Мотылёк - Butterfly - is just a sweet little Russian cartoon (with subtitles) (and foxes). I seem to get a little speck of something in my eyes when I watch it for some reason.
posted on Jul 14, 2008 - View this thread

I first saw Russian Barre at Cirque du Soleil's Alegria show. I find it an exciting display of acrobatics but the ending of this video is absolutely amazing to me.
posted on Jul 11, 2008 - View this thread

Gorbachov the music video, contains basically everything I've ever wanted in a music video.
posted on Jul 8, 2008 - View this thread

When people think of Soviet culture in the Stalin era, jazz usually isn't the first music to come to mind. But it was there, and some of it was pretty good, whether adapting Western standards, partying with a Russian twist, or just being adventurous. If that's a little too old-school for you, try some Soviet funk.
posted on Jun 9, 2008 - View this thread

The Amber Room found? German treasure hunters using electromagnetic pulse measurements are "90% sure" the Russian "Eighth Wonder of the World" was buried by the Nazi's in a man-made cavern 20 meters underground near the village of Deutschneudorf (map), but it will take "..until Easter to get into the chamber because it may contain booby traps and has to be secured by explosives experts.. The chamber is likely to be part of a labyrinth of storage rooms that the Nazis built." Russia is eyeing its return, "If, hypothetically speaking, the room still exists."
posted on Feb 24, 2008 - View this thread

Nine experienced cross-country skiers hurriedly left their tent on a Urals slope in the middle of the night at around -30 degrees Celsius for no obvious reason, casting aside skis, food, boots and most of their clothes. Soon they would be dead, some with injuries more suited to car crash victims, and apparently dosed with radiation. Their deaths are still unexplained, 49 years later. The Mystery of the Dyatlov Pass Accident.
posted on Feb 22, 2008 - View this thread

The crime in Moscow makes for some great headlines.
posted on Feb 1, 2008 - View this thread

Did you ever hear the story / of Belinda O'McHugh / She was courted by the Devil / And she didn't know what to do / He came a courtin' ev'ry evenin' / So Belinda got to thinkin' / She would be the Devil's wife / It was better far than bein' / An old maid all her life
posted on Dec 26, 2007 - View this thread

After inventing the autojector, the worlds first artifical heart-lung machine, Sergei Bryukhonenko began to experiment on keeping severed dog heads alive and bringing dogs back from the dead, as shown in the film Experiments in the Revival of Organisms (some links contain mildly ghoulish stills from film).
posted on Dec 21, 2007 - View this thread

The livejournal group ru_graphic has been showcasing great artists for years, such as soamo, desmonych, floksystar, malli-ly, olliwander, omie-yomie, zuza1, ya-ya, varka, solntsev-gleb, adul and names.
posted on Dec 19, 2007 - View this thread

A recent post on Russian animation reminded me of the "Lift" series of short animations, created by the Pilot studio [link in Russian]. There are, count 'em, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 installments. Knowledge of Russian not required to watch.
posted on Nov 27, 2007 - View this thread

Ivan Maximov makes some lovely and strange animation.
posted on Nov 21, 2007 - View this thread

Out of work? The Shooting Range is hiring. No, not the Firing Range. The Shooting Range.
posted on Sep 27, 2007 - View this thread

Regina Spektor is a Russian-born American singer-songwriter and pianist associated with the anti-folk scene centered on New York City's East Village. Incorporating "piano riffs and integrating moans, nonsense words, groans, gurglings, or warblings," Spektor has a pretty unique voice (Seattle P-I: "an instrument with the agility of an athlete and the flexibility of a yogi") and style which incorporates "beatbox-style flourishes in the middle of ballads, or the use of a drum stick to tap rhythms on the body of the piano or chair" (wiki). She's got a pretty unique voice and "Fidelity" is a very unusual and rather enjoyable music video. Someone to keep an eye on (although Mefites already had been doing so).
posted on Jun 9, 2007 - View this thread

The Other Side - A funny short film by Mikhail Aldashin, one of the most talented Russian contemporary animation directors.
posted on May 24, 2007 - View this thread

The Cossacks, a proud people with a long history, are famous nowadays for their dancing, whether of the mass spectacle variety, or the slightly lower-key celebration of actual Cossacks. They have some pretty famous music, too, often featuring balalaikas. (Behold, the real lyrics to "Tetris") But dancing and singing is not enough for some, apparently, who seek to refine Cossack martial arts.
posted on May 23, 2007 - View this thread

Russian Book Jackets, 1917-1942, courtesy of the NYPLDG. [Via Growabrain]
posted on May 16, 2007 - View this thread

Sherlock Holmes and the Murder of Lord Waterbrook. Excellent new Russian animation (well, kinda new, anyway). Here's part 2.
posted on Mar 14, 2007 - View this thread

There is a bear in the woods. Some people say he is adorabley blotto. Some people say he is a ponderous Pooh. Still others say he is as cute as a bug's bottom. Since nobody really knows for sure, isn't smart to be smarter than the average bear? If there is a bear? YouTubery Ahoy
posted on Mar 10, 2007 - View this thread

