Lars von Trier‘s “Nazi” scandal gets even dumber.

Perhaps you’ve heard some other news recently related to Lars von Trier, Melancholia, and Cannes, but what? Oh, yes, right, von Trier said he was a Nazi.

For Rich Juzwiak (blogger at fourfour and senior editor at VH1.com), Dunst’s response to those remarks constituted an even better performance than she gave in the movie. To commemorate same, Juzwiak assembled this wall of animated GIFs, which finds Dunst’s body language screaming discomfort and a weird kind of grace. It’s pretty mesmerizing.

A still image is above, but be sure to check out the link for the full animated effect.

http://www.nerve.com

What is funny and forlorn, where is the comic pathos, in the following sentence? ‘A fortune-teller once read my cards and said that if it wasn’t for a tiny black cloud hanging over me I could do great things and not only for my country but for all mankind.’

Instantly, a person opens before us like a quick wound: probably a man (that slight vibration of a swagger), grandiose in aspiration but glued to a petty destiny, eccentric and possibly mad, a talker, rowdy with anecdote. There is a comedy, and a sadness, in the prospect of an ambition so large (‘for all mankind’) that it must always be frustrated, and comedy, too, in the rather easy and even proud way that this character accepts his frustration: is he not a little pleased with the ‘tiny black cloud’ that impedes his destiny? – at least it is the mark of something. So this character may be grandiose in his ambition, but also in his fatalism.

Such are the goods packed in a typical comic sentence by the great Czech novelist Bohumil Hrabal, who died in 1997. The character relieving himself of this little confession is a garrulous cobbler, who admits to being ‘an admirer of the European Renaissance’, and is the narrator of Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age.

And there is Ditie, the picaresque hero of I Served the King of England, a waiter in a Prague hotel, who once served the Emperor of Ethiopia, and worked with a head waiter who once served the King of England. Ditie is usually wrong about everything – he marries a German athlete just as the Nazis are invading Czechoslovakia – but sometimes he says something wise or prescient, and whenever he is complimented for this, he replies, ‘modestly’: ‘I served the Emperor of Ethiopia.’

Hrabal wrote in an expressive, highly visual style. He affected the use of long sentences; in fact his work, Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (Taneční hodiny pro starší a pokročilé) (1964) consists of a single sentence! Political quandaries and their concomitant moral ambiguities are a recurrent theme. Many of Hrabal’s characters are portrayed as “wise fools” – simpletons with occasional inadvertently profound thoughts – who are also given to coarse humour, lewdness, and a determination to survive and enjoy oneself despite harsh circumstances.

Much of the impact of Hrabal’s writing derives from his juxtaposition of the beauty and cruelty found in everyday life.

The 2006 Czech film, I Served the King of England, directed by Jiří Menzel and based on the novel by Bohumil Hrabal. This film is Menzel’s sixth adaptation of the works of Hrabal for film. The film was released in the UK and in the US in 2008.

A must-see. Here’s the trailer and the review on rottentomatoes.com.

http://www.lrb.co.uk

http://art-bin.com

http://en.wikipedia.org

“Flight of the Bumblebee” is an orchestral interlude written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, composed in 1899–1900. The piece closes Act III, Tableau 1, during which the magic Swan-Bird changes Prince Gvidon Saltanovich (the Tsar’s son) into an insect so that he can fly away to visit his father (who does not know that he is alive). Although in the opera the Swan-Bird sings during the first part of the “Flight”, her vocal line is melodically uninvolved and easily omitted; this feature, combined with the fact that the number decisively closes the scene, made easy extraction as an orchestral concert piece possible.

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five. He was a master of orchestration. His best-known orchestral compositions—Capriccio Espagnol, the Russian Easter Festival Overture, and the symphonic suite Scheherazade—are considered staples of the classical music repertoire, along with suites and excerpts from some of his 15 operas. Scheherazade is an example of his frequent use of fairy tale and folk subjects.

Rimsky-Korsakov believed in developing a nationalistic style of classical music. This style employed Russian folk song and lore along with exotic harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements in a practice known as musical orientalism, and eschewed traditional Western compositional methods. However, Rimsky-Korsakov appreciated Western musical techniques after he became a professor of musical composition, harmony and orchestration at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871. He undertook a rigorous three-year program of self-education and became a master of Western methods, incorporating them alongside the influences of Mikhail Glinka and fellow members of The Five. His techniques of composition and orchestration were further enriched by his exposure to the works of Richard Wagner.

“Flight of the Bumblebee” is recognizable for its frantic pace when played up to tempo, with nearly uninterrupted runs of chromatic sixteenth notes. It is not so much the pitch or range of the notes that are played that challenges the musician, but simply the musician’s ability to move to them quickly enough; because of this and its complexity, it requires a great deal of skill to perform.

Although the original orchestral version mercifully assigns portions of the sixteenth-note runs to various instruments in tandem, in the century since its composition the piece has become a standard showcase for solo instrumental virtuosity, whether on the original violin or on practically any other melodic instrument.

“Flight of the Bumblebee” was featured, along with other of Rimsky-Korsakov’s compositions, in the fictional 1947 biopic Song of Scheherazade.

The radio program The Green Hornet used “Flight of the Bumblebee” as its theme music, blended with a hornet buzz created on a theremin. The music became so strongly identified with the show and the character that it was retained as the theme for the later TV series. This version was orchestrated by Billy May and conducted by Lionel Newman, with trumpet solo by Al Hirt, in a jazz style nicknamed “Green Bee“. This particular version was later featured in the 2003 film Kill Bill.

Very interesting – listen below:

http://en.wikipedia.org

http://www.amazon.com

Being a fan of horror, I thought it is high-time I showed some love for the genre on this site. Horror films are great because they appeal to our most base natures, but also because they are allowed to be as loopy and imaginative as they want… well, at lest they used to be. These days, imagination has been replaced by lots of gore and cheap ‘jump-out-of-your-seat’ shocks. Horror films no longer follow you home and haunt your dreams in the stillness of the night. So, here are ten great horror films that you’ve probably haven’t seen. They will provide you with a much needed antidote to the remake-hell that we are stuck in today. More importantly, each one of these films is very imaginative and will provide you with the nightmares you’ve been “lacking”.

10. I, Madman

This twisted gem from the eighties owes a lot to Freddy Krueger, but is also original and creepy in its own way. Jenny Wright (Near Dark) stars as a mousy book worm who discovers a very strange novel in the back of the used book store where she works. The dimestore paperback is called “I, Madman” and tells the story of a lunatic scientist who falls in love with a beautiful woman. The woman tells him she can’t stand the sight of his face, so he begins to slice it off piece by piece and replace it with the skin of his many victims. As Wright continues to read, events from the novel begin to happen in her real life and she starts seeing a strange man, dressed all in black and carrying a scalpel, everywhere she goes. The movie is creepy, but also great campy fun. It knows how silly it is and flaunts it.  It also has much more fun with the premise of books coming to life than the much later, bigger budgeted In the Mouth of Madness from John Carpenter. The finale of the film is as wicked as it is hilarious and makes great use of classic stop-motion animation. From Hungarian director Tibor Takács.

http://www.imdb.com

9. Sauna

This Finnish horror film moves at a deliberately slow pace, but is unsettling as all hell. It takes place in the 1400′s and tells the story of two Finnish brothers who have just finished fighting a twenty-five year war with Russia. With the war over, they are tasked with meeting up with some Russian allies and mapping out the new border between the two countries. However, before they begin this task, the brothers commit an atrocious crime that I cannot reveal here. Once they begin mapping out the border, they come upon a remote village that has a sauna right in the middle of the woods. The villagers tell them that the sauna can wash away their sins ‘without the presence of god’. Naturally, the two brothers step inside and begin to be haunted by ghosts and demonic images that may or may not be in their own heads.

This movie deals quite nicely with themes of guilt, redemption, religion and what it means for a man to no longer have a purpose in life. One other unique thing about the film: it takes place almost entirely during the day and shows that the safe light of day can be as deceptive as the night.

http://www.imdb.com

8. Q – The Winged Serpent

Q really feels more like two films. One film is a rather average giant-monster police-procedural with David Carradine and Richard Roundtree playing detectives on the hunt for an ancient Aztec monster called Quezoctaol that is decpaitating and eating a lot of Chicago residents. It’s a so-so monster movie in the tradition of Godzilla.

