Gaz

Looking online for movies this week, I found and watched some Russian films free on Youtube, Road to Berlin with English subtitles, The Cuckoo with Vietnamese subtitles and a bright light in the middle of the screen to deter me from watching it free, The Last Train that listed English subtitles but had only Russian subtitles for interpreting German, where I recognized a sound доктор. Recent films, all were situated in World War Two, which is what I was looking for. Set in dark, bitter Russian winter before the Germans were pushed out of Russia, Train was so depressively drab I don’t remember noticing whether it was color or black and white, I may go back to see. 

Before watching Cuckoo, I read reviews and saw it didn’t matter about the subtitles, because the three characters speak respectively Finnish, Russian, and Lappish and don’t understand each other at all, which causes all manner of mixup including comic, frustrate, and near-tragic. English subtitled is available, but which lets the viewer understand what the characters never do, which rather spoils the point. So Vietnamese, which I don't do at all, is good as any.

More than a bit sentimentalist, Road to Berlin was fun to watch but odd. Beginning in the East as Germans get pushed back, I saw not the slightest relevance of having Berlin in the title. There was a puzzling time gap jump indicated by a fade of black that made me wonder if the film was by amateurs, but it wasn't. And almost soviet-like, the story ended with the main character absolved as hero not coward, as opposed to western style heading back to the beautiful widow who lusted after him. Well, he was twenty, maybe too young to see what was going on, though I remember twenty and it wasn’t like that at all.

There are two blogposts for this morning, the other about capital punishment, the death penalty, reverted to draft and may delete.

DThos+ wondering what the hell - -