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JewsYourOwnAdventure
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Name: Dan
Country: United States
State: California
Metro: Sacramento
Birthday: 6/17/1980
Gender: Male
Interests: Pipe smoking and the good clean love of a woman.
Expertise: The great Dan sees and knows all. Ask and you shall be answered. But beware, for the answer you hear won't always be the answer you desire.
Message: message me
Member Since:
2/2/2006
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| Greg, Ian, and I just got back from a restaurant. The table next to us contained three women, about our age. One of them, an absolutely stunning woman, spoke at length about her problems with men. They were my problems with women. I sat there and listened and wanted to walk over to the table, sit down next to her, and just talk. But as I've discovered many times in my life that kind of thing doesn't happen. I walk over there and say hi and there's no doubt how creepy, sleazy, or otherwise undesirable I'd be in her eyes. So I sat and listened and ate my food in silence. When we left they were still there. Now we're home, and she doesn't even know my name.
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|  | Currently Watching
Alexander Nevsky
By Nikolai Cherkasov, Nikolai Okhlopkov, Andrei Abrikosov, Dmitri Orlov (III), Vasili Novikov
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Part 1: Alexander Nevsky;
Alexander Nevsky, or should I say Saint Alexander Nevsky, was a Russian prince and warlord in the 13th century. He was also the subject of a movie by the same name directed by Sergei Eisenstein in 1938. This film is further the subject of part one of my fifty part series "50 F@#*KING MOVIES" where I will review each movie in the Janus Films 50 Years of Art House Movies box set... in alphabetical order.
Alexander Nevsky, the movie version, was epic like only a Russian movie can be. And they should be, after all, the country itself is epic. As a loveable robot once said "I'm a big country, and I need a biiiig cereal". Nevsky is that big cereal. What is a big cereal without big sugary pieces. The namesake himself is, of course, the largest chunk of all, like when two or three chunks get stuck together in a syrupy mess, you know what I mean. Tall, lantern jawed, with a chest as wide as the mighty Mississippi, he is a hero among heroes. But he is humbled by the very nation he lives in, even from the first scene putting Mother Russia above everything else.
If it seems like a bit of a propaganda film already, well, it definitely is. The other characters we soon meet are the loveable duo of Vasili and Gavrilo along with their mutual love interest Olga. This little love story adds some meat to the film... not a lot of meat, and the meats not great, but when faced with the rest of the film you'll be glad for the variety.
After our quick introduction to the lovebirds we finally get to the crux of the matter. A neighboring city has been taken over by the awful, inhumane Germans (propaganda?). These cruel Germans, as our wounded messenger reveals, will basically kill you for anything and everything, and then take your wives and children. We are brought to this city to see just that, the men are killed while their hands are tied behind their backs, the women dragged away, and the children brought to priests where they are baptized and (horrifically) thrown into a fire. All this mixed with the audaciousness of the German armour, when compared to the simple, functional armour of the Russians means instant villains.
The real movie is the battle between the two forces: Germany, led by the Roman Catholic Church, and the Russians, led by charismatic but totally approachable Alexander Nevsky. This huge battle takes up about half the movie with the two plots merging. The first plot, Alexander trying to stop the rampaging Germans, goes about how you would think it would, also how it historically did (more or less) with the Russians completely routing the seemingly better equipped Germans. The second plot, that of the love triangle, is solved thusly. The indecisive Olga states that whichever man fights the bravest shall have her hand in marriage. Both men battle ferociously and bravely, when suddenly Gavrilo steps in front of some spears aimed at the prince and is felled. As women cross the battlefield looking for their dead loved ones Vasili, who is presumably just exhausted cause I never saw him get injured, crawls out to find his mortally wounded friend. How does this one end? I'm not going to give everything away, but it involves a sled and woman in chainmail. The important part is Russia is saved, and Nevsky proves he is better then the Germans in every way.
A word about the nature of the Germans in this movie. At the time this movie was made Stalin was kinda iffy on the whole Nazi thing going on in Germany and Eisenstein probably agreed. The subject matter alone is not the only clue to the propaganda-ish nature of this film. The helmets the German foot soldiers wear are too similar to Nazi helmets to be a coincidence, the Bishop in charge of the religious aspect of the invading Germans has a very very thinly veiled swastika design on his lapels, and the final message of the movie is to beware of political movements. Once Stalin made a pact with Hitler he banned this movie from being shown. This didn't last long, and when Germany invaded Russia Stalin forced this movie to be shown in all cinemas.
And as for my opinion? It was enjoyable. It wasn't great. Russia loves its epic movies, and sometimes they are worth the time to watch them, but more often they are just slow. I don't mean slow in the deliberate Bergman way, I mean they just try to eat up a lot of film with slowly drawn out scenes. This isn't the only Russian film I've seen that suffers from this, Andrei Rublev manages to eat up nearly an hour before anything actually happens, and in a series of Russian/Finnish collaborations that are on MST3K, we find the same kind of blandness for long periods of time. Eisenstein was an amazing director, and the beauty of this film is indisputable, but unfortunately it doesn't have the same kind of tight editing that he used so well in Battleship Potemkin. Worth watching, and I'm betting of the 50, it will end up being placed somewhere around 25.
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| For those of you who thought that I may have given up on my playing card/contact card project, here is my newest one. I haven't had anything for awhile because there was a sudden draught of good pulp art covers to choose from. I was very excited today to find a beautiful 20,000 Leages Under the Sea cover that was perfect for my project. Enjoy:
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| Well, I've returned from my epic trip out east. All in all it was a fun experience, one I'd like to have again. I really like Providence, I really liked Boston (though I got the feeling that it would begin to annoy me eventually) and I really liked coffee-milk. I'm glad to be home though because I realized a couple things. First off I realized that moving across the country was worthless if all I was going to be doing is what I am doing here (i.e. working at Barnes and Noble and playing Wii all day), secondly the internet at the hotel was so unrealiable it ruined some of my evenings. There would have been two or three more entries with pictures and videos if only I could have gotten the internet there to work, so glad to be home with reliable internet access. So, with that said here is the video of Lisa I was trying to upload before:
So yes I couldn't go to the East Coast without breaking it somehow.
Kinda wish we had actually gone down the stairs into whatever might
have been at the base of that bridge tower.
So what do I do now?
Good question. First thing I'm going to do is to try to find a better
job. There is a very reputable auction house in townl, it would be
awesome to work as an antiques appraiser, just the kind of thing I
would love to do. Maybe I'll try to get an internship or something like
that there. Also, I'm going to apply to Providence College which I
really liked. I'm going to talk to the transfer counselor there and see
what I need to do to get myself into her school. And finally I'd like
to set aside a piece of the garage as a kind of workspace. Like a
darkroom/art studio. I've also been thinking that if I can't really do
any of those things there is a program at a local school (a little out
of my way) called "Funeral Sciences", aka becoming a mortician, which
is also up my alley and pays real well, so that is sort of my 'B' plan.
Anyway, love to you all. One final picture to distract you:
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