(OT) Anyone seen "The Trotsky?" (The movie, not our poster.)

[onager]

I know that our esteemed poster Trotsky didn't take his nick from the famous Bolshevik leader. I still thought he might get a kick out of hearing about this movie.

Made in 2009, it just popped up on my cable system last night. Think I'll give it a look over the weekend.

Sounds interesting - a teen comedy about a kid who thinks he is the reincarnation of (the other) Trotsky? ROFL...

Leon Bronstein is not your average Montreal West high school student. For one thing, none of his peers can claim to be the reincarnation of early 20th century Soviet iconoclast and Red Army hero, Leon Trotsky. When his father sends Leon to public school as punishment for starting a hunger strike at Papa's clothing factory, Leon quickly lends new meaning to the term 'student union', determined as he is to live out his pre-ordained destiny to the fullest and change the world.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1295072/

Being among friends, I'll confess to a weird attraction for Commie-inspired movies. If I admitted that over in R/T, I would be hounded relentlessly by A Certain Poster trying to "prove" something about my atheism. I think I will anyway, just for the laffs.

A few that popped into my alleged head:

Children of the Revolution - the lighter side of Stalin Junior! Judy Davis as a young woman who gets pregnant by Uncle Joe. Hilarity ensues.

Archangel - the heavier side of the same subject. BBC mini-series from Robert Harris' novel. Hard-liners find Stalin's secret son, try and use him as a figurehead to restore the Evil Empire. With a pre-Bond Daniel Craig in the lead role.

Stalin - unintentional comedy produced by HBO. Starring Robert Duvall as Stalin, looking more mummified than Lenin's corpse. WTF were they thinking?

Goodbye Lenin! - 10 years after the fall of The Wall, a Berlin kid must keep his elderly mother convinced that it never fell at all and Communism still rules.

[LeftishBrit]

1. Letter to Brezhnev (though the film is mostly about 1980s Liverpool)

To go back to the really early days, Eisenstein's early classics, 'October' and 'Battleship Potemkin'.

[onager]

2. I just recently (re)watched "October"

:hi:

A couple of years ago, I found a big stash of early Soviet movies...uh...lying around on the internet. The ones you mentioned, plus Strike!, Fall of the Romanovs, Ivan The Terrible Part I & II and probably some others I've forgotten. Great stuff!

Over here, the Turner Movie Classics channel sometimes shows early Russian movies, going back to the silent era.

For a more modern Russian film maker, there's Nikita Mikhalkov...I guess. He won a ton of awards for Burnt by the Sun.

He also did the interesting documentary, Anna, showing the breakup of the Soviet Union and the ugly wars that flared up among the former fraternal comrades. Anna is Mikhalkov's daughter. He filmed her every year on her birthday, from age 5 to age 16, asking the same 5 questions about life.

Mikhalkov comes with some large caveats. He rants so much about God in Anna that I asked some Actual Russian People about him. Turns out he's still something of a Czarist and a devout Xian.

Which didn't keep him from profiting handsomely during the Communist Era. In Anna he makes a big deal out of filming in secret. At his luxurious country dacha, to which he drove in a big ol' capitalist-piggish Mercedes sedan.

The Actual Russian People also told me that the Mikhalkov family has been involved in Russian arts for many years. They were commissioned to write a new Russian national anthem shortly after 1917. It still isn't finished.

[PassingFair]

3. What, no love for Reds?

[onager]

5. Thanks! Forgot that one!

A little too much of Warren Beatty being his Hollywood self, but I liked the "witnesses." And the big "Internationale" montage, of course.

Any movie that uses Emma Goldman as a character is OK with me. IMO, she's one of the most fascinating people in American history. I often wonder why nobody has done a mini-series about her life. Then I remember she was an atheist, a feminist, etc. etc. Only me and 9 other people in One Nation Under Jebus would watch it, and the producers would get hauled before a Congressional investigating committee.

Six or Seven Degrees of Separation: Jack Reed is also a character in the HBO movie, ...And Starring Pancho Villa As Himself. I really enjoyed that one, too. Worth a look if you've never seen it.

Snarky Trivia: funniest title of a review for Reds - "Commie Dearest."

[realisticphish]

4. Goobye Lenin! is great

though, to be fair, it's not that long after the fall, IIRC. They're still going through the combining process.

But maybe I'm remembering it wrong. Because I think she fell into her coma right before the wall fell, then woke up after unification

[onager]

6. Nope, you're right.

I just hadn't seen it in a long time and misremembered. (I do that a lot.)

The IMDB summary: East Germany, the year 1989: A young man protests against the regime. His mother watches the police arresting him and suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. Some months later, the GDR does not exist anymore and the mother awakes. Since she has to avoid every excitement, the son tries to set up the GDR again for her in their flat. But the world has changed a lot.

This will surprise you - sarcasm tag - but I collect a lot of weird video stuff. I got one of the weirdest ones when I visited Budapest - a DVD called "Life of an Agent." In Hungarian,w/English subtitles.

It's a bunch of training videos produced by the Hungarian secret police during the Communist years. How to spot a suspect, how to covertly tail him, how to plant audio bugs in his home/office, etc. Oh, and how to force a suspect to...ahem, "co-operate" and rat on his friends/family. One example is a govt. employee who has been padding his travel expenses. He can either turn in other Anti-Social Elements, or go to jail.

