In March 1985 at a Soviet orphanage, a severely disabled Russian teenager improbably named Ruben David Gonzalez Gallego was watching television as Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the newly anointed Soviet leader, received well-wishers from abroad. Among them was Ignacio Gallego, the patriarch of Spanish Communism. “Not your grandfather, is it?” someone in the room quipped. “If […]
A Prize Novel Full of Truths That Stretch Believability Read More »
At first glance the new Russian film “Bimmer,” about four car thieves who run afoul of gangsters in Moscow, is a routine exercise in mafia chic, post-Soviet style: leather jackets, flashy cars, copious blood. Such films have appeared regularly on Russian movie screens in the last decade, in progressively emptier theaters. In their obsession with
Its Freedoms No Longer New, Russian Cinema Matures Read More »
There has been much talk of cities in the sky since the recent unveiling of nine designs for the reconstruction at ground zero in Manhattan. Some of the plans envisioned gardens and theaters hoisted 50 stories in the air. The architects hailed the proposals as a new kind of urbanism. In fact, the idea of
A Suburban Street Straight Up Into the Sky? Read More »
