It’s no secret that the movie industry, since its inception, has become a constantly evolving medium. It all began in the 1890s with film clips that were little over a minute long. Within a decade, these miniscule operations had...
It has long been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the entertainment industry. In a lot of ways, movies serve as an influence to us on the deepest...
WHAT DO THESE TWO PICTURES HAVE IN COMMON? Picture 1 (above – left)– Official announcement of Shades of Day screening by the Consulate General of Sweden at St. Petersburg, Russia’s Festival of Festivals, June 2014. (Never-before-seen video interviews with...
Some films inspire you to pick up books. Great adaptations leave you inspired or curious about the source material. Notes From The New World, filmmaker Vitaly Sumin’s retelling of the Fyodor Dostoevsky novel, is an easy way to get drawn...
I’ve been pondering of late the planned feature-length documentary about the making of our film Notes from the New World, which was based, of course, on Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece, Notes from the Underground. The working title of the documentary...
Dostoyevsky Reimagined isn’t the first vlog I’ve experience with. I had one before which consisted of a new friend coming on each episode, rating the aesthetic of celebrities, engaging in random general chat… & there was rubbish CGI (Computer-generated...
In the Russian classic, Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s ‘Underground Man’, the narrating protagonist, recalls a traumatic experience he’d endured involving a young woman called Liza. Underground Man talks of how, after failing to present himself as...
There are two kinds of people: those who can only read or watch a book or film once, and those who delight in returning to certain works, whether they be favorites or those that they did not immediately connect...
Los Angeles… Sunset Boulevard… January… I walked up the steps that came off the street into the classic old hotel. It was the kind of place I’d expect writer/director Vitaly Sumin to be conducting a private screening of his...
Film adaptations are a tricky thing: they can be complete disasters that shame the source material, or they can leave you thinking about the original content in a whole new way. This problem is compounded when filmmakers attempt modern...
