Edward Crabtree

HARRY POTTER ON STEROIDS: Russian horror film QUEEN OF SPADES: THE LOOKING GLASS.

No cliché is left unused in this fun haunted house hokum.

Mid-March proved still a time of snow and chill winds so when the web had informed me that a new Queen of Spades installment was out I thought: what better time for some eerie relaxation to head off the winter blues?

From being all but unheard of in the Soviet and early post-Soviet eras, Russian cinematic horror has become the new trend to watch and one that is drawing fresh blood into the business. On top of that, the chills and spills of this genre give the Russian learner an easier ride than more involved stories.

This scary dark old house potboiler forms part of a franchise. Three years ago Queen of Spades: The Dark Rite set the scene. Produced by Russian horror doyen Svyatoslav Podgaevsky this, despite name checking a famous 1834 story by Pushkin, introduced a murderous spectral woman, tall, black clad, with a veil and a penchant for hair cutting. Rather like Clive Barker’s 1992 Candyman, this ghoul can be summoned should you call her three times into a mirror with a door and stairs drawn on it.Following a lead taken by The Conjuring, Queen of Spades: The Looking Glass recycles this adversary but with a different story, different cast – and a new director.

Horror veterans.

Thirty year old Aleksandr Domogarov was on clapboard duties. Two years earlier he had produced a short film –Poostitye Deti – based on a Stephen King tale.

Likewise the producers Konstantin Buslov and Dmitry Litvinov have dipped their toes in horror before with Konvert/ The Envelope (2017) and Rassvet/Dawn (2019) respectively (both reviewed below).

Even the main star, one Angelina Stretchina – the ballsy malcontent at the centre of it all – has previous horror form. She also stars in Gosti/Guests from this year, another ghost yarn (although one hard to come across in the cinemas).

Playing with fire.

A young boy and his older sister lose their mother in a car accident (an unnerving event which opens the film). This results in the bereaved pair being sent away to a boarding school located in a former orphanage and deep in the woods. (In fact the filming took place in the Nahabino district of Moscow, known for its golfing links and country club).

The girl, Olya (Stretchina) is busy trying to find a way to make her escape while her brother, Artyom, (Danil Isotov) keeps having visions of his mother.

Meanwhile they are introduced to a teenage rabble drawn from every teen movie from The Breakfast Club onwards. There is the anguished boy with parent issues, the vampish girl with designs on one of her teachers, and the overweight girl and so on.

Before long this pranksome crew break into a forbidden part of the school, an attic, in which they find a mirror with a door and staircase drawn on it….

Having been released the Queen of Spades grants the kids some of their wishes. The boy with awkward parents finds that they commit suicide, the fat girl cannot eat without finding maggots in her food and Artyom gets his mother back, sort of….

Boo!

As with the somewhat derided The Nun from last year there is much reliance on startling appearances often in the form of a silhouette seen in the distance or through tarpaulin left around by building renovators. These jump scares have this in their defence: they at least represent the work of actors and directors and not computer image manipulations.

The intricate, musty olde-worlde set had been well thought out and contrasts with the modern block of flats locale of the first movie. The dark romance of it all is then augmented by a quasi-classical score courtesy of the now L.A based Sergei Stein.

Bubblegum.

The film seems preoccupied with death and loss (as was Rassvet and Provodnik, as well as any number of horror flicks) and there exists a possible metaphor around mirrors and how they can reflect our darker selves. Furthermore, some of the characterisation is less predictable than might be expected – a male teacher turns out to be a decent sort, for example.

This is a romp, however, a high jinx Halloween party and does not elicit tears or laughter but just burrows itself down into the haunted house subgenre.

This pantomime will not haunt me, but the posse of teens who turned up to the showing got what they had come for.

The Trailer.

NICE GUYS FINISH LATE: Russian rock band KREMATORI live.

Moscow Dad rocker’s can still lead the dance.

Photography by Iain Rodgers.

You insidious sister of Pluto/Open mouth, icon eyes/Your ears are bliss/I know where to buy noodles for them/To touch your heart….Hey, beauty, who will pay for all this?/Life is short and can’t be stretched/ for the deaf there’s no forgiveness/Love is just a supermarket` (Translated from `Supermarket` by Krematori.)

I cannot claim to be a huge fan of Krematori but I do own one of their albums – Lyudi Nevidimski (`Invisible People`). This, within its Rocky Horror Show packaging, features a few pleasant old school rock-and-roll type numbers which put me in mind of a Craft beer bar live event, so much so that I can almost smell the whiff of yeast and wood shavings in the tracks.

Which is all very lovely, but in Russia this band signify much more than just a competent jive act.

Venerable.

Krematori’s manifestation in their home turf of Moscow only warranted a brief mention on a flyer on the window of the Mumy Troll music bar – but their many devotees would have known all about it well in advance.