Michael Moriarty’s performance is nothing short of magnificent. He should have won an Oscar. It’s the only film I’ve seen where a single performance makes the entire thing worth watching. So, when you watch this one remember that the ‘Q’ is for Quinn, the main character, not Quezoctoal.

http://www.imdb.com

7. God Told Me To

This movie actually shares the same writer-director as Q, b-movie mogul Larry Cohen.  Cohen is most known for It’s Alive, about a monstrous baby, but Q and this film are really special. Originally titled Demon, it stars Tony Lo Bianco as a New York detevctive investigating a series of random murders for which all the culprits make the same claim when asked why they did it: ‘God told me to’. Now, that’s creepy enough, but is really just the icing on the cake. Cohen throws in religious cults, kinky sex, the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ, and space aliens. Not everything works, but you got to give the man points for ambition. I also believe that the blueprint for The X-Files was created with this film.

Also noteable: this is the first actual film appearance of Andy Kaufman, something Man on the Moon failed to mention.

http://www.imdb.com

6. 13 Tzameti

This Georgian thriller can best be described as ‘Saw without the bullshit’. It concerns a young man who begins work as a carpenter for a real estate tycoon.  After the job is done, the tycoon dies and our young hero is unable to get paid. So, he steals a secret invitation to a a special ‘game’ that the old man had recieved in the mail. The invitation gives very complex directions on how to get to the secure location of the game. Half the film is a great mystery asking just what the game is and who controls it. The other half is the payoff where you find out what the game entails. I can’t tell you exactly what that is, but I can say that it’s far more creepy and intense than a thousand of Jigsaw’s traps.

http://www.imdb.com

Check out the rest of the list here: http://www.nerdblerp.com

Two young men strangle their “inferior” classmate, hide his body in their apartment, and invite his friends and family to a dinner party as a means to challenge the “perfection” of their crime.

Rope is a 1948 American crime film based on the play Rope (1929) by Patrick Hamilton and adapted by Hume Cronyn (treatment) and Arthur Laurents, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by Sidney Bernstein and Hitchcock as the first of their Transatlantic Pictures productions. Starring James Stewart, John Dall and Farley Granger, it is the first of Hitchcock’s Technicolor films, and is notable for taking place in real time and being edited so as to appear as a single continuous shot through the use of long takes.

The original play was said to be inspired by the real-life murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Rope has similarities to Agatha Christie‘s short story “The Mystery of the Spanish Chest” from the collection The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding.

On a late afternoon, two brilliant young aesthetes, Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan, murder a former classmate, David Kentley in their apartment. They commit the crime as an intellectual exercise: they want to prove their superiority by committing the “perfect murder”.

After hiding the body in a large antique wooden chest, Brandon and Phillip host a dinner party at the apartment which has a panoramic view of Manhattan’s skyline. The guests, unaware of what has happened, include the victim’s father Mr. Kentley and aunt Mrs. Atwater (his mother is not able to attend). Also there is his fiancee, Janet Walker and her former lover Kenneth Lawrence, who was once David’s close friend.

In a subtle move, Brandon uses the chest containing the body as a buffet for the food, just before their maid, Mrs. Wilson arrives to help with the party. “Now the fun begins”, Brandon says when the first guests arrive.

Brandon’s and Phillip’s idea for the murder was inspired years earlier by conversations with their erstwhile prep-school housemaster, publisher Rupert Cadell. While at school, Rupert had discussed with them, in an apparently approving way, the intellectual concepts of Nietzsche‘s Übermensch and the art of murder, a means of showing one’s superiority over others. He too is among the guests at the party, since Brandon in particular feels that he would very likely approve of their “work of art”. As Brandon becomes increasingly more daring, Rupert begins to suspect.

Using some very inventive cutting techniques the film appears as if it was filmed all in one take. This is more impressive when you see the actual size that color film cameras were during this time period. They were absolutely enormous, bigger than a man standing. To move the camera in and around the small stage space, many of the set pieces were set on casters and rolled about to keep out of the way of the camera.