Fascinating, but spooky as hell - here in the era of War On Terriers and the Patriot Act.

The video shows non-stop at "Statue Park." That's a well-lanscaped junkyard outside Budapest, where a bunch of Soviet-era "heroic" statues were dumped and turned into a very profitable tourist attraction.

[realisticphish]

8. oh wow

I've always wanted to go to Hungary, especially Budapest, and the Holocaust shoes and Statue Park are high on the list.

Do you know of anywhere where that video could be viewed online?

[onager]

9. Well, maybe...

This site claims you can watch it, but requires registration. And my security software said this was a "Medium Risk" site, FWIW:

http://avaxhome.ws/video/Format/documentary/TheLifeofanAgent.html

I also found a review in the NY TIMES, which is so short I'll post the whole thing:

Gabor Zsigmond Papp's darkly ironic historical documentary (The Life of an Agent) stitches together a compilation of instructional films used in Cold War Hungary to train secret government police. Papp uses much screen time to draw striking aesthetic, stylistic and thematic parallels between those works and the Z-grade, cliché-ridden fictional thrillers of the day, thus demonstrating how the Hungarian government modeled its propaganda on the conventions of popular cinema. The films at hand provide police trainees with suggestions on such procedures as: leading home raids, conducting rudimentary surveillance and planting moles. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/349050/The-Life-of-an-Agent/overview

Hungary was a great place to visit!!! Highly recommended. Besides Budapest, I went out in the country some. One day trip went to a famous old church/castle, right on the Slovakian border. Spent another day at a farm, visiting those famous fuzzy pigs that produce low-cholesterol pork.

On-topic to this forum, believe it or not! In one Hungarian town, we saw a famous old Catholic school/cathedral, hundreds of years old. The tour guide said after Communism fell, the Church wanted to open the school again, but only for boys. The Hungarian govt. said it would be open to both sexes, or it would not open at all.

[realisticphish]

11. amazing

after decades of repression, the church gets a chance to expand and... represses women.

why am I not surprised?

[onager]

14. Maybe even more amazing...

Since Hungary is pretty much a "Catholic" country, at least officially. According to Wikipedia, the 2001 census showed about half the population claiming to be Catholic.

That sure wasn't the case in the Czech Republic, where the Catholic hierarchy is openly reviled as flat-out collaborators during the 40 years of Communist rule. (And before that, with the Nazis.)

Another interesting place to visit in Budapest - the House Of Terror, a large museum built inside the former secret police headquarters. It's arranged as a sort of mini-history of repression in Hungary. Including the reign of the right-wing Arrow-Cross Party during WWII and its role in the Holocaust.

[realisticphish]

15. I think that often

people ignore how much locals helped during the Holocaust. It's not like the Germans marched in and did everything single-handed. Aside from full-on parties like the Arrow Cross, look at how much locals helped turn over jews in Russia, Poland, etc

[charlie]

7. *hack* Red Dawn remake *cough*

For the high schoolers inspired to form Future Veterans of Foreign Wars clubs in the 80s, only to have their dreams dashed when the Rooskis imploded -- it seems everyone's forgotten, the danged Chinese are still officially Commies.

They weakened our resolve with Everyday Low Low Prices. No one will notice the tanks on the horizon... except those who kept the faith and their Patrick Swayze decoder rings.

Ripe with the aroma of Tailgunner Joe and bursting with jingo flavor, Wolverines are back!

http://www.libertasfilmmagazine.com/the-red-dawn-remake-the-return-of-the-red-scare

[onager]

10. I thought that POS remake was cancelled...

Jebus! IIRC, a few years ago, even John Milius said he was embarassed by Red Dawn. And would not make it, given the whole thing to do over again.

How can a remake possibly top that sizzling on-screen romance between Lea Thompson and Powers Booth? Miley Cyrus and Tommy Lee Jones? Sarah Jessica Seabiscuit and Justin Beiber?

My favorite bit o' trivia (from answers.com): ...production crews designed and built special combat vehicles in Newhall, California. Soldier of Fortune (magazine) reported that the movie's T-72 tank was such a precise replica that "while it was being carted around Los Angeles, two CIA officers followed it to the studio and wanted to know where it had come from".

[realisticphish]

12. glad to know the cia

was as capable as possible at the height of the cold war...

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. IMDB and Wikipedia say they've rewritten it in post-production to make North Korea the baddies

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234719/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dawn_%282011_film%29

People close to the picture said the changes will cost less than $1 million and involve changing an opening sequence summarizing the story's fictional backdrop, re-editing two scenes and using digital technology to transform many Chinese symbols to Korean. It's impossible to eliminate all references to China, the people said, though the changes will give North Korea a much larger role in the coalition that invades the U.S.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-china-red-dawn-20110316,0,995726.story

Which is both funny, and yet sort of makes their point about the power of China - but monetarily. I expect it will make the film even funnier too - at least a Chinese invasion could have sheer weight of numbers behind it, and China could afford to build a massive invasion fleet/air force etc. to cross the Pacific; but North Korea??? It'll be as realistic as Team America.

[trotsky]

13. LMAO

Gonna have to pick that one up for the comedic value alone!

[LeftishBrit]

16. We must mention Andrei Tarkovsky's work...

Solaris, The Mirror, Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev.

[Ninjaneer]

17. Just watched it.

Pretty solid movie. Might have to start reading Trotsky's "My Life" that's been lying on my desk for a few months now heh...