guys are purely ethnically Russian, whereas the bad team always includes a couple of foreign agitators, normally some Arabs or Africans. A number of films have been made along these lines, and I suppose this is just the latest. Of course I recognise it is a piece of rubbish, but I also see it as a popular culture reflection of where things are at the moment. Not that I like what I see. On the subject of Chechnya, Vladimir lent me дом дураков, which is some kind of weird Kosturica style film, just set in Chechnya. It features all the caricatures mentioned above, plus a lot of crazy people (hence the title). фартовый isn’t set in Chechnya, but the action does take place in a Gulag, which I imagine is the next best thing. It features all the standard heroes mentioned above, only the Chechens are missing. So naturally by the end of the film, some of the seeming bad guys are converted into good ones. Not all though, one guy remains evil, but then he has slanty eyes, so maybe we are to believe he is not ethnically Russian after all? Then many people I know liked питер FM, but i cant say that i did. It was, of course, more intelligent than a Chechen war film, actually, it is the most intelligent of the Russian films listed here, but I couldn’t get into its mood. Maybe that is my fault. I will have to get мне не больно, i haven’t seen it yet, but everyone says it is really good.
But now I suppose I really should get back to that bibliography, there is a limit to the amount even I can procrastinate.