Russian fisherman catch squeaking alien and eat it. Footage of the 100kg monster was also caught on camera phone (possibly nsfw page).
posted on Feb 13, 2007 - View this thread

Letchik Leha photography. Letchik Leha is a russian photographer and pilot ("letchik" means "the pilot" in russian, apparently). Two tastes that go great together.
posted on Jan 29, 2007 - View this thread

"This was painted by a person with a rare and severe mental disorder. He was constantly seeing his own fantasies all around him. He also had a certain phobia..." (via Digg). The image is an imperfect reproduction of a particular postcard dated 1972. A blogger (in Russian) claims his psychiatry professor found one aspect of this eerie painting that reveals the patient's disorder. Allegedly, only one of his students in the past 15 years has figured it out. The psychoanalytic mystery has piqued the interest (in Russian) of the online community. A number of supplemental hints from the professor and thousands of guesses later, the case remains unsolved. Skeptics have already decried the mystery as a traffic-boosting hoax, but a few signs still point to its authenticity. Most notably, the artist's reproduction of another classic painting contains the following note: "transferred in 1990 from Moscow mental hospital."
posted on Dec 3, 2006 - View this thread

Russian Anthems Museum.
posted on Nov 6, 2006 - View this thread

In 1974 Alexander Lipson wrote an excellent Russian language textbook: scanned highlights, complete book. However, its value goes beyond the merely pedagogical. via our very own metafilter udarnik languagehat.
posted on Oct 11, 2006 - View this thread

Once there was a redheaded man without eyes and without ears. He had no hair either, so that he was a redhead was just something they said. He could not speak, for he had no mouth. He had no nose either. He didn't even have arms or legs. He had no stomach either, and he had no back, and he had no spine, and no intestines of any kind. He didn't have anything at all. So it is hard to understand whom we are really talking about. So it is probably best not to talk about him any more. Note that the last two links are in Russian. [This is a copy of a post by Daniel Charms, at MetaChat.]
posted on Aug 31, 2006 - View this thread

George Orwell né Eric Arthur Blair is probably best known to readers for his eerily prescient novels 1984 and Animal Farm. This comprehensive Orwell site betrays an erudite, complex, fascinating personality who wrote about a variety of subjects, from an exposition on British class relations affecting the art and practice of murder, to the complex moral compromises of Gandhi's practice of non-violent resistance, to the doublespeak-laden corruption of the English language as a telling reflection of a corrupt, brutal, post-WWII culture — and much, much more. This site also includes Russian translations of much of Orwell's work.
posted on Aug 21, 2006 - View this thread

Andrey Kuznetsov makes delightful lubki (sing. lubok), a form of Russian folk art, out of some well-known modern movies. Some information (in English) about the medium and its origins with many examples can be seen here (warning: Java). Shamelessly ganked from AskMe. Thanks jonson!
posted on Jul 5, 2006 - View this thread

Jews and The Russian Revolution: "More often than not, we picture nineteenth-century Russian Jews as residents of hermetically Jewish shtetls, small hamlets saturated with tradition and authenticity. After the Revolution of 1917 perceptions dramatically reversed, as Jews suddenly appeared as consummate insiders in the young Soviet state. How are we to make sense of these disparate impressions, stemming from two adjacent historical periods?" [More Inside]
posted on Jun 26, 2006 - View this thread

Ukraine is divided on the issue of Russian: The Russian speaking population from the eastern part of the country has increasingly attempted to make Russian into an official language only, provoking bitter opposition from the Ukranian speaking majority in the western part. [More inside]
posted on Mar 28, 2006 - View this thread

It takes a long time to load, but Kol-Belov's "PU's_tota" is just so creepy and bizarre and awesome with really cool music. The artist is obviously deeply weird, also highlighted in the series of shorts, "Self-Destructing Organisms." There's also a game. These are Flash animations. Nearly all of them contain a modest amount of cartoon violence/gore; may not be safe for work. Also, the guy really loves his industrial music.
posted on Jan 30, 2006 - View this thread

Parkour is nothing new. It has been posted about before. However, what is new is this stunning example of the gymnastics in action. Watch, enjoy.
posted on Nov 28, 2005 - View this thread

We all know the story: little Elli, a girl living in the steppes of Kanzas with her dog Totoshka, is blown by a hurricane (stirred up by the wicked witch Gingema) all the way to Magic Land, where she meets the Cowardly Lion, the Iron Woodman, and the scarecrow Strashila and has to make her way to the Emerald City to find the magician Gudvin so she can get back home... What, you don't remember it that way? Didn't you read The Wizard of the Emerald City and its much-loved sequels Urfin Jus and his Wooden Soldiers, The Seven Underground Kings, The Fiery God of the Marrans, The Yellow Fog, and The Mystery of the Deserted Castle? Ah, you're not Russian! Listen [RealAudio] to a five-minute description (on Studio 360) of Alexander Volkov's Russified versions of Baum (with illustrations by Leonid Vladimirsