|
Author
|
Comment
|
JennySchillig
Registered User
(7/8/04 5:45 pm)
|
Russo-Finnish fairy-tale movies
Thanks to the good people at Mystery Science Theater 3000, I've
gotten a taste for the Russo-Finnish fairy-tale movies. (If you
remember, MST3K did The
Day The Earth Froze, The
Magic Voyage of Sinbad--overdubbed to make a Russian folk
hero into Sinbad the Sailor in Russian garb--The Sword And The
Dragon, and Jack Frost. Jack
Frost is the only MST3K version I have on tape.)
Even the good people at Best Brains admit that these movies are
actually among the better ones they've MSTed. The one problem is
that the plots can be a little goofy and the acting...well, as one
Jack
Frost riff goes, "I guess there's no Finnish word
for 'subtle'." But the photography is excellent, the settings
really do convey "long ago and far away," and the music
is exquisite.
Part of it is that I really do have a taste for cheesy old children's
movies--the kind they showed on UHF channels on rainy Sunday afternoons
when I was little. Jack
Frost, in particular, has the oddest feeling of familiarity
to it. Maybe it was one of those movies.
I enjoy them so much I actually bought two of them. (Thanks to Ruscico.com,
many of them are now or will soon be available on DVD.) There's
The
Snow Maiden, which didn't really grab me as much...it seemed
most characters changed their motivations every five minutes. But
I also bought Father
Frost...which is the aforementioned Jack
Frost under its true name. You can access the dubbed version
or the original Russian (and let me tell you, if you thought Nastenka,
heroine of Father
Frost, had a helium voice in the dub, just listen to the
original Russian).
I think that a poster on the MST3K newsgroup put it best...these films are full of great charm, sprinkled liberally with moments of "...the hell?"
So...have any of you seen any of these, and what do you think?
|
Heidi
Anne Heiner
ezOP
(7/8/04 6:46 pm)
|
Re: Russo-Finnish fairy-tale movies
I have many of them listed on SurLaLune in their DVD format--but not MST3Ked--at:
www.surlalunefairytales.c...films.html
I haven't had the opportunity to watch any of them, not even on MST3K, so I don't have any input.
Heidi
|
Kate
Laity
Registered User
(7/11/04 2:43 pm)
|
Re: Russo-Finnish fairy-tale movies
I love the ones I have seen so far. I have a copy of Jack
Frost, which I had seen before and bought from Rusisco. Heard
rumors that The
Day the Earth Froze would be released on DVD, but the only place
I have found it so faris Movies Unlimited.
I love The Day the Earth Froze! My family is Finnish and I'm working
on a cycle of stories based on the pre-Christian mythology of Finland
(some of which have already appeared). It will be called Unikirja
(Dreambook).
Even when I saw it MSTed I knew I would have to find the film because it is the Sampo story. Pity they make Louhi so cartoonish -- I have always thought she got a bad rap from the "southerners."
|
|
