Don't Think About White Monkeys
''Don‘t Think About White Monkeys'' ("Не думай про белых обезьян") is a Russian social satirical tragicomedy film, directed by Yuri Mamin. The creators of the film define its genre as a tragic farce. The screenplay was written by Yuri Mamin and Vladimir Vardunas. The form of the film is unusual: all dialogues are in verse accompanied by a strict musical rhythm. Plot A hero of our time, the young bartender Vova Smorodin ( Mikhail Tarabukin), receives the task of opening a small, but prestigious restaurant called "Paradise Corner" from his boss Gavrilych, the father of Vova's fiancée, Larisa. Perceiving this task as the first step in his financial career, Vova Smorodin develops the magic-touch of enterprise. If he needs to drain and repair the selected basement, he may recall an entire fire brigade from a fire emergency, or a company of soldiers from a mission. After taking over an empty attic for his office, Vova discovers there three Bohemian artists w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yuri Mamin
Yuri Mamin (russian: Юрий Борисович Мамин) is a USSR, Soviet and Russian film director, stage director, screenwriter, composer, author and television host, Honored Art Worker of the Russian Federation. His "Window to Paris" (1993) remains one of the most popular movies in Russia. His Buddhist-themed film "Don't Think About White Monkeys" (2008) is popular among the Russian noncomformist youth, including punks and rockers.http://www.kinoafisha.spb.ru/reviews/7636620/ Mikhail Bortnikov's review of the film "Don't Think About White Monkeys" Yuri Mamin is the only person in Russia to have won the Chaplin's Golden Cane award. The award was presented by Charlie Chaplin's widow, Oona O'Neill, Oona Chaplin, at the festival marking 100 years since the birth of the great comedian. The festival was held in the Swiss city of Vevey, where Chaplin was buried. Mamin's works are known for a strong emphasis on social justice and criticism of hypocritical social norms. Because ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oleg Basilashvili
Oleg Valerianovich Basilashvili (russian: Оле́г Валериа́нович Басилашви́ли; ka, ოლეგ ბასილაშვილი, ; born 26 September 1934) is a Soviet and Russian stage and film actor. People's Artist of the USSR (1984). Biography Childhood He was born to a family of mixed Russian, Polish, and Georgian origin. He is half Russian. Oleg Valerianovich Basilashvili was born on 26 September 1934 in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union. His father, named Valerian Basilashvili, was a director of the Moscow Polytechnical College. His mother, named Irina Ilyinskaya, was a teacher of linguistics. His father made up a humorous story that his grandfather had once arrested a dangerous criminal named Dzhugashvili, who was really Joseph Stalin. In reality Basilashvili's maternal grandfather was a Russian Orthodox priest and an architect, who participated in the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. During the World War II, yo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Stone won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as writer of '' Midnight Express'' (1978), and wrote the gangster film remake '' Scarface'' (1983). Stone achieved prominence as writer and director of the war drama ''Platoon'' (1986), which won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. ''Platoon'' was the first in a trilogy of films based on the Vietnam War, in which Stone served as an infantry soldier. He continued the series with ''Born on the Fourth of July'' (1989)—for which Stone won his second Best Director Oscar—and '' Heaven & Earth'' (1993). Stone's other works include the Salvadoran Civil War-based drama '' Salvador'' (1986); the financial drama ''Wall Street'' (1987) and its sequel '' Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps'' (2010); the Jim Morrison biographical film ''The Doors'' (1991); the satirical black comedy crime film ''Natural Born Killers'' (1 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ingmar Bergman
Ernst Ingmar Bergman (14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish film director, screenwriter, Film producer, producer and playwright. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time, his films are known as "profoundly personal meditations into the myriad struggles facing the psyche and the soul." Some of his most acclaimed work includes ''The Seventh Seal'' (1957), ''Wild Strawberries (film), Wild Strawberries'' (1957), ''The Virgin Spring'' (1960), ''Through a Glass Darkly (film), Through a Glass Darkly'' (1961), ''Persona (1966 film), Persona'' (1966), and ''Fanny and Alexander'' (1982). Bergman directed more than 60 films and documentaries for cinematic release and for television screenings, most of which he also wrote. His theatrical career continued in parallel and included periods as Leading Director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm and of the Residenztheater in Munich. He directed more than 170 plays. He forged a creativ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Robert Zemeckis
Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1952) is an American filmmaker. He first came to public attention as the director of the action-adventure romantic comedy ''Romancing the Stone'' (1984), the science-fiction comedy ''Back to the Future'' film trilogy (1985–1990), and the live-action/animated comedy ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' (1988). He subsequently directed the satirical black comedy ''Death Becomes Her'' (1992) and then diversified into more dramatic fare, including ''Forrest Gump'' (1994), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director and the film won Best Picture. He has directed films across a wide variety of genres, for both adults and families. Zemeckis is regarded as an innovator in visual effects. His exploration of state-of-the-art special effects includes the early use of insertion of computer graphics into live-action footage in ''Back to the Future Part II'' (1989) and ''Forrest Gump'', the insertion of hand-drawn animation into live-action footage in ''Who ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini (; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter known for his distinctive style, which blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. His films have ranked highly in critical polls such as that of ''Cahiers du Cinéma'' and ''Sight & Sound'', which lists his 1963 film '' '' as the 10th-greatest film. Fellini's best-known films include ''La Strada'' (1954), ''Nights of Cabiria'' (1957), ''La Dolce Vita'' (1960), ''8½'' (1963), ''Juliet of the Spirits'' (1965), the "Toby Dammit" segment of ''Spirits of the Dead'' (1968), ''Fellini Satyricon'' (1969), ''Roma'' (1972), '' Amarcord'' (1973), and ''Fellini's Casanova'' (1976). Fellini was nominated for 16 Academy Awards over the course of his career, winning a total of four in the category of Best Foreign Language Film (the most for any director in the history of the award). He received an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nick Cassavetes
