Armando Ianucci's The Death of Stalin

http://33.media.tumblr.com/02e340a33444c8a650271dcab2977949/tumblr_n733e7DcOj1rrtza4o9_500.gif

xp

He has shit taste in music, seems like a total dick, is a shit director and makes me think of those godawful Shane Meadows travesties!

when I say "shit taste in music" - he is a fully paid up member of the Real Music is made with Guitars posse.

oh god I've just got depressed realising Shane Meadows is still alive and all his shit movies haven't been obliterated by an industrial laser.

Haha. Fair then.

What's that gif from chap?

Hot Fuzz.

This is reminding me that I need to watch Khrustalyev, My Car!

Khrustalyov, even. It seems this movie night be somewhat indebted to it

That's quite a cast. Looking fwd to Buscemi's Khrushchev and Palin's Molotov.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4686844/fullcredits/

this looks great but personally - and it might just be my mood today - the terror looks thick enough in the trailer to be a bit too frightening for full belly laughs

I think it's a good moment for comedies of terror.

this is playing the NY Film Fest

oh it's certainly the right moment

it's super weird to me that it's in english but other than that i'm highly anticipating

That looks awesome! I was wondering on Wednesday where Michael Palin had gone.

Love that no one tries for accents! It was all I could do to stop the trailer early just so I could watch it again.

PBS just aired this 3-year-old Palin show

http://www.pbs.org/show/remember-me/

Isaacs is Zhukov I'm guessing?

looks fantastic

I presume he is Zhukov, it isn't credited on imdb.

oh it's certainly the right moment

It's the perfect moment! Hell it should be coming out right today.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/55893/stalin-vol-ii/

woah! Kotkin's vol II has a release date as well.

when I say "shit taste in music" - he is a fully paid up member of the Real Music is made with Guitars posse.

He is also autistic, and has admitted he has some issues as a result

so i guess this isn't getting released in the usa until 2018

Booooooo whereza torrents then

[doing a Rick & Morty fan Szechuan sauce freakout, but about not being able to watch The Death of Stalin even though it's out in the UK]

— The Discourse Lover (@Trillburne) October 22, 2017

honestly I saw it at TIFF and it was dece but certainly no IN THE LOOP. it feels weirdly slight for what's effectively framed as a huge story, whereas ITL managed to be v funny while also telling a complete story about how modern war legislation is sold. certain awful truths of the characters and period sit awkwardly with the lols. Friend and Isaacs are great and should both do more comedy

I don't remember ITL so much but I thought this was great, the fact that it was about a real and murderous regime made it all the more chilling. The climactic scene was seriously intense. Some insight into how these regimes function - the groupthink, the cognitive dissonance; the true believers, the cynics & self-servers. Still funny though, & not too much of the fucknugget cockwomble type dialogue.

not on in Hull today sadly, wanted to fuel my inner despair without booze

Friend and Isaacs are great and should both do more comedy

Really well-cast all round

Was just reading about the Aleksei German death of Stalin movie. Which provoked a massive walkout at Cannes '98 and Scorsese wanted to award it the palme d'or. His movie is coming from the pov of a persecuted Jew during Stalin's antisemitic Doctor's Plot. It sounds fucking great tbh, I just wish my copy had subtitles.

http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/khrustalyov-my-car/

thanks for tip

subtitles! [

https://sovietmoviesonline.com/drama/305-hrustalev-mashinu.html

Is that site legit? I wouldn't complain about paying $3 for a good copy.

Oh I see you don't need to pay to watch, cool!

no idea bud but you can stream the movie for nothing anyway

Absolutley fucking cool, tbh!

excited for my tankie friends to get all mad about this

omg thanks nv!!

Will give that a watch.

Not seeing Death of Stalin but its been an...experience seeing Peter Hitchens go on about this *all day*.

Stoked for the opening of the communist museum.

I bet there isn't a moment in The Death of Stalin where Beria, standing over Stalin's fresh cadaver, says to Klensky: "Make him fart again".

I thought this was A+. Good year for films imo.

Was just reading about the Aleksei German death of Stalin movie. Which provoked a massive walkout at Cannes '98 and Scorsese wanted to award it the palme d'or. His movie is coming from the pov of a persecuted Jew during Stalin's antisemitic Doctor's Plot. It sounds fucking great tbh, I just wish my copy had subtitles.

I saw this several years ago as part of a German retrospective. (I think My Friend Ivan Lapshin was the only other title I managed to get to.) My impression was of a nightmare journey seeded by a deep study of the period. My memory is almost certainly at fault, but I'm remembering a faux-one shot stream of consciousness a la Birdman. I probably should revisit it, if it's available to stream.

I thought it was very good. It felt you are experiencing someone's internal memory of The Terror and experiencing memories in the abstract and disjointed way that they are relived in your mind. If that makes any sense. And this was mixed with much more vivid horror, like the innocuous looking NKVD van with the advert for Soviet Champagne on the side.

And Klensky seems such a strongman character and pretty invulnerable in the first act, by the end he is broken and humiliated. I'd imagine this was the director's memory that *anyone* could be broken in that era.

The overwhelming atmosphere of menace rendered simple sight gags excruciatingly hilarious. At some points I almost felt like I could be shot for laughing, which made not laughing much harder.