Headed by Armen Grigoryan, 59, of Armenian descent, this doughty cult band has seen thirty-six years of business. Throughout the trials and tribulations of the Andropov, Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras this five piece has been a good-tempered eye of the storm. They have knocked out some fifteen studio albums each with a trademark philosophical take on life. In a way they remind me of the British band Hawkwind, even though their sound is more redolent of someone like Lindisfarne.

So I felt that I would be failing this blog not to skip over to the venue, just a stone’s throw from Red Square, on the 9th March.

Mixed crowd.

The three hundred or so punters that filed into that basement bar were the types to have proper jobs, perhaps with babysitters looking after their first borns at home. Their sap was rising with the false promise of spring in the air of this holiday weekend. The faithful gathered at the stage to await the arrival while others sat down to chomp on lobster while the wouldn’t-say-no waitresses scraped the foam off the tops of their beer glasses.

Hearing us speak English, an earnest schoolmistressy type accosted us at the bar. We were in for a treat, she informed us. She herself lived in Holland now, but made a point of catching this band live whenever she returned to Moscow. She had with her a potted tulip to deliver to the stars. However she advised us that the complex Russian lyrics formed the main point of it all.

Barn dance.

At quarter to nine the band at last showed their faces. A mock self-glorifying video backdrop announced each member as they came onto the stage.

Grigoryan hides behind raybans and a wide-brimmed hat, which does give him a certain presence whereas Nikolai Korshunov, the extroverted bassist is an identikit metal band member with his goatee beard, bald head and chunky build.Vladimir Kulikov, the lead guitarist, looks like a man who would buy you another pint if you spilled it.

Their sound – folk and blues tinged rock and roll, but enlivened with unexpected mid-sections, chugged along in an upbeat fashion.

Krematori’s principal innovation – and U.S.P – is the violin work of Maxim Guselchikov which lends a seductive hoe down feel to the proceedings.

They waded through an array of themes around consumerism, spirituality, men and women, and aliens. One of their songs was called `Bezoomni Mooshina` (`Mad Man`) and another `Hare Krishna` but the one that I recognised – as well as could most relate to – was `Supermarket` – some of the lyrics of which I have attempted to render in English above (with much help from my Russian teacher).

So we gulped down our pricey German ales and the band played on and the men, as if some primal instinct had been unearthed, did the twist with their ladies, and the band played on, and we began to look at our watches as it neared eleven and the band played on….

A cheeky townie girl, en route to a night club, peered in from a window looking out on the street above us. With satirical intent she began to twitch to the country rhythm but then she danced on and on like a mannequin whose strings were being jerked, and the band played on….

Katmandu by Krematori

Their Official site (Russian).

HANG ON IN THERE! : The film OTRYV (BREAKAWAY).

Does the video for Wham’s `Last Christmas` make you retch? The antidote is this new winter-break-from-Hell flick.

`It wasn’t like this for George Michael!`
[mobi.com]

There had been little advance publicity for the release of Otryv (Breakaway). The film’s appearance in the cinemas had first been scheduled for January 24th – this is very much a New Year’s tale after all. In the event, however it got its first public screening on February 14th. This was fitting too as, with its romantic subplot, the film could function as a date movie.

Two days into its release the audience at the suburban cinema in Zhulebino reached double figures and contained a mix of ages. Perhaps the word was already out that we had a winner here – for winner it is.

High Suspense.
This 16+ certificate tale of peril over the snowy mountain tops, a suspense-disaster-action-thiller, delivers just the right fist-gnawing -how-will-they-get-out-of-that? -thrill.
It proceeds from a high concept premise: a group of kids marooned on a stalled cable car in freezing weather conditions.

Directed and in part penned by Tigran Sahahkyan- whose main claim to greatness comes from having directed a much awarded movie short called Haroshoya Rabota (Nice Work) five years ago – Otryv can be viewed as Adrift meets Touching the Void, with the entrapment of the first and sense of vertigo of the other.

Bright idea.
On a winter break in the Urals, a merry band of sporty twenty-something friends, three boys and two girls, decide to see the New Year in on a funicular. The aim is to reach the top of a mountain and then descend back to base with their snowboards.
To this end they come to a private arrangement with an old cable car operator (Vladimir Gusev).

The crazy venture goes to plan until the grizzled old machinist has an accident which results in him getting tangled up and then killed by the machinery. Suspended above a ravine, the cable car grinds to a halt in mid air – while below them all of nearby civilisation is deep in revelry….

From here the narrative piles on further calamities in an uncompromising way. A hatch blows open, an attempt to lower one of them to the ground with a rope results in death, there is a snowstorm and – as is the convention – one of the party turns out to be a bit of a dementoid. Confinement, heights, subzero temperatures and conflict are all rolled into one.

Meanwhile, one of the party has been left behind on the ground, following a spat with his girlfriend. As he sulks in their hotel he comes to realise, little by little that something is up. Can he become their saviour?