Though the technical achievements are quite wonderful, it is a shame that they have overshadowed what it really a very good bit of suspense. All of the acting is quite good.

Interesting fact: critic Robin Wood points to several instances in the film that could be interpreted as homoerotic. He suggests the opening strangulation reflects the euphoria of an orgasm and the subsequent limpness; and Wood sees masturbatory overtones to the scene in which Brandon excitedly fingers the neck of a champagne bottle.

Alfred Hitchock manages a triumph of technical brilliance and suspense in Rope. It’s influence in the technical realm of cinema far outshines any effect the story has on future movies. This is a shame, for the story being told is one of suspense, macabre and excitement.

http://en.wikipedia.org

http://www.imdb.com

Best known for his children’s books, Where The Wild Things Are and In The Night Kitchen, Maurice Sendak has spent the past fifty years bringing to life a world of fantasy and imagination. His unique vision is loved around the globe by both young and old. Beyond his award-winning work as a writer and illustrator of children’s books, Sendak has produced both operas and ballets for television and the stage.

Maurice Sendak

Born in Brooklyn, New York (June 10, 1928), to Polish-Jewish immigrant parents, Sendak was a frail and sickly child. Spending much of his young life indoors, he turned to books at an early age. His view of the outside world was often limited to the family that came to visit him and the little that he could see from his window. It was during this time that he began to draw and to allow his imagination to run free. At age twelve, he went with his family to see Walt Disney’s Fantasia. This animated world, constructed completely of invented characters and fantasy, had a great influence on him.

Throughout high school, Sendak continued to draw, and after graduating, published a handful of illustrations in the textbook Atomics For The Millions. In 1948, he began working for F.A.O. Schwartz as a window dresser and continued there for four years while taking night classes at the New York Art Students League. After finding work illustrating Marcel Ayme’s The Wonderful Farm and Ruth Krauss’s A Hole Is To Dig, Sendak left F.A.O. Schwartz to become a full-time, freelance children’s book illustrator.

Throughout the 1950s, Sendak worked regularly, producing nearly fifty illustrated children’s books. He saw in book illustration the opportunity to expand the imaginary world of the reader. While many illustrators had concentrated on clarifying the images in the text, Sendak believed that an illustration should add to the mystery of the work. His oddly grotesque characters seemed strangely inviting in their imperfections. Unlike much of the Disney cartoons and the illustration that followed it, Sendak’s artistic imagery brought a self-conscious attention to its origin and its maker.

Where The Wild Things Are

By the early 1960s, Sendak had already gained a following as one of the more expressive and interesting illustrators in the business. In 1963, his book, Where The Wild Things Are brought him international acclaim and a place among the world’s great illustrators. For this project, Sendak worked as both the illustrator and the writer. It is the story of a young boy named Max, who is sent to his room only to find his imagination has created a new world there, populated by wild geographies and monsters of all kinds. Initially, its graphic portrayal of the toothy wild things concerned parents, but before long it was a favorite among children everywhere, having been translated into fifteen languages and selling more than two million copies.

Over the following years, Sendak created dozens of popular children’s books including one of his best known, IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN (1970). In the late 1970s, Sendak turned his attention to other forms. While continuing to write and illustrate, Sendak began producing and designing performances. Incorporating much of the same imaginative design that had made his books so popular, Sendak put on a number of operas, including Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” and Prokofiev’s “Love for Three Oranges”. In 1979, he turned his book, Where The Wild Things Are into a popular opera, and four years later designed a winning production of Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker”.

Throughout the past fifty years, Maurice Sendak has been one of the most consistently inventive and challenging voices in children’s literature. His books and productions are among the best-loved imaginative works of their time. Like the Grimm brothers before him, Sendak has created a body of work both entertaining and educational, which will continue to be popular for generations.

http://www.pbs.org

Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla (March 11, 1921 – July 4, 1992) was an Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music. A virtuoso bandoneónist, he regularly performed his own compositions with different ensembles.

Piazzolla was born in Mar del Plata, Argentina in 1921 to Italian parents, Vicente Nonino Piazzolla and Asunta Manetti. His grandfather, a sailor and fisherman named Pantaleone Piazzolla, had immigrated to Mar del Plata from Trani, a seaport town in the southeastern Italian region of Apulia, at the end of the 19th century.

Ástor Piazzolla spent most of his childhood with his family in New York City, where he was exposed to both jazz and the music of J.S. Bach at an early age. While there, he acquired fluency in four languages: Spanish, English, French and Italian. He began to play the bandoneon after his father, nostalgic for his homeland, spotted one in a New York pawn shop. At the age of 13, he met Carlos Gardel, another great figure of tango, who invited the young prodigy to join him on his current tour. Much to his dismay, Piazzolla’s father deemed that he was not old enough to go along.

While he did play a young paper boy in Gardel’s movie El día que me quieras.

He returned to Argentina in 1937, where strictly traditional tango still reigned, and played in night clubs with a series of groups including the orchestra of Anibal Troilo, then considered the top bandoneon player and bandleader in Buenos Aires.

The pianist Arthur Rubinstein — then living in Buenos Aires — advised him to study with the Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera. Delving into scores of Stravinsky, Bartók, Ravel, and others, he rose early each morning to hear the Teatro Colón orchestra rehearse while continuing a gruelling performing schedule in the tango clubs at night. In 1950 he composed the soundtrack to the film Bólidos de acero.

At Ginastera’s urging, in 1953 Piazzolla entered his Buenos Aires Symphony in a composition contest, and won a grant from the French government to study in Paris with the legendary French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. In 1954 he and his first wife, the artist Dedé Wolff, left Buenos Aires and their two children (Diana aged 11 and Daniel aged 10) behind and travelled to Paris.

Piazzolla returned from New York to Argentina in 1955, formed the Octeto Buenos Aires.

Upon introducing his new approach to the tango (nuevo tango), he became a controversial figure among Argentines both musically and politically. The Argentine saying “in Argentina everything may change — except the tango” suggests some of the resistance he found in his native land. However, his music gained acceptance in Europe and North America, and his reworking of the tango was embraced by some liberal segments of Argentine society, who were pushing for political changes in parallel to his musical revolution.

In 1990 he suffered thrombosis in Paris, and died two years later in Buenos Aires.

Piazzolla’s nuevo tango was distinct from the traditional tango in its incorporation of elements of jazz, its use of extended harmonies and dissonance, its use of counterpoint, and its ventures into extended compositional forms.

As Argentine psychoanalyst Carlos Kuri, has pointed out, Piazzolla’s fusion of tango with this wide range of other recognizable Western musical elements was so successful that it produced a new individual style transcending these influences.

http://en.wikipedia.org

Definition: animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways. The most common method of presenting animation is as a motion picture or video program, although there are other methods.

Anyone who’s seen Princess Mononoke knows animated films can hold their own with their live-action counterparts. For those who still think cartoons are for kids, here are, for starters, has 6 reasons why you’re wrong.

Animal Farm (1954)

Holding the title of “first British animated feature film on general release,” this adaptation of George Orwell’s novel is not entirely faithful to the source text, but hews to the book’s central premise. It was (much) later revealed that the C.I.A. secretly funded the film in an effort to promulgate the anti-communism message. Fun fact!

You can watch the entire film on YouTube.

Fantastic Planet (1973)

Given the Gilliamesque animation and crazy-far-out setting in the trailer, you’d never guess that this movie won the 1973 Cannes Special Jury Prize. Set in the far future, the film depicts a world in which humans are kept as pets by an indifferent race of blue giants who apparently lack animal cruelty laws. The surreal imagery is paired with a trippy soundtrack for an experience that can be enjoyed with, or in place of, the mind-altering substance of your choice.

The Plague Dogs (1982)

Remember when your dad brought home the Watership Down VHS tape, thinking it was a charming film about rabbits for girls, and the next thing you remember is shrieking as bunnies were being devoured by hawks on television?! Ah yeah, good times. Why not make this a family tradition, by renting The Plague Dogs for your tots? It’s about puppies, and they love them Beethoven movies, so what could go wrong?

