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Showing posts from November, 2012

The Russians Retrieve Tarkovsky

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Before You Read My Article! November 28, 2012 - 19:55 AMT PanARMENIAN.Net - Memorabilia related to celebrated Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky sold for over $2 million, 15 times the pre-sale estimate, after a dramatic 18-minute bidding battle at Sotheby's auction in London, Business Standard reported. The archive of the legendary Soviet filmmaker is to return to Russia, after the director’s home region outbid competitors on Wednesday November 28 evening, The Moscow News said. The three bidders who stayed in the race until the end were Danish film master Lars von Trier, a representative of the Ivanovo region – where Tarkovsky was born – and an anonymous collector, RIA Novosti reported, citing the region’s governor, Mikhail Men. The funds were collected from various non-budgetary sources, according to Men. He said earlier that the archive should be preserved in a museum in the town of Yuryevets, near where the director of “Stalker” was born. “Together w

The Imperialist Design of Khartoum

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By: Muhsin Khalid Part Six "Too late!   Too late to save him, In vain, in vain they tried. His life was England’s glory, His death was England’s pride" Rudyard Kipling "A world with no room for the Gordons, is a world that will return to the sands." The narrator in the movie Earlier in this series, mention was made of the Mahdi fighters' plundering of an abandoned cannon in the aftermath of their battle at Kashgel with the thirst-stricken army of Hicks Pasha. Near the closing scenes of the movie, the only time we learn that they could use it properly is when they aim and hit a building, not the desperate soldiers of the besieged Gordon Pasha! The hidden meaning here is that no matter what these fighters earn, they don’t deserve it because they are bound to misuse or abuse it. This structuring of the hidden meaning of worthlessness builds up to the moment when Gordon declines from holding his sword presented to him by his servant and ta

The Imperialist Design of Khartoum

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Article by: Muhsin Khalid Part Five The Mahdi in "Khartoum" is portrayed as a Ghoul, a black vampire whose guest room is noticeably occupied by jars filled with cut off heads, whose talk is threatening to kill women and children, every soul..! The Amazigh  in the "Gladiator" are shown as no different. They sip their wine from the skulls of messengers and mail deliverers who are not, by convention, to be killed. In the movie "300" of 2006, the invading Persians come to fight the Spartans by an army from the underworld; an army of mirabilia ; of exotic creatures as though bred from marine and some monster organisms which, in their onslaught in battle have children and women entangled in the cracks of their hoofs and under their folds , before they meet their doom. In another Hollywood movie we are introduced to a Muslim terrorist . We cannot tell whether he is Palestinian or Egyptian because he uses both accents! He is on board of a ship in whi

Movie Review: Within The Whirlwind 2009

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Marleen Gorris Movie Review by:  Adnan Zahir                           The events of "Within the Whirlwind"  take place in the second half of the thirties of last century in the "former" Soviet Union, now Russia, during the communist era and the reign of Stalin on the party and the state. It is set, specifically, in the period between 1934 to 1939 in which thousands were killed in concentration camps in various parts of the Soviet Union. It is believed that, under Stalin's rule, a million people had been killed in those camps known as the "Gulag" , most of them were artists, writers, poets, scientists and politicians. This so-called Great Purge was orchestrated by the chief of Secret Police Nikolai Yezhof. Artists, scientists etc. in the Gulag The screenplay, written by Nancy Larsen, is based on the autobiography by the Russian writer Euginea Ginsburg (1906- 1977) who spent  about 18 years in Soviet prisons in that period and later pu