Brat pack?
The young cast act with conviction but the one who stands out is the thirty year old Mikhail Fillipov. He is the crazed one and he embraces this dislikable role with commendable gusto.

Ingrid Olyenskaya, 26, made her name as the cynical schoolgirl in the cult comedy film Neadekvatnye Ludi (Inadequate People) from 2010 and, likewise, her on-screen lover, 34-year-old Denis Kozyakov has a face much seen in light comedies.

Andrey Nasimov plays the jilted lover-cum-rescuer. He is something of a cinema heart-throb, having played the lead in Chernaya Molniya (Black Lightning) back in 2009.

Irina Antonenko gets to play the queen bee of the story. This beauty contest trophy holder nevertheless has notched up some significant film roles. In 2012 she turned up in The Darkest Hour, an alien invasion scenario made by a Western producer, which just happened to be set in Moscow. Then three years ago she lent her charms to Krasnaya, an intriguing `Ostern` (or `Red Western`).
One of the film’s strength is the exotic locale. The cinematographer Sergey Dysnuk, who has been the lensman for two anticipated science fiction movies due ot this year – Project Gemini and Koma – has brought out the majesty of the sbowbound peaks here.

This ambience is enhanced by an airy synthesiser keyboard score courtesy of Alexei Chinchoff. This in turn is interspersed with Western pop music, such as some solo work by Chris Martin.
If the production can be called `slick` – it is so in a good way.

“`Death not in the mountains!` The slogan of the film.
[C.T.B films/ Attraktion]

A trend.
The Russian big screen has flirted with catastrophe thrillers before. In 2013 the superb Metro, in which a Moscow carriage gets trapped undergorund following a flooding, had real impact. The three years later the blockbuster Ekipazh (Aircrew) arrived. Attempting a revival of the Airport-type franchise this brought volcanoes, earthquakes and lightning storms into the proceedings.
You might also include Ledokol (Icebreaker) (2016), a fact based docudrama a about a nuclear ice breaker which becomes locked in the ice of the Arctic.

(My review of Ekipazh and Ledokol (for `Moskvaer`) here and here).

Not a `feelgood movie`.
Those films offered heroic adventures for family audiences. Not so Otryv, which, from its baleful big red title onwards, borrows a lot from the horror genre.
The scenario of a posse of high-spirited college kids being picked off one by one is the most obvious scary movie cliché on show here.

Then we have two popcorn-on-the -floor nightmare sequences from which the heroine awakes with a start. In addition, the use of live video links by phone where the characters appear to speak directly to the camera, whilst in real-time, seems like a nod to the `found footage` subgenre.
(Also the cable car is named `The Overlook`. A reference to the hotel in `The Shining`?)

So is the film just a white knuckle ride? Perhaps, but whether intended or not, you can view this, without much forcing, as an allegorical depiction of the middle class youth of todays’ Russia. They have been abandoned by their elders and left to fend for themselves in hostile circumstances. Left hanging.

Could travel.
Still Otryv, more than any other recent Russian film I have watched, mirrors its American counterparts. The Urals-wintersport backdrop may give it freshness, but otherwise there can be found little intrinsic `Russianess` to the movie. It could sell well in America and Europe. As much as it is early days, it would have to be a good thriller for me not to see this as the best film of its kind from this year.

The Trailer.

Official website (English).

Bad Dreams with no Boundaries: the film`RASSVET` (`SUNRISE`/`QUIET IS THE DAWN`)`)

`YOU WON’T WAKE UP!` A lugubrious chiller based around lucid dreaming ushers in this year’s batch of Russian screen scares.

The Moscow movie goers who arrived to check out Rassvet (`Sunrise` AKA `Quiet Is the Dawn`) when it screened at the end of January may well have experienced a bit of deja vu.

This latest in the new cycle of horror flicks to spook Russia tells of a Tragic Young Woman who is Subject to Terrifying Dreams Involving Family Members.

Remind you of anything? I f you have been following this blog it should have done.Provodnik from last November (reviewed below) shared the same blueprint.

However,` tragic-young-women` and so on function as standardised horror tropes ( a result of producers playing to the audience demographic, I suppose) and this competent 16+ certificate supernatural chiller handles them in a different way to that Alexandra Bortich vehicle.

Newbies and Veterans.
The director – Pavel Sidorov from Saint Petersburg – as well as the lead actress – Alexandra Drozdova – constitute relative newcomers.

The producers however – Dmitry Litvinov and Vladislav Severtsev -can claim credit for Nevesti (`The Bride`) from three years back, a watershed for Russian horror cinema owing to its box office takings. Less noteworthy is Severtsev’s involvement in some tosh churned out by Television 3 called Battle of the Psychics which purported to show real events. (The promotional poster for this film seems to imagine this to be a selling point!)

The man behind the plot and the script, meanwhile, had also worked on Vurdalaki (2017) (`Ghouls`), a dark fantasy extravaganza.

Oksana Akinshina is a further luminary who got roped in. This 32-year-old actress from St Petersburg, who appeared in The Bourne Supremacy (2004) , only really has a cameo part here, as the late mother of the heroine, yet her name has been shoved to the front of the publicity material as a stamp of class.

Alexandra Drosdova in her screen debut.[kg-portal.ru]

Nightmare on Vyaz Ulitsa.
Sveta is a young woman beset by nightmares involving her mother who she lost in childhood. Only her brother, who seems to be the last surviving member of her family, is around to comfort her when she wakes up screaming.

What then happens one harrowing night, though, is that this young man steps out from the window of their shared flat, plunging to his instant death below….

The corresponding grief of Sveta is portrayed with a brilliant poetic image: we see her sitting on a sofa which is also at the bottom of an open grave. Mourners throw clods of earth onto her from above. (Sidorov has a background in television commercials and this might explain his yen for metaphorical imagery).

Sveta later discovers that her brother was implicated in a sinister cult going by the name of `Dawn`. Her fearful nightmares persist until a loyal friend intervenes.

She encourages Sveta to sign up for a session at the Institute of Somnology in a forested area somewhere outside the city (the narrative is vague about locations).

Here a psychiatry professor, employing state-of-the art technologies, will guide her through `therapeutic` lucid dreams.

There are three other guinea pigs for this experiment: a man tramautised by a fire he escaped played by 49 year old Oleg Vasilkov (Convoy 2012) and a woman who (we learn) killed her own husband, a role evoked by the 39 year old Anna Slyu – who as a participant of the Daywatch and Nightwatch franchise is an old hand at this sort of thing.

Then there is a cheeky young man named Kirill whose fear turns out to be one of claustrophobia. This would-be love interest also makes his debut here (in fact I am not even sure what his name is, which is a shame because, judging from this appearance, he could be a star in the making).

Together they will become immersed in a collective lucid dream; one which will confront them with the deepest fears of all involved…

So we get treated to something like a Mad Doctor scenario, complete with a veneer of `scientism` and something more witchy and demonological. The premise, inspired by lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis, is not so new – one could go right back to Dreamscape from 1984- but it is still fresh enough to set Rassvet apart from more common spooky-convent type fare.

Oksana Akinshina guest starring in “`Rassvet`.[in-rating.ru]

Atmosphere.
What makes this film memorable is its poetic and eerie ambience. The director achieved this through the slow pace and the muted lighting.We see a lot of apprehensive creeping through corridors but jump scares are used in a sparing way and the music (courtesy of 56-year-old Londoner Gary Judd) is rather spectral.

Architecture also plays a key role in this. We get a lot of long shots of the Institute of Somnology – a sprawling moderne concrete affair in the middle-of-nowhere – which, like the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, seems almost like a character in the story.

In terms of this (somewhat Russian) atmosphere, I was even reminded of the great Soviet film Solaris (1972) which also concerned dreams made manifest.

Downbeat.
Drosdova has her charms but is no vamp; she functions as more of an approachable girl-next-door than does Bortich’s Alphagirl in Provodnik.

Likewise, with its real world trappings and more focused plot, Rassvet provides more of a feel of reality than its predecessor and nor does it offer any refuge in sentimental uplift. In horror terms, it is the more effective film of the two, even if it seems sombre to a fault.

With little advance publicity through leaflets and posters, I learnt of this film through the interweb alone. Perhaps the producers are relying on sales in the keen Asian market. Indeed I was at the first showing and joining me was a contingent of four Chinese students, who formed a quarter of the audience that night.

The Trailer (English subtitles).

Lord of Light: Mikhail Larionov’s work comes home.

A leading figure in Russia’s avant-garde in collection.

Portrait of Vladimir Tatlin.
[en.wahooart.com]

Way back when I lived with my parents, the headboard of my bed had a special postcard blu-tacked on it. This came from Paris, a memento of a visit to the National Museum of Modern Art in the Pompidou Centre in the Beauborg area.

I had chosen it as much for its decorative effect as for its – even then – challenging modernism. A a man faces us, head neck and chest in view but all of this is overlaid with a rich network of red, purple and green criss-crosses. The Portrait of Vladimir Tatlin immortalises a man whose contributions to art came to be a signature of the early Soviet years. Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov (1881 – 1941) completed this Rayonist portrait in 1913.

Moscow’s own avant-garde scene.

The early Twentieth Century became a time when the visual arts exploded like a sky-rocket. European painters and sculptors found themselves exhilarated by the new world being opened up by scientific advances and sought to answer to this. In France, Picasso and Braque developed Cubism, a fresh way to perceive objects, in Italy Futurism celebrated the machine age and German Expressionism was concerned with the inner life. All of these trends engaged artists in Russia. Until Larionov’s Rayonism, however, they did not have their own form of non-representational art.