Nicholas David Rowland Cassavetes (born May 21, 1959) is an American actor, director, and writer. He has directed such films as ''She's So Lovely'' (1997), ''John Q.'' (2002), ''The Notebook'' (2004), '' Alpha Dog'' (2006), and '' My Sister's Keeper'' (2009). His acting credits include an uncredited role in ''Husbands'' (1970)—which was directed by his father, John Cassavetes—as well as roles in the films ''The Wraith'' (1986), ''Face/Off'' (1997), and ''Blow'' (2001). Early life and career Cassavetes was born in New York City, the son of Greek-American actor and film director John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands. As a child, he appeared in his father's film ''Husbands'' (1970). After spending so much of his youth surrounded by the film industry, Cassavetes initially decided he did not want to go into the field. He instead attended Syracuse University on a basketball scholarship, but after an injury effectively ended his athletic career, he decided to rethink his aspira ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Cassavetes
John Nicholas Cassavetes ( ; December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989) was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. First known as a television and film actor, Cassavetes also helped pioneer American independent cinema, writing and directing movies financed partly by income from his acting work. AllMovie called him "an iconoclastic maverick",Ankeny, JasonJohn Cassavetes ''AllMovie''. while ''The New Yorker'' suggested in 2013 that he "may be the most influential American director of the last half century."''The New Yorker'', July 1, 2013, p. 17 "On the Horizon: Movies: Wild Man Blues July 6–31" As an actor, Cassavetes starred in notable Hollywood films throughout the 1950s and 1960s, including ''Edge of the City'' (1957), ''The Dirty Dozen'' (1967), and '' Rosemary's Baby'' (1968). He began his directing career with the 1959 independent feature ''Shadows'' and followed with independent productions such as ''Faces'' (1968), ''Husbands'' (1970), ''A Woman Under the Infl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Michael Cimino
Michael Antonio Cimino ( ; February 3, 1939 – July 2, 2016) was an American filmmaker. One of the "New Hollywood" directors, Cimino achieved fame with ''The Deer Hunter'' (1978), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Born in New York City, Cimino began his career filming commercials and moved to Los Angeles to take up screenwriting in 1971. After co-writing the scripts of ''Silent Running'' (1972) and ''Magnum Force'' (1973), he wrote the preliminary script for ''Thunderbolt and Lightfoot'' (1974), which became his directorial debut, and one of the highest-grossing films of its year. The critical accolades for co-writing, directing, and producing ''The Deer Hunter'' in 1978 led to Cimino receiving creative control for '' Heaven's Gate'' (1980). The film became a critical failure and a legendary box-office bomb, which lost production studio United Artists an estimated $37 million. Its failure was widely credited with Hollywood studios shifting ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo (; 2 November 1906 – 17 March 1976) was an Italian filmmaker, stage director, and screenwriter. A major figure of Italian art and culture in the mid-20th century, Visconti was one of the fathers of cinematic neorealism, but later moved towards luxurious, sweeping epics dealing with themes of beauty, decadence, death, and European history, especially the decay of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. He was the recipient of many accolades, including the Palme d'Or and the Golden Lion, and many of his works are regarded as highly-influential to future generations of filmmakers. Born to a Milanese noble family, Visconti explored artistic proclivities from an early age, working as an assistant director to Jean Renoir. His 1943 directorial debut, ''Ossessione,'' was condemned by the Fascist regime for its unvarnished depictions of working-class characters resorting to criminality, but is today renowned as a pioneering work of Ital ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky ( rus, Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский, p=ɐnˈdrʲej ɐrˈsʲenʲjɪvʲɪtɕ tɐrˈkofskʲɪj; 4 April 1932 – 29 December 1986) was a Russian filmmaker. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time, his films explore spiritual and metaphysical themes, and are noted for their Slow cinema, slow pacing and long takes, dreamlike visual imagery, and preoccupation with nature and memory. Tarkovsky studied film at Moscow's Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, VGIK under filmmaker Mikhail Romm, and subsequently directed his first five feature film, features in the Soviet Union: ''Ivan's Childhood'' (1962), ''Andrei Rublev (film), Andrei Rublev'' (1966), ''Solaris (1972 film), Solaris'' (1972), ''Mirror (1975 film), Mirror'' (1975), and ''Stalker (1979 film), Stalker'' (1979). A number of his films from this period are ranked among the List of films considered the best, best films ever made. Aft ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dumbing Down
Dumbing down is the deliberate oversimplification of intellectual content in education, literature, and cinema, news, video games, and culture. Originated in 1933, the term "dumbing down" was movie-business slang, used by screenplay writers, meaning: " orevise so as to appeal to those of little education or intelligence". Dumbing-down varies according to subject matter, and usually involves the diminishment of critical thought by undermining standard language and learning standards, thus trivializing academic standards, culture, and meaningful information, as in the case of popular culture. In '' Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste'' (1979), the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) proposed that, in a society in which the cultural practices of the ruling class are rendered and established as the legitimate culture, said distinction then devalues the cultural capital of the subordinate middle- and working- classes, and thus limits their social mobili ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |