Category: Cinema

Disappointed by Project Hail Mary: A Missed Opportunity for Smart Sci-Fi | May 04 2026, 16:40

We went to see Project Hail Mary yesterday. Honestly, neither Nada nor I liked it at all. Maybe we’ve just grown out of the age group that likes such movies. Comic book style. The alien, in my opinion, appeared on a budget. It feels like it’s at the level of the early 2000s – when you could have made exactly the same thing. Remember the movie Arrival, where they tried to come up with something unusual? Really, was this stone monstrosity worth 200M? The whole plot is full of cliches and banalities. In one minute, they made it so that the human and the alien began to understand each other perfectly via some program that a science teacher created in a day. As if the astronaut and a piece of rock just start chatting like buddies… 5 kilometers of iron chain the thickness of an index finger is about 10 tons of metal… did they have that much on the ship?

The directors became successful in the realm of Lego movies and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, along with a couple of comedy series and 21 Jump Street. I was expecting a movie in the spirit of Interstellar or The Martian, smart adult sci-fi that is not afraid of scientific details, and instead I got a children’s fairy tale with an ugly alien.

I googled it, and it turns out that a ton of people are thrilled with it and it’s making a lot of money.. Probably, people are nostalgic for such amidst post-irony, satires, various narratives, Lanthimos, and “Battle after Battle”. As children, everyone watched “Flight of the Navigator” and “Short Circuit”, so adults are nostalgizing over simple goodness. Perhaps it’s just a family movie for watching with the kids. Then it might be okay.

okay, going back to watching the second season of Succession. It’s considerably better.

From Wooden Puppet to Beloved Boy: The Evolution of Pinocchio’s Tale | May 01 2026, 16:52

It turned out that initially Carlo Collodi, who wrote “The Adventures of Pinocchio,” did not intend to turn his hero from a wooden puppet into a real boy. Pinocchio was destined to be hanged by the Cat and the Fox on an oak tree—as a lesson to all children who lie and disobey their elders.

The author was persuaded to continue Pinocchio’s adventures by the editor of the “Children’s Newspaper,” who said that otherwise it would be their last publication. The readers were so outraged by the death of the hero that the editorial office was inundated with letters demanding a continuation.

Eventually, after a few months, the author was forced to “resurrect” the puppet. This is how the Blue Fairy appeared in the story, who saved Pinocchio from the noose, and the grim parable gradually turned into the familiar fairy tale with a happy ending.

When Pinocchio was already hanging on the oak tree and gasping for air, a Beautiful Girl with Azure Hair appeared at the window of a nearby little house. At that moment she is described not as a kind fairy, but rather as a ghost or spirit (she says that everyone in this house died, and she too is waiting for her coffin).

Seeing the puppet dangling from the tree, she took pity and organized a whole rescue team. The fairy clapped her hands three times. A giant Falcon arrived. She ordered him to fly to the Great Oak, gnaw through the rope with his beak, and carefully lower Pinocchio onto the grass. Then she summoned her servant—a poodle named Medoro. He was dressed in festive livery, with a cocked hat and a curly wig. Medoro was sent for Pinocchio in a luxurious carriage drawn by a hundred pairs of white mice. When the puppet was brought to the castle, he was neither alive nor dead. To decide what to do next, the Fairy summoned “luminaries” of medicine. By Pinocchio’s bed came the Crow, the Owl, and the Talking Cricket (the same one that Pinocchio “killed” at the beginning of the book, but he returned as a spirit).

Harsh.

Essentially, the hero owes his happy ending not to the author’s mercy, but to commercial success and public pressure.

The Art of the Unresolved Finale: Viewer Frustration as a Narrative Tool | April 20 2026, 13:27

We finished watching the series “Pete”. It seems like TV directors do everything to ensure that the last episode offers no answers, resembling just a regular mid-season episode. In many TV shows, the second-to-last or third-to-last episodes answer the questions, while the final one rarely satisfies, always adding a multitude of hooks and new questions, probably serving as an invitation to a next season that may never come. Or it might, but for now the director doesn’t know what it will entail and leaves much unsaid. However, the likely goal is to irritate viewers so that they flock to Reddits and Facebooks to discuss what they’ve seen. A logical end was only seen in the series Chernobyl, it seems.

Boney M Beyond the Stage: Unveiling the Voices and Ventures | March 07 2026, 15:11

It turned out that my childhood group, Boney M,

1) is still touring. Concerts in 2026. But from the whole group it’s only

2) Maizie Williams who is lighting it up now, she’s 74 years old. But on none of the Boney M records from those times is her voice found. They let her sing in concerts, yes.

3) Frank Farian, the group’s creator, is a white guy from Germany who assembled exotics” in 1974. A couple of years ago he died in his home in Florida.

4) And “that black guy” – that’s Bobby Farrell, who was a DJ from Aruba before Farian hired him to lip-sync the male parts recorded by Farian himself in all Boney M songs. Seriously, listen to Boney M and pay attention to the male parts. Now that you know who actually sang them, you won’t be able to unhear Farian’s strong German accent 🙂

5) Boney M were the first Western group (from FRG!) to penetrate the Iron Curtain.” They had concerts as early as 1978.

6) Remember their song “Rasputin”? Bobby Farrell died on the same date (Dec 30) and in the same city (in St. Petersburg) as Rasputin. At the “Ambassador” Hotel, which is literally a few minutes’ walk from the Yusupov Palace, where Grigory was killed.

By the way, Frank Farian was the king of “lip-sync” projects. Ten years after Boney M’s success he pulled the same stunt with the duo Milli Vanilli. But in the case of Boney M, he got away with it (everyone understood that it was a show), but with Milli Vanilli, there was a huge scandal: the group’s Grammy Award was revoked when it turned out the pretty model-boys on stage hadn’t sung a single note.

Exploring the Tango Vibes: Astor Piazzolla and Beyond | February 23 2026, 06:31

A few days ago, I decided to Google whether Astor Piazzolla’s music would be performed anywhere nearby, and saw that this very weekend, close by in Strathmore, there is a Tango After Dark show featuring Piazzolla’s music, accompanied by an Argentine orchestra and Argentine tango dancers. Really cool, but I didn’t bring any recordings here.

While Googling what this exotic instrument the local soloist was playing – the bandoneon – I stumbled upon a very very very cool concert of Mario Pietrodarchi accompanied by the Minsk Orchestra. This concert occupies the top five spots in the most popular recordings of the Belarusian State Chamber Orchestra – just go to popular and listen to everything, all of it’s great. You’ve probably already heard Libertango and Oblivion without me, they are ubiquitous, so I’m attaching Angel’s Dance (Milonga del angel) in the comments.

Chris Pratt’s Race Against AI in “Mercy”: A Cinematic Journey | February 10 2026, 16:24

We went to see the movie Mercy with Chris Pratt yesterday. Bekmambetov! His “screenlife” format has finally been expanded into a $50 million blockbuster and stuffed into IMAX. The guy really did well. First, he made six Yolki movies, and then, bam – he broke out and even started to produce something decent. (We were alone in the theater in super comfy motorized chairs. Empty halls — that’s pretty much the norm for the last many years. I don’t know how cinemas even break even. Even the bar was closed, it only works on weekends when more than two people show up to a hall)

So, the plot. The near future. The justice system is maximally optimized: instead of jurors and years of appeals — an impartial AI. The main character (Chris Pratt) is accused of brutally murdering his own wife. The evidence against him is significant, and society demands blood.

He is placed in a high-tech chair and given 90 minutes. This window” for defense — the time in which he must convince the algorithm of his innocence. If after an hour and a half the guilt probability” scale doesn’t drop below a critical threshold — he will be executed right there. Everything happens in real time, the movie runs for 90 minutes.

In the era of neural networks, this seems very timely. Screenlife here is ideal: we see the evidence and the world through the system’s eyes via cameras and browsers. Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson on screen — always a plus.

However, what causes doubt is the attempt to crossbreed a hedgehog with a snake. Screenlife is good for its chamber feel, but here they sell us IMAX 3D, explosions, and chases, although 95% of the time the hero just sits in a chair.

Classic cinema for streaming. Not bad. On the couch with pizza on a Friday night — it’ll be great, there’s a solid detective story. Your brain might explode from the overload of details. Big question whether it’s worth paying for an IMAX ticket to watch Pratt watching a monitor… Who knows. There are some action scenes here and there, and they’re pretty good, but only occasionally.

Overall, detective fans should like it. From the plot, it’s clear they won’t fry the guy in the chair at the end of the movie, the question is how he’ll manage to wriggle out of it.

Cinema Meets Culture: The Indian Diaspora and Their Movie Rituals | January 09 2026, 06:09

I noticed that there is a huge gathering of Indians in our cinema, and it turns out it’s because the cinemas and the local Indian diaspora have found common ground. Today there were 13 showings of The Raja Saab in three languages – Tamil (in which the film was originally made), Telugu, and Hindi. The genre is fantasy horror comedy. There were also two showings today of Parasakthi in Tamil and two of Sarvam Maya in Malayalam.

And it was men only. I googled why. Superstars like Prabhas (The Raja Saab) have huge organized fan clubs. In Indian culture, “premiere night” and the first morning sessions are the territory of hardcore fans – and they are predominantly young men. They come to make noise, whistle, dance in front of the screen, and shout various things during the show. Many Indian families and women prefer to avoid this “crazy” atmosphere of the first sessions, opting for calmer showings on Saturday or Sunday.