For 23 years the New Tretyakov Gallery, opposite Gorky Park on Krymsky Val, has been the Go To place for Moscow’s modern art. From September of last year and for a five month span, they mounted an exhibition of 500 of Larionov’s works, taking up three halls, including material from the 1920s and 1930s not yet put on view.

As I took the metro to Park Kultury and crossed the bridge over the River Moskva the one question in my mind was would I get to see the Portrait of Vladimir Tatlin once again?

Seeker.

The cockerel: A Rayonist study (1914)
[03varvara.wordpress.com]

Larionov hailed from Tiraspol (now the capital of Transnistria).Speaking of this Southern area his partner and fellow painter Natalia Goncharova said `You can find Tahiti in Russia too`. Indeed, the vivid colours of his early environment imbued his art. He studied in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He would remain in the capital until being conscripted in to the war.

The military discharged hin though and with Goncharova he fled to France. There he assumed a new role as a stage designer and choreographer for the Ballet Russ maestro Serge Diaghilev.. He would stay in France for the next fifty years, becoming a French citizen.

A Farewell to Concrete forms.

Lariomov published the Rayonist Manifesto when he was 32.

This acknowledged Futurism but was also indebted to the polychromatic style of Apollinaire’s Orphism current at that time. He, however adopted an anti-Western pose (`Long live the beautiful East!`)

At that time Curie’s discovery of radiation lead to a new way of viewing the world and there was talk of a `fourth dimension`. In accordance with this Rayonism called for `spatial forms arising from the intersection of the reflected rays of various objects`.

Rayonism was never as influential as it might have been owing to the isolation of Moscow and then the Great War. Nevertheless Rayonism’s overriding of pictorial space and stress on coloured lighting much influenced later artists such as abstracts of Kasmir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin a decade later.

Red and Blue Rayonism (1913).
[Pinterest.com]

Wide range.

Not that it was all Rayonism.The first hall of the exhibition featured Larionov’s `neo-primitivist` pieces (inspired by a trip to Paris he made in 1906) these constituted depictions of provincial life and of soldiers (from his spell in the army) done in a `naive` style. In 1912 he evoked the four seasons by referencing pagan practices and deities. `The Blue Pig` (1909/10) shows him already chaffing aginst objective reality, however.

Then we see some `objectless compositions` – whitewash on cardboard, which `our-four-year-old-could-do-better-than` and, of course, there was plenty of sumptuous ballet memorabilia too.

Colour shot.

The notice board opening the exhibition described Larionov as `a brilliant and always surprising painter`. Indeed he was `experimental` in the best sense. Russian art was interacting with, and sometimes pushing against, the stylistic revolutions occurring in Europe and Larionov characterised all of that.

I would have liked more of the crystalline elegance of the Rayonist period, as well as more English language notice boards to explain them to me. I did get to see Portrait of Vladimir Tatlin again but the bookshop was not selling any postcards of this masterpiece. I left, though, with a shot of colour which just might take me through another month of the winter.

WikiArt page on Larionov.

Good write up on the New Tretyakov Gallery in `Kidding Herself` blog.

Falling Down in Riga: HEADCRUSHER…revisited.

Will a Latvian pulp shocker still be as stimulating sixteen years on?

No matter how hard I tried to fathom the mysterious mechanism of the stunningly, scandalously sudden wealth of the most various and unexpected of my fellow citizens…I couldn’t figure it out. The money seemed to appear from nowhere, in obscene and incomprehensible amounts…I don’t want to be like them. I don’t like them. But if they want everybody to play by their rules, then I can play that game too.And I’ll beat them.Because I’m clever. (Headcrusher, p-15)

When I first made the leap from the U.K. to the Russian Federation in 2006 I had but one companion on the voyage. This came enclosed in a mud – brown cover and went by the name of Headcrusher by Garros-Evdokimov. I checked out the first page in the train station en route to the airport and, by the time I had reached my destination, had already devoured this minor classic. The urgent and confrontational prose told me more about what really awaited me in my New World than any Lonely Planet guide or classic from the Golden Age of Russian literature.

It would not be long before I would find myself passing it on to expat colleagues in Russia. One of them, an American who had studied Creative Writing, just opined that the book contained too many adjectives stuffed together. Another, one of my managers from New Zealand, took issue with the central character’s failing (in what is a crucial sequence) to show his I.D to security at his place of work! I am not sure that either of them got what myself and many other readers -for the novel proved a commercial success – responded to.

Browsing in a Moscow bookstore late last year I chanced upon my mud brown companion once again. How would it shape up now?

I resolved that I would also, once again, share it with someone. This time the recipient would be a fellow expat from California who has feathered his nest with a chain of nursery schools in Moscow.
More on that later.

