Mid-day Matinee

Today Zhenya, my roomate, had a rare day off of work so we decided to go to a movie together. We checked out the newest Russian blockbuster to hit theaters: Admiral. The film takes place in 1917 and features Admiral Kolchak and his fearless leadership of the white army, along with the best set of mustaches to hit the screens since Burt Reynolds. The wife of the General falls madly in love with the Admiral, and in a move that would make Anna Karenina proud, she leaves the General at a train stop to become a nurse and follow her beloved Belomorkanal-smoking Admiral Kolchak all over the frozen landscapes of Siberia (even though he has a wife and son hiding out in Paris).
In a twist from your typical Eisenstein portrayal of the revolution, the white army is led by heroes who refuse to quit fighting even as the Germans are blowing the legs off of their sailors. The revolutionaries are portrayed as disorganized mutts, muddling with the infrastructure of Russia as the military officers try to focus on the war against ze Germans. The film was highly patriotic and mother-land loving; not a surprise, of course, as it was funded in part by the Russian government. Zhenya and I squirmed in our seats during gruesome explosion scenes and when the General gets his frozen toes sawed off by the doctor. Blech.

Zhenya has never seen Zoolander, so the next film we watch together will be much more light-hearted.

I'm at the St. Petersburg Times office now waiting for pages to come off the printer to edit. It's that time of the night again- Tobin's turned on Eye of the Tiger. Stim Table at Reed College has forever destroyed this song for me. It brings back the smell of burnt coffee, matte, the sticky peanut butter mystery messes all over the library lobby and that feeling of late night paper writing. Good luck to all you readers who are still there.