Andrey Borzenko. Bear and gramophone

Bear and gramophone
Review of "cultural" media

Andrey Borzenko

Publication date: February 12, 2004

Grammy

Russian critics were surprisingly unanimous in their assessments of the latest Grammy Awards ceremony. This year's award did not present any surprises; everything was quite expected and predictable.

The headlines play on the name of Mikhail Gorbachev in every possible way: the first president of the USSR, it seems, without even expecting it, received a golden gramophone. Together with Sophia Loren and Bill Clinton, he took part in the recording of “Peter and the Wolf” by Jean-Pascal Beinthus. The Russian National Orchestra, conductor Kent Nagano, and, presumably, Sergei Prokofiev were awarded in the category “Best Children's Audio Fairy Tale.” Boris Barabanov in Kommersant ponders , not without acerbity, whether Clinton will be given the Golden Gramophone, and the article in Komsomolskaya Pravda is simply dedicated to Gorbachev alone, other laureates are not mentioned in it at all.

For obvious reasons, Rinat Arkhipov (Rossiyskaya Gazeta) begins his article with the Russian winners: in the “classical” nomination, one of the prizes went to Mstislav Rostropovich and Maxim Vengerov for their recording of Britten’s violin concerto and Walton’s viola concerto. Vremya Novostey columnists Yulia Bederova and Alexander Belyaev, in a detailed report on the results of the ceremony, commented on this award as follows:

“It’s curious that in the fight for the Grammy, Rostropovich competed with himself. And it’s a little unfortunate that the prize jury liked Vengerov’s openly flirtatious art more than Mikhail Pletnev’s secretive interpretations - among the award nominees was a recording of concerts by Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev with the participation of Rostropovich and Pletnev.”

While Rostropovich himself in an interview with Izvestia says the following:

“I have come to the conviction that Britten’s Concerto is one of the greatest violin concertos. In terms of artistic quality, it is equal to Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Brahms. And above this level I know nothing. Britten’s concerto ends with such a piercing monologue from the violin that I’m crying like a child <...> And then <...> violinist Vengerov played Walton’s viola Concerto fantastically, and we successfully finished recording our CD. I’m very proud of this disc.”

This year at the Grammy ceremony was recognized by critics as the year of r'n'b - a record number of nominations in this style attracted the attention of all music critics.

“Taking into account five awards for Beyonce, four for Vandross and three more for hip-hoppers from OutKast, there is a clear dominance of black music at this academic ceremony. And also the triumph of R&B music, a modern version of the good old rhythm and blues,” write Ilya Ovchinnikov and Alexander Zaitsev ("Newspaper").

The victories of vocalists Beyoncé Knowles and Luther Vandross (in particular, their joint victory in the category "Best R'n'B" Duo) evoked unanimous approval from critics. And opinions differed regarding the best debutant:

“Everyone thought that the rapper and former criminal element 50 Cent would be recognized as the best debutant, but the gramophone was given to the metalheads from Evanescenсe, led by a buxom gothic beauty” - this is just “Newspaper”.

“The American band Evanescence, playing gothic rock, was named the discovery of the year. This was to be expected - almost all of last year their record label actively (even too actively) promoted this young group from Arkansas,” and this is Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

Otherwise, there are practically no differences. All the “posthumous” awards (to George Harrison, the spouses June Carter Cash and John Cash and the entire Beatles group), the prize for best jazz album awarded to Wayne Shorter and Michael Brecker (the great masters of friendly creative projects), as well as the victory of Howard Shore - The author of the soundtrack to "The Lord of the Rings" did not cause any complaints.

The newspapers did not forget to mention the fact that the ceremony was broadcast by CBS with a five-minute delay - if the main character of the fresh scandal - Janet Jackson - was removed from participation in the ceremony, then her accomplice - Justin Timberlake - did not go anywhere and even received an award for best male pop -vocals And here we gracefully move on to the next topic of the week.

Berlinale

The truism that one of the most win-win PR moves - the demonstration of body parts usually hidden under clothing - was confirmed not only in the case of Janet Jackson. According to our newspapers, perhaps the main subject of discussion at the Berlin Film Festival is Jack Nicholson's ass. Some of the newspaper space, so to speak, is devoted to it by Izvestia , Rossiyskaya Gazeta , and NG . Moreover, Ekaterina Barabash from NG even makes Nicholson’s butt (that’s certainly not the way to put it) the leitmotif of her Berlin publications, the starting point for discussions about the fate of Russian cinema:

“Nicholson feels good, he has something to be proud of. But we were very sad. And there was a reason - they watched our film, selected for Panorama. It was shot by young music video directors Olga Stolpovskaya and Dmitry Troitsky (the latter, by the way, is known in Berlin as the producer of our famous reality show on TNT, which was filmed here).

Oliver Reiter (Gazeta.Ru) calls the above-mentioned film “I Love You” “amazing monstrous trash”; Yuri Gladilshchikov (Izvestia) temporarily refrains from commenting .

Alexey Medvedev (“Vremya Novostei”) is the most strict and clear in his emphasis. In an article with the explanatory title “ Competition of Banalities ,” he refuses to describe the festival crowd (atmosphere, conditions, etc.) in favor of cinema itself:

"..."Samaritan" by Korean Kim Ki-Duk and "Before Sunset" by American Richard Linklater, the latest premieres of the Berlin competition program, which your observer has to watch as part of his duty. These films are not that incomparable with the masterpieces from retrospectives , which, by the way, were filmed not so long ago. They seem to have been filmed on another planet, where stupidity, infantilism and depressing mediocrity are the respectable norm. But this is not a crisis of cinema, this is a crisis of the festival movement. Once again, one of the three leading European festivals. He proved by his own example and at the cost of his own reputation that collecting more than twenty decent, one hundred percent “author’s” films is, if not impossible, then very, very difficult.”

The tone of other film critics is also gloomy, and if Andrei Plakhov (“ Kommersant ”) “ is consoled by the very fact that radical art films are trying to compete in the Berlinale competition with the Hollywood mainstream,” then Anton Dolin (“Newspaper”) gloomily states:

"Berlinale is living up to its reputation as the most politicized film festival in the world. Last year, films about the plight of refugees prevailed here, and now films dedicated to interracial contacts and conflicts rule the roost."

One thing is good - no matter what the festival is, among the visiting celebrities there are always interesting interlocutors. Therefore, read the interview: Renee Zellweger , Peter Greenway and Christopher Doyle - "Gazeta"; Juliette Binoche and Tim Roth - "NG"; John Boorman , Anthony Minghella and Sandrine Bonner - Izvestia.