The film is based on novel by Richard Adams and, as he did with Watership Down, the author uses cuddly animals to explore complex ethical issues. In Plague Dogs, the topic under discussion is animal testing in the name of research. You will not be rooting for the researchers, let’s just say that.

Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

Set at the end of World War Two, this is a Japanese film. That’s probably all you need to know.
Having previously weathered The Road, I figured this one would be a cakewalk. Yeah, no. Dude. Not exactly the feel-good hit of the summer.

Spirited Away (2001)

If Princess Mononoke was the animated film that got me back on the lot, Spirited Away was the one that actually made the sale. It’s gorgeous and sophisticated and engrossing; it’s also, at times, frightening, disgusting, and bizarre enough to ensure months of nightmares about giant, ambulatory, obese turnips.

Both Mononoke and Spirited were written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who could have dominated this list were I not limiting myself to no more than one entry per creator. Be sure to catch his earlier My Neighbor Totoro and his later Howl’s Moving Castle as well.

Waking Life (2001)

Writer/director Richard Linklater built his career on a series of films constructed almost entirely around dialogue: Slackers, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, and the like. Waking Life continues a trend in a novel way: combining an extended mediation on liminality with a style of animation (rotoscoping) that simulates the experience of lucid dreaming. The structure—or, rather, lack of structure—also approximates dreamwalking, as the protagonist shifts fluidly from one situation or conversation to another without the need for explicit transitions.

In 2006, Linklater again used rotoscoping to great effect in his film A Scanner Darkly, in which the animation style mimics the unreality and paranoia of substance abuse.

Both films deftly demonstrate that animation is not only a vibrant medium, but uniquely suited for tackling certain types of topics.

View the rest of Matthew Baldwin’s list here.

http://en.wikipedia.org

Kontroll is a Hungarian comedy-thriller released to theatres in 2003.

A tale about a strange young man, Bulcsú, his fellow inspectors, who are all without exception likeable characters, a rival ticket inspection team, and racing along the tracks… And a tale about love.

Shown internationally, mainly in art house theatres, the film is a darkly comic thriller set in a Hungarian Metro system.

“Kontroll” in Hungarian refers to the act of ticket inspectors checking to ensure a rider has paid their fare. The story revolves around the ticket inspectors, riders, and a possible killer.

The film was written and directed by Nimród Antal (Predators) and starred Sándor Csányi, Zoltán Mucsi and Csaba Pindroch. The film was entered in a number of film festivals in Europe and North America. It won the Gold Hugo Award at the Chicago International Film Festival and was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

Actor Lajos Kovács, who plays a minor role in Kontroll, is internationally known for Radiohead’s “Karma Police” music video.

The main character of the story is Bulcsú (Sándor Csányi), who spends his life working in the Metro system, checking tickets. He eats and sleeps underground and never sees the sunlight. He is a member of a ticket inspector team (the others are played by Zoltán Mucsi, Csaba Pindroch and Sándor Badár). His team struggles to check riders’ tickets because people resent them. Among the ticket inspectors on the same shift there is a conflict between Bulcsú’s team and another team. Bulcsú is challenged to “rail running” by this other team’s leader. “Rail running” is an event similar to the running of the bulls. Once the last passenger train leaves the station, the contenders must run through the tunnels and exit before the last ‘express’ train, which does not stop at any station. Bulcsú exits the tunnel first with his opponent close behind. Bulcsú pulls the opponent off the track just in time to prevent the train running over him.

While Bulcsú is on a ticket inspection, he meets a woman, Sofie (Eszter Balla), who is dressed as a bear and never buys a ticket for the metro. Bulcsú falls in love with Sofie, and later he discovers that she is the daughter of his good friend Béla (Lajos Kovács), a metro driver (the family of public transport workers don’t need to buy tickets in Hungary). Béla drinks; he used to drive trains on the surface until he crashed a train due to “lack of braking distance”.

Deaths start occurring in the Metro, with passengers and bystanders seemingly leaping into the path of the oncoming trains. At first the characters think the victims are suicidal jumpers. The audience, however, and later Bulcsú see that the deaths are caused by someone, or something, pushing each victim onto the tracks right before a train comes. The identity of the murderer is never known and is seen only as a quickly moving hooded figure.

