Sometime last week Yuric, the kind Russian soul who has been feeding us Day Watch and 9th Company news for the past while, dropped a note and asked if I'd be interested in a wee overview of recent Russian films, the latest crop of quality stuff that may have been overlooked with all the hype surrounding The Night Watch. I'm no fool. I said yes. Yuric made good today with what he promises will be just a first installment ... some of these we've heard of before, some we haven't and I actually pulled some information out of this for the post on Paragraph 78 soon to appear above this one.
Turkish Gambit/State Councilor
Two movies based on a popular book series by Boris Akunin about 19th century Russian detective Erast Fandorin. In Turkish Gambit - during Russian-Turkish war - young Fandorin is desperately trying to find a Turkish spy who has infiltrated the highest ranks of the Russian military. Enjoyable and fast-moving adventure with all actors and filmmakers clearly having fun. In State Councilor an older and bitter Fandorin is investigating a series of killings and bomb-attacks by socialist terrorist cell in pre-revolution Moscow. Much darker in tone and setting, but with some outstanding performances.
Interesting fact - Paul Verhoeven read one of the books(not Turkish
Gambit or State Councilor, but Azazel, already made into Russian TV
mini-series a couple of years ago), liked it and was developing it for a European feature film for some time as mentioned in this interview.
Both movies were shot simultaneously with different casts and crews.
Turkish Gambit became a smash hit. Overgrossing Night Watch (and being a much more satisfying movie IMHO), it is currently #1 movie in Russian BO, with 19 mln$ for 3.5mln$ budget. State Councilor came out a month later with lesser, but still respectable 7 mln$ BO (for 5 mln $ budget).
Book
Turkish Gambit Trailer (downloadable WMV, 7.6 meg)
State Councilor Trailer (downloadable AVI, 56 meg)
Bimmer 2
The sequel to a 2003 sleeper hit. First Bimmer made 1,6 mln$ from
30 screens with 0,8 mln budget - impressive result even by American
standards. You already posted a link to a trailer for Bimmer 2,
although it's not really an action movie in the vein of Transporter.
Bimmer was a low-budget, gritty, realistic and utterly depressive look at the Russian criminal world. A lot of people in Russia hated it, saying that Bimmer was promoting violence and criminal ways. Well, in my opinion it was one of the best movies to come out of Russia in the last 10 years. If you want to look at what Russian criminals are really like, not some over the top Hollywood Russian mafia villains selling nuclear weapons and planning to take over the world, than check it out. Great review from an American expat who watched it here (his site is hilarious, btw).
Bimmer 2 Trailer (downloadable AVI)
I have this movie and it was really good. The realism of it was awesome. Do yuo know by any chance when BIMMER 2 is coming out on video or DVD??
Bummer 2 is commig April 2006. I can't wait to c it...
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