Of the more recent vintage, Timur Bekmambetov’s sand-blasting pulp tirade NIGHT WATCH (2004; December 2, 7 pm) is a kneejerk inclusion, but Karen Shakhnazarov’s ZERO CITY (1988; December 2, 9:15 pm), a perestroika landmark, is easy to overlook: an absurdist, Kafka-esque comedy in which a Moscow engineer arrives in a small town to modify a tiny air-conditioner part, cannot get a straight answer, is met with all manner of surreal non-sequiturs, and eventually realizes he can never leave. If Buñuel had done time in a Communist country amid his many exiles, this might well have been the result. But it also makes you wonder how any such scenario ever found textual roots without the enriching benefit of a psychotic totalitarian bureaucracy — or perhaps contemplate how such a social context adds ferocious weight and size to any symbolic narrative idea. At any rate, once the empire fell (becoming, in critic J. Hoberman’s phrase, “the red Atlantis”), nostalgia quickly set in, itself a new kind of idealism. An amused yet rhapsodic expression of post-Soviet retrospection, Alexei Fedorchenko’s FIRST ON THE MOON (2005; December 10, 7 pm) is a festival fave that posits, in wistful mock-doc fashion, the secret Soviet lunar landing of 1938, complete with heroic cosmonaut and an archival love of retro-futurism.
Related:
History and truth, Shaw business, Once were films, More 
- History and truth
It has been 92 years and there continues to be a reluctance (perhaps too gentle a word) to acknowledge that Turkey systematically killed a million and a half Armenians.
- Shaw business
The Shaw Brothers dominated Hong Kong film production in the ’60s and ’70s, and they produced not only martial-arts epics but also musicals, ghost stories, and melodramas.
- Once were films
The riveting young Barbara Stanwyck is an embodiment of that blessedly uncorseted but sadly brief era just before Hollywood was battened down by the self-censoring Hays (Production) Code in 1934.
- Danke schoen
All Ferris wants is the same thing we all want: to win.
- Poseidon
Wolfgang Petersen gets his feet wet again ( Das Boot , The Perfect Storm ) with this remake of the 1972 disaster flick The Poseidon Adventure .
- Flashbacks: August 11, 2006
These selections, culled from our back files, were compiled by Doug Fleischer, Sam MacLaughlin, and Hannah Van Susteren.
- Local color
Michael Corrente will be presented with the Creative Vision Award for his influential and ambitious work next week at the 10th Annual Rhode Island International Film Festival.
- Life after Bizkit
Last week, Fred Durst made a quiet appearance in Providence, not trawling for nookie (though he did recently get engaged to a local woman), and not as a musicmaker.
- Zombie Stippers
I found it well-directed, sexy, schlocky, and sublime.
- Christmas packages
Some of us cringe at the very word Nutcracker , but there are alternatives — and even the Real Thing comes in many flavors.
- Kael? Sarris?
“Kael was a presence, a factor in how many of us do our jobs,” argued Salon.com ’s Stephanie Zacharek.
- Less
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Features
, Entertainment, Science and Technology, Henry Selick, More
, Entertainment, Science and Technology, Henry Selick, Karen Shakhnazarov, Space Shuttles, Technology, Media, Television, Movies, Wildlife, Less