When Bulcsú is chasing a troublesome passenger, nicknamed “Bootsie” (in Hungarian, the name of this character is “Roadrunner” as in the cartoon character), the murderer pushes Bootsie in front of a train. Bulcsú is suspected of the crime, which leads to him quitting his job. While brooding and in despair he is attacked by the murderer. He has to run for his life on the rails. In the end, the train apparently hits the murderer, and Bulcsú leaves the underground hand in hand with Sofie. Every staircase of the escalator is moving upwards.

Check out the trailer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

http://www.imdb.com

Kontroll

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff, also commonly spelled in English as Rachmaninov, (Сергей Васильевич Рахманинов) (1 April 1873 – 28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor. He was considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, very nearly the last great representative of Russian late Romanticism in classical music. Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and other Russian composers gave way to a thoroughly personal idiom which included a pronounced lyricism, expressive breadth, structural ingenuity and a tonal palette of rich, distinctive orchestral colors.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

The piano features prominently in Rachmaninoff’s compositional output, either as a solo instrument or as part of an ensemble. He made it a point to use his own skills as a performer to explore fully the expressive possibilities of the instrument. Even in his earliest works, he revealed a sure grasp of idiomatic piano writing and a striking gift for melody.

Born in 1873 in Semyonovo into a noble family of Tatar descent, who had been in the service of the Russian tsars since the 16th century. His parents were both amateur pianists. When he was four, his mother gave him casual piano lessons, but it was his paternal grandfather, Arkady Alexandrovich Rachmaninoff, who brought Anna Ornatskaya, a teacher from Saint Petersburg, to teach Sergei in 1882.

Sergei studied at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory before moving alone to Moscow to study piano. In his early years, he showed great skill in composition. While still a student, he wrote the one-act opera, Aleko for which he was awarded a gold medal in composition.

The sudden death of Tchaikovsky in 1893 made a strong impression on Rachmaninoff; he immediately began writing a second Trio élégiaque to his memory, clearly revealing the depth and sincerity of his grief in the music’s overwhelming aura of gloom.

His First Symphony (Op. 13, 1896) premiered on 27 March 1897 in one of a long-running series of “Russian Symphony Concerts”, but was likened by nationalist composer and critic César Cui to a depiction of the ten plagues of Egypt, suggesting it would be admired by the “inmates” of a music conservatory in hell.

After the horrific reception to the First Symphony came a period of severe depression that lasted three years, during which he wrote virtually no music.

During this whole time, the Russian Orthodox Church maintained its objection to Rachmaninoff marrying his cousin, Natalia Satina, which only deepened his depression.

In 1900, Rachmaninoff began a course of autosuggestive therapy with psychologist Nikolai Dahl, himself an amateur musician. Rachmaninoff quickly recovered confidence and overcame his writer’s block. A result of these sessions was the composition of Piano Concerto No. 2 (Op. 18, 1900–01), dedicated to Dr. Dahl.

Rachmaninoff made his first tour of the United States as a pianist in 1909, an event for which he composed the Piano Concerto No. 3 (Op. 30, 1909) as a calling card. This successful tour made him a popular figure in America. Nevertheless, he loathed the tour and declined offers of future American concerts.

Due to his busy concert career, Rachmaninoff’s output as composer slowed tremendously. Between 1918 and his death in 1943, while living in the U.S. and Europe, he completed only six compositions. This was partly due to spending much of his time performing in order to support himself and his family, but the main cause was homesickness. It was during these years that he traveled the United States as a touring pianist. When he left Russia, it was as if he had left behind his inspiration. His revival as composer became possible only after he had built himself a new home on Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, where he spent summers from 1932 to 1939.

There, in the comfort of his own villa which reminded him of his old family estate, Rachmaninoff composed the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, one of his best known works, in 1934. He went on to compose his Symphony No. 3 (Op. 44, 1935–36) and the Symphonic Dances (Op. 45, 1940), his last completed work. Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered the Symphonic Dances in 1941 in the Academy of Music.

Rachmaninoff died of melanoma on 28 March 1943, in Beverly Hills, California, just four days before his 70th birthday.

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