Bright Young Things.
Limbus Press in Saint Petersburg were the first to print Headcrusher in 2003. It sold well in the Russophone world and proceeded to win the Russian Literary National Bestseller Prize in the same year. The authors – Alexander Garros and Aleksei Evdokimov were both 28-year-old journalists residing in Latvia.
Three years later the London-based Vintage Books produced an English language version courtesy of a seamless and vigorous translation by the ever busy Andrew Bromfield. This in turn received an approving reception from the British press. (`A brilliant piece of writing`: The Daily Telegraph, and so on).

Headcrusher comprises an intense and transgressive Molotov cocktail made up of social satire and polemic. In so doing it channels the aspirations and frustrations of many people – particularly young men – who have lived through the transition to post-Communist societies in Eastern Europe.

This `cyberthriller` exudes a landscape of `permanent unreality` (p-58) composed of `hotels, taverns, underground car parks, casinos, computer game arcades and supermarkets` (p-55). Overseeing it all is the National Conservative Party whose leader exhorts the citizens to be `less lazy` and to `try at least brushing your teeth everyday` (p-62).

Latvian Psycho.
Garros-Evdokinov’s alter ego is the twenty-six year old Vadim Appletaev, who consists of a sort of little guy/ everyman when we first encounter him. However, during one typical, slushy January holiday period Vadim’s banal dog-eat-dog world will push him over the edge.

Like Victor Pelevin’s protagonist in Homo Zapiens (2002) Vadim worked as a writer in Soviet times and was feted for his brilliance. All that changed in the new era of post-Soviet economic shock therapy and he ended up churning out P.R copy for a major bank in Riga.

So Vadim spends his days adding to a secret hate-filled grumble sheet which is saved on the bank’s computer. He has his way with vacuous young women who are awed by his connections with International Finance but his only real friend runs a computer gaming arcade. It is this that introduces him to the violent combat game – `Headcrusher`.

One day, entering his closed workplace to add some choice rants to his hidden blog, he runs into his pompous manager who seems delighted to have caught him in the act. As the man dresses him down, all of Vadim’s dammed up rage spills out as he smashes the manager over the head with a bronze dinosaur which is a part of the office decoration. Then he has to dispose of the body….
Thus begins Vadim’s descent into a Macbeth like vortex of slaughter. We follow him as he executes a string of George Grosz-like cartoon irritants including a meatheaded security guard, street hoods, sleazy cops, spiritual fakirs (`the Church of Unified Energies`), right-wing trendies and even the head of the government itself!

The action tale is animated with scornful disgust all the way through. It is just as raw as Arslan Khasavov’s Sense (reviewed below). Nevertheless, Garros-Evdokimov entertain us with their fresh and vivacious descriptions and philosophical soliloquies.

Riga night life, coitus, a first taste of single malt whisky, and computer games are all brought to life. The sequence in which Vadim has to dispose of his first corpse before his workmates find him is a satisfying example of horror-supense writing too.

The duo wrote some more novels but these have not been translated. A story by Alexei Evdokimov turns up in Moscow Noir – an anthology of crime stories produced by Akashic books in 2010. Then, sad to say, Alexander Garros died of cancer in 2017.

Meeting with a critic.
Edward makes his way on the metro to the Akademicheskaya area of Moscow where his acquaintance lives in a gated community. He has a long canvas bag slung over his shoulders.
Security lets him in and he goes along the hall and enters the plush white and chrome apartment. He is greeted by a portrait of Trump shaking hands with Putin and a collection of numerous gold Russian icons laid out on the walls.
The critic is portly and bald and seen sitting on a bean bag with a copy of `Headcrusher` in front of him. He shakes his head from side to side.
`It’s a confusing piece of bull crap`, he begins in a braying voice. ` Any sympathy I’d had for the hero I’d lost by the end of the first chapter. I mean it’s all so adolescent and preachy!`
He offers Edward some imported coffee from the Andes but the man just asks him to continue.
`It’s so obvious that these guys are just settling old scores with real people – people they’re too much pussies to sort out in real life! Anyway, my countryman Chuck Palanhiuck already did this sort of thing so much better!`
CLICK-CLICK!
`And it’s all so unbelievable. I mean as if anybody would get away with going round and…hey, whasat!?`
The report sounds like a Siberian avalanche. The icons are now golden red. There is beef stroganoff served on the floor.A shadow moves over the torso to retrieve the book.
`Now if you’d read the novel with more care, you might have seen that coming`, says the shooter.

`Headcrusher` by Garros Evdokimov (translated by Andrew Bromfield) London: Vimtage Books, 2006 (All quotations are from this text).

Vot Eta Da!

SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF 2018:

The exhibition of Modernism without Manifestoes, Chapter 2: Leningrad at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. A reclaiming of the experimentation that was bubbling under during the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods.
The doppelgänger thriller Selfie by Nikolay Khomerki from last February. A Russian film noir with a fine wintry ambience. Trailer (English subtitles) here. My review here.
Lena Katina (ex tATu) live at Mummytroll in March (reviewed below in tATu retrospective) in which she showcased her single `Silent Hills` in which she takes a promising new `Adult Oriented pop` direction.
The release of Rusalka: Lake of the Dead last July. This confirmed that Svyatoslav Podgaevsky – after Queen of Spades and The Bride is becoming the new standard-bearer of Russian Horror cinema – and is revitalising old Slavic folk myths to do so. (I intend to review this director’s films in unison soon). Trailer dubbed into English here.
The announcement that Dmitry Gudkov is to join forces with Ksenia Sobchak to form a new political party – The Party of Changes. (Although it remains to be seen what their full platform is going to be).
The introduction of the dark writings of Leonid Andreyev to the Anglophone world via the Publication of The Abyss and Other Stories (Translated by Hugh Alpin) by Alma Classics. The Silver Age of Russian Literature can now be appreciated anew.

Some things to come:

It looks set to be a good year for Russian cinema. In science fiction we have Coma and the Gemini Project and Attraction 2 to look forward to. In horror there is The Stray, Dawn, a sequel to Queen of Spades and Svyatoslav Podgaevsky’s latest Yaga: Nightmare in the Forest. The cable car disaster movie Breakaway looks very promising too.
A review of the Rayonnist Mikhail Larionov at the New Tretyakov.
And the fabulous Swan Lake at the…NAH!

GENERATION P: THE ONE STOP SPACE FOR ALL THINGS INTERESTING FROM CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA.

WISHING ALL MY READERS PEACE AND INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING FOR 2O19!

First Barbarians at the Gates: the film LETO (SUMMER).

Precious but eye-brow raising: the celebrated glimpse of a time when Soviet Youth was toying with Western decadence.

Welcome to the Leningrad of the early Eighties and the bands of the Rock Club that emerged there. Part biopic/docudrama and part musical, this monochrome film which opened in Cannes last May to much fanfare, concerns the (fictionalised) life and times of Viktor Tsoi, lead singer of Kino and Mike Naumenko the vocalist with blue-rock band Zoo Park.

These `U.S.S.R punks` were smitten with Western rock and so, uniformed in denim and shades, tried to live for the moment, swigging wine and puffing cigs in the way they imagined their Western counterparts had done 15 years earlier.We see them haggling over Western rock posters in markets and getting hassled by old-timers on train journeys.

Many of their elders indulged them, however, and the Soviet authorities let them play their stuff – most of it on acoustic guitars and recorded on reel-to-reel tape recorders –provided it was their own work. We can be thankful for this edict because the music of Tsoi’s Kino is as timeless as it is Russian, even though nudged a bit by the likes of Joy Division.

It seems somehow fitting that many of these artisans, Tsoi and Naumenko included, were to die young just before the Soviet period, which they had chaffed against, drew to a close.

The brainchild of this innovative movie is the outspoken Putin critic Kirill Serebrinnikov who is notorious for being under house arrest for supposed `embezzlement` – a situation which came into force during the making of this film.

He has brought the Russian rock star’s restricted milieu to life by use of quasi-avant garde flourishes. Leto features hand painted graphics, on screen lyrics, and abrupt vaudevillian rock turns the songs of Talking Heads, Bowie, and Iggy Pop.

Real life rock vocalist Roman Bilyk (of power-pop group Zveri) takes the role of Mika Naumanko and does so with able nonchalance. The difficult task of becoming the iconic Viktor Tsoi fell to the Korean-German actor Teo Yoo who had to say his lines in Russian despite not having any of that language!

However not even the addition of Irina Starshenbaum (Attraction) as the object of a love mix-up involving Tsoi and Naumenko, can disguise the fact that Leto is formless and overlong, (in particular if one is not fluent in Russian).

What saves Leto is its stylistic playfulness some of which even startled me, and of course the music proves enlivening, although I would like to have heard less of the old Western party pieces and more from Kino.

This film resembles Aleksey German’s film Dovlatov from earlier the same year.Both films brood over the well-known problems of earlier times. Perhaps it is time for Russian film makers to look forward.

The trailer.

`Leto` by Kino

Russian bands SUNWALTER at the Alibi Club, Moscow, December 1st and DOLPHIN at Glavclub Green Concert, Moscow December 8th.

Up-and-coming Sci Fi metal act Sunwalter have forged a great rapport with their burgeoning fan base, while established groovers Dolphin put on a polished but aloof performance.

Sunwalter shots by Iain Rogers.

Sunwalter, a five piece now in their first decade, term their own brand of symphonic power rock `sci fi metal`.

The lyrics of these twenty-something’s compositions (sung in English) reside in an intergalactic reality of their own. This is a broth of Roswell speculation and cosmic adventure as shown in their most recent album – Alien Hazard – which they toured Eastern Europe with last year.

