`Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel` – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.
In wishing you and the other guy that reads this All the Best for Etcetera, let us revisit some of the more promising signposts in sight and sound that were served up in these last leaden twelve months.
I opened last year with a write-up of the film Invasion and in this opined:what a roaring way to welcome in the Roaring Twenties!
Alas, it seems that we are not so much in the Roaring Twenties as the Rasping Twenties!
Aspects of this – the Zoom pandemic year – were presaged by the grim military fantasy Avanpost from 2019 with its quarantine zones, mass infections and blackouts but even more so by the television series Epidemia (from the same year) – starring The Sniffer’s Kirril Karo – which was serialised on Netflix with subtitles earlier this year.
There have been some small mercies. The Mayor of Moscow, Sobyanin only visited one Big Stop on us all (between late March and early July). There have been no more since then.
So – I never thought I’d say this -but a Big Thank You to Sergey Semyonovich Sobyanin for not being a fanatic for Big Stops! He may have put an end to Gay Parades in Moscow, but he hasn’t put an end to the gay parade that is Moscow life itself.
The main casualty of Rasping Twenties so far has been the ability to join a crowd and see rock/pop artists perform in front of you in darkened halls. Even the venues for this are being decimated: Glav Green Club is limping along but Red Club is an empty property and Mumy Troll Music Bar is likewise hollowed out.
(The same is true for pivbars. Kamchatka – the street mecca of central Moscow – closed its doors forevermore last December in order to be replaced by yet another Adidas retail department. The Kruzhka chain is still around though).
I did however manage to turn up to see the theatrical cosmic rock act Sunwalter. They were playing alongside fellow nu-metal exponents like Blackthorn in an event styling itself Metal Against Corona at Live Stars on 2nd October – just before further restrictions would have made such an event impossible again.
The cinematic breakthrough of the year has to be Sputnik. Premiering online last April during the Big Stop, it made it into the cimemas in August and has been welcomed with a string of appreciative comments by Western European and North American cineasts.
Let us hope that its vaccine namesake Sputnik V proves to be every bit of a success!
(By the way, if you like scary Russian movies then join me on my Facebook page Russian Horror is Cool. This gets more hits than this here blog, which is damned annoying!)
Although I have yet to review it The Man From Podolsk must constitute the other significant film of this year. A Harold Pinteresque absurdist take on culture rifts in contemporary Russia, it reminds us that literate and awkward films can still make it in the current environment. It is the Zerograd (1989) of our time.
As for the popular novel, I was a latecomer to the Labyrinths of Echo series. This is not my genre and I will not be thumbing through the whole series, but fans of Fantasy should make the acquaintance of Max Frei. Apart from anything else, his sense of fun is so contrary to our times.
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GENERATION P: alone in uncovering significant cultural signposts from the Other Russia and subjecting them to the critical gaze of a Western European.
Do stay onboard for this quirky but important guided tour!
FOR MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING AND CO-OPERATION BETWEEN NATIONS IN 2O21!