IZO

Sergei Kurekhin explains what is popularly known as the Maikelson-Shvarts Law in his Lecture on Bromide (via egmg).

A song about the absence of love, from the film Sorcerer (Чародеи); the recurring image of the meeting of hands is quite powerful, I think; reminds me of a similar motif in a Godard movie, I forget which.

50,000 pirate DVDs of Bekmambetov's new movie Wanted have been seized by police in Moscow (Interfax, in Russian).

Contemporary Russian cinema and government involvement (Mansur Mirovalev/SignOnSanDiego).

Bigger than Ben, starring Ben Barnes (recently, he's Prince Caspian), an English film (based on a book) about two Russian immigrants in London in the late 90s, is showing at the Moscow Film Festival (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

"Ugly men is much problem in Russia", or, Brit Wins Russian Oscar (Guardian).

Vladimir Kott's debut movie Mukha, about an independent sixteen-year-old orphan girl, has won the Shanghai Film Festival (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

Someone has seen Bekmambetov's Wanted; he's luke-warm (Rope of Silicon). The movie is based on a Mark Millar/J G Jones comic (First Post).

An office clerk loses his rag in a Moscow office. Apparently he'd just been told that he wouldn't be receiving his expected bonus: the exact words of the man who speaks to him before his outburst are reported to have been: "So, you were looking forward to a holiday in Thailand, but now it's the Crimea." Surveillance cam and mobile phone footage (Komsomolskaya Pravda, in Russian).

UPDATE: apparently it's not merely a fake but a viral promo by Timur Bekmambetov!!! (Wired); designed to promote Wanted.

The Hollywood debut of Timur Bekmambetov: the thriller Wanted: "the tale of one apathetic nobody's transformation into an unparalleled enforcer of justice" (imdb). The film premieres on 21 June.