criterionforum.org

zedz wrote:I still can't believe Morphia never got an English language release. It's the kind of film that, if we're lucky, somebody like Second Run will unearth in thirty years' time and startle everybody.

I'm not sure if it helps or hinders its chances that the same Mikhail Bulgakov stories were later adapted into a four-part quasi-sitcom by the wildly unlikely duo of Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm.

Was that from the same source? The mind boggles.

MichaelB wrote:And while interviewing Balabanov a few years back was one of my less pleasant Q&A experiences...

Link?

It was a live Q&A, and I don't think anyone was recording it. Or at least I hope they weren't!

Was it just like his other interviews where he refuses to give anything away?

What are the chances of Criterion or anyone picking up his films? There are a lot of interesting docs about him and Sergei Bodrov Jr. I'd love a fancy Criterion of Brother, and there's a great episode of this show Private Screenings where critics do battle over Cargo 200 with Balabanov in the middle; would be an amazing extra. So much could and should be done for his films.

Who knows, but my impression is that there's some weird disconnect between him and the Western critics that I've always thought to be the reason behind the relative obscurity of his work (besides Brother and Cargo 200, the latter of which especially seemed to me to owe its relative popularity almost entirely to the fact that it happened to be marketable to the sort of horror/ultraviolence/"extreme" crowd that Tartan liked to cater to). I've read so many reviews/articles describing him as, among other things, "xenophobic", "racist", "chauvinist", "nationalist", "reactionary" (these are all actual quotes), and on the other hand there's his "nihilism", "misanthropy" AND "misogyny" (ditto) - maybe people just really don't know what to make of him or who to market his films to. I'm not really prepared to analyze it in detail, but my gut feeling is that what's at work here is a classic case of failure to engage with the work on its own terms (or in the correct context) and the result is a confused misreading. (And yes, I know there's no such thing as a misreading etc. etc.)

I'm trying to order a bunch of his stuff off this Ozon.ru site. I can't seem to find a thread on Russian dvds and I'm wondering how to go about this. Should I write my info in Cyrillic?

Edit: only ship books to Canada.

I only have experience of buying Russian DVD's from this shop - they're situated in Finland, and they definitely ship internationally to Europe at least. Only a couple of AB films in stock at the moment though, but I guess you could ask them if they're getting restocks of the others.

There's a very fine looking (but not English-friendly) Blu-ray of Cargo 200 that's been out for years in Russia. Is there any reason that no one like Arrow has taken the opportunity to port it over?

For those in New York: "The Story of Aleksei Balabanov’s Unfinished Film The American and Its Potential Afterlife", a talk with Dr. Frederick H. White at the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia on Ocotber 5th, 2018.

Watching Cargo 200 was actually pretty therapeutic after seeing the masterful but brutally bleak Leviathan recently. Balabanov’s very Slavic sense of humor and the loose and inevitably chaotic drive of his movies are like a fresh breath of air in the spirit of the Yeltsin era. Aleksey Serebryakov’s character was in some ways eerily similar to Kolya who he played in Leviathan, but the ending

Spoiler

was just gratifying even if both movies were pessimistic beyond belief.

zedz wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2013 7:49 pm Well, he was. . .

I still can't believe Morphia never got an English language release. It's the kind of film that, if we're lucky, somebody like Second Run will unearth in thirty years' time and startle everybody.

I'm coming to this very late but I'll second your comments on Morphia. Its particularly odd that it has shown up given it is his very best work.

I first saw it at a Russian Film Festival and was completely dazzled by it from start to finish. The film is an utter head trip and has a terrific unforgettable ending. When it turned up on TV I burned it onto a DVD-R so that's what I'm stuck with until someone gives it the Blu Ray treatment it so richly deserves. Actually a Blu Ray release of Balabanov's complete work would be even better. He really should be better known and given more exposure.

I saw a horrible DCP projection of Morphia when it came out, but the movie was so good, that it didn't bother that much. Bluray would be nice. Couple years ago I grabbed Bulgakov's Country Doctor's Notebook without knowing that it was the source for Balabanov's movie. The adaptation is really fateful and the Bulgakov's stories work really well both ways. Miniseries seemed pretty bad though.

swo17 wrote:There's a very fine looking (but not English-friendly) Blu-ray of Cargo 200 that's been out for years in Russia. Is there any reason that no one like Arrow has taken the opportunity to port it over?

I certainly brought up Balabanov’s name more than once in discussions with Arrow, and cited that film in particular as a good fit for them, but I don’t know if any formal enquiries were ever made.

Of Freaks and Men is the one I’d really love on Blu-ray - I saw it twice in 35mm, and the Tartan DVD doesn’t remotely do it justice.