Russian Movies Weekend #25

Long time no see, товарищи! After a two months hiatus your lovely RMW returns, with a vengeance!

This week I present you an not very ordinary Soviet movie, named “An Ordinary Miracle”, which I personally like very much.

It’s accompanied by another animated masterpiece, “The Old Man and the Sea”, based on a renowned Ernest Hemingway’s novel.

An Ordinary Miracle / Obyknovennoye chudo / Обыкновенное чудо (1978)

Genres/Tags: Comedy, Fantasy, Musical
iMDB Rating: 8.2 out of 10 (based on 2812 ratings)
Director: Mark Zakharov
Starring: Oleg Yankovskiy, Irina Kupchenko, Evgeniy Leonov
Video format: YouTube
Languages: Russian Audio, English subtitles

Description

A wizard invents characters who all come to life and start to arrive at his house: a King, his servants, a princes, a bear trapped in a man’s body – the usual lot. The Plot mainly rotates around the bear, who the wizard had turned into a man. The Bear, who wishes to be a bear once again, can turn into his old self if he were to kiss a princess. It gets complicated when he falls in love with that princess, that arrived at the wizard’s house. For how can they be together, if a single kiss will destroy their love?

Watch (Part 1)

or watch directly on YouTube.

Watch (Part 2)

or watch directly on YouTube.

Старик и море / Starik i More / The Old Man and the Sea (1999)

Genres/Tags: Animation, Short, Adventure
iMDB Rating: 8.1 out of 10 (based on 3753 ratings)
Director: Aleksandr Petrov
Starring: Gordon Pinsent, Kevin Duhaney, Yoji Matsuda
Video format: YouTube
Languages: English Audio & Subtitles

Description

The Old Man and the Sea is a 1999 paint-on-glass-animated short film directed by Russian animator Aleksandr Petrov, based on the 1952 novel of the same name by Ernest Hemingway. The film won many awards, including the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

Work on the film began in March 1997. It took Aleksandr Petrov and his son Dmitri Petrov (who helped his father) until April 1999 to paint each of the 29,000+ frames. The film’s technique, pastel oil paintings on glass, is mastered by only a handful of animators in the world.