I thought this was great, amazing entrance scene from the guy playing Zhukov.

Jason Isaacs, he is hilarious in this. I liked it a lot also. I expected it to have had all the best jokes in the trailer but there were plenty more. I also found it surprisingly affecting. Andrea Riseborough as Svetlana deserves a lot of credit for that, in particular. Great performance.

when/where can i see this

I saw it (friend wanted light relief) and it was really bad although given where I am often coming from it might be impossible for me to find it good. There were only a couple of funny moments in this (the "you can plot while you run" quip at Khrushchev) and Isaacs was given the best lines, although the general as working class no-bullshitter who cuts through felt too easy a thing to do.

Otherwise it wasn't doing much of anything - felt like middle-class people laughing at stuff. Palin's role gave it a People's Front of Judea vibe to it and I mostly hate Python.

You didn't need to know anything about Soviet history. Imagine watching a Italian comedy where they talk like Cubans.

"or the titles calling 1953 "the midst of the great terror""
I didn't notice this at the time and I was looking to pick at this thing, cos I can't fucking stand Ianucci's style and the rest.. anyway absolutely fab post there, DLH.

the CC scenes are actually not far from Python's People's Front of Judea in Life of Brian

Imagine watching a Italian comedy where they talk like Cubans.

is this a Scarface reference

Just finished on BBC2, what a piece of pointless crap.

yep. A self-satisfied Iannucci gag fest no less, with some good and bad actors enjoying themselves much more than the poor viewer.

It's not good on many levels but I enjoyed a couple of the performances. I don't much care about movies having a point either but yeah, this is waste, especially compared to Khrustalyov

It was simultaneously too light and too dark and ended up as nothing. Not funny. I grinned once.

It really doesn't work as a comedy

And it definitely doesn't work as a drama, apart from the last 5 minutes.

Plus I'm sorry the bit where Beria has a hissy fit and starts shouting accusations at the other committee members was just a pale shadow of Glenn's "I AM MAN" meltdown in "Rise of the Nutters".

There was an 80's brit tv comedy drama about Stalin that pissed all over this, but I saw it years ago and can't remember the name of it, and then there is the darkest of dark comedy of Khrustalyov My Car which isn't going to be for everybody but goes more into the anti-Semitic "doctors' plot" violence at the end of Stalin's era, which much more interesting than doing shit comedy versions of famous Soviet commissars in *hilarious* UK regional accents. Actually maybe the latter could actually be funny if it was done by anyone but fucking Iannucci.

Having Paul Whitehouse play Paul Whitehouse, Michael Palin play Michael Palin and Jeffrey Tambor play Jeffrey Tambor was a bit lazy.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/dec/14/khrustalyov-my-car-review-visually-amazing-russian-gem-aleksei-german

lol Khrustalyov is the recipient of that highest of movie accolades, a five star P Badshaw review! tbf on him it is a decent little review.

Fuck off back to Georgia, dead boy.

finally watched this. not funny at all apart from isaacs

i mean there's a line of people being shot in the head and then news of stalin's death reaches siberia and the next guy doesn't get shot. that isn't funny and it isn't satire

it's reveling in misery

It isn't any of those three things, but it is necessary so that the film isn't just members of the committee - I liked all of the grim 'elsewhere' parts, though I am more comfortable with tonal shifts than I think most of you.

I think all of the non-committee scenes are the results of Beria's work, including the apparently factual detail that as his 'dates' left the next morning, they were handed a bouquet; if they took it then the previous actions were deemed consensual, if they didn't they were arrested.

I do wish Rupert Friend would get all the Johnny Depp roles he wants.

'Everybody’s afraid not to wear them': Trump buys shoes for admin officials

President Donald Trump is buying expensive shoes for his advisors, and people are scared of not wearing them.

According to a bizarre Wall Street Journal report, during meetings, the 79-year-old president starts guessing people's shoe size and then orders them $145 pair of loafers known as Florsheims.

https://i.postimg.cc/qvGgfT36/lilmarco.jpg

$145 is crazy cheap for dress shoes, no?

doesn't even include lifts

Florsheim? Thats a bog-standard mens dress shoe where I'm from. Like, lower-middle-class sorta shit.

I was baffled when I saw that headline, what WSJ reader is agog at $145 shoes? Chuck Taylors are $65 these days.

it's the purest trump: those were the cool shoes 50 years ago, so of course his aides must wear them

looking forward to fox promoting florsheims tho

anyway who is whom interpolating the death of stalin with the trump administration

beria obviously stephen miller
malenkov . . . idk maybe markwayne

Rubio is Malenkov
Kid Rock is Marshal Zhukov

Kid Rock is Marshal Zhukov

absolutely not

for better or worse there is no zhukov

yet

Aww I like Florsheims. They used to be considered a reasonably high quality product iirc? My mom had one pair in the 80s and 90s for her most formal events.

Sure, but why is Trump buying and insisting that everyone wears these upper mid-range shoes or he'll shout at them? Is this like when he turned the White House into a Tesla forecourt?

because he has dementia and is a bully and lives in the 1980s

oh yeah

lives in the 1980s

apparently still has an aide to print out articles and stuff from 'World Wide Web,' he's incapable of using even an iPad