They sustain this theatricality in all their dealings: they wear costumes, have stage names (Alexio – vocals, Olga Sol- vocals, Myutel and St Odium on guitars and Miran on drums), their stage act constitutes masquerade and the music itself owes something to the pomp and circumstance of the `prog rock` of 40 odd years back.

Sunwalter form an upbeat (if escapist) counterblast to the dark and (often lazy) nihilism of all too many acts in the same genre. They are very much helped by the soprano like `clean` vocals of Olga, who gives an operatic edge to the whole enterprise.

When I interviewed them a few years back I was very much struck by their ambition. This was focused on the music itself, in getting it just right, but also in pushing themselves out there and becoming known.

So when I clambered in to the Alibi club, right next to a Lukoil building, it was with some proprietorial concern.

The event was another `battle of the bands` format of the kind that I had first met them in. That is, a coterie of camp followers congregating to compare notes and to cheer on their own teams. This time, however, Sunwalter were hosting and it was their name at the top of the list and their t-shirts and CDs on sale in the lobby.

The bands had to do their own sound checks before going on. This was why I had assumed that the portly, bespectacled lead singer of Schwarzkopf was a sound engineer.

He and his band went on to parody Rammstein with great competence. I think their songs were their own, but would have believed them to be by the band they so much model themselves on.

Likewise, the next act (Suicider?) – lead by a standardised hairy rock god – seemed to be referencing Metallica, up to an including the American accents.

When Sunwalter made their eventual appearance they brought with them a sense of relief. This lot, at least, represented more than mere acolytes.

Alexio from Sunwalter.
He may look like a stage hypnotist but
he can reverse the polarity of the neutron flow in your warp drive faster than you can say ` ““Flash Gordon`.

The attendance swelled to about 300 and it became clear that many of them had come just for Sunwalter, who, for their part seemed to relish every moment of their hour and a half set.

Sunwalter guitarist Myutel.
(He’s a nice boy really)

Alexio growled from behind a Sunwalter themed disc shaped lectern while Olga, resplendent in a shiny blue one piece costume and green eye shadow nodded to the beat.The drummer wore a death’s-head mask and at one point the guitarist leapt down from the stage and began playing from behind the audience. Olga kept up a lot of banter with her fans – she seems to have become the focus of attention – and one of them won a competition and received a gem stone.

After the curtain call the satisfied punters posed with Olga for selfies. It was then that I reflected that, for all the cheer this accomplished band spread around, they remain a hobby-band with day jobs. They deserve so much better.

Sunwalter’s site (English)

With the tickets going at 2, 200 roubles, this was the most that I had paid for a concert in Russia. This might explain the nature of the ticket holders. They were dressed as if for the theatre and a few men had ponytails but not many wore the usual faded black t-shirt with band logos on. I was amongst urban professionals. One of them even apologised to me when he almost knocked a glass out of my hand!

The Glav Club Green Concert venue is to be found in the industrial heart of the Leninsky Prospekt area. The place seemed well run as snazzy black suited young women took our coats in the wardrobe area and it proved spacious enough to house the two thousand or so punters in non-sardine like conditions.

Andrei Lysikov of Dolphin.
An icon of Russia’s post-Soviet rock-pop scene.
[spblife.info]

Dolphin (Delfin) represent one of the few signature Russian rock bands that I know little about. This owes to the fact that there is a strong lyrical content to their `rap rock`.

The lead singer, 47-year-old Andrei Lysikov, began life, after all,as a hip-hop rap artist. With Malchysnik – think a Russian Beastie Boys for the post-Soviet generation- made the Russia of the Yeltsin years both blush and wince.

Long since then he has mellowed (this concert was certificate 12+) and has been producing a more thoughtful type of techno-rock rap fusion in creative buddyship with the guitarist Pavel Dodonov.

Nobody seems quite sure how to categorise this fusion. Trip hop? Shoe gazer? British readers will know what I mean when I mention New Order and Depeche Mode. The ensemble also sometimes recall the more indigenous t.A.T.u at times.

Whatever the genre, many of their numbers, such as `Vyesna` (`Spring`) are known to pretty much all Russians.

The nondescript three-piece engineered a non-stop two-hour set shrouded in a purple and blue laser light show. Between sets they produced portentous electronic soundscapes.

This combination was often majestic and the drummer in particular fleshed out a pre-programmed bass with sharp percussion, sometimes incorporating wood blocks. A trumpeter and saxophonist came on for three songs too. The vocals, however, all seemed a bit the same, although it would have helped if I could have caught the content more.

In contrast to Sunwalter, though these heroes of Russian rock did little to reach out to the people who had bought tickets to see them. We might as well have been watching them on a screen. The audience responded in kind by not singing along and not calling for an encore.

What we did do, however, was jive. It is not so obvious from their recorded material that Dolphin constitute a great dance band – but, as the gyrating girl in dreadlocks and a satchel in front of me well knew – they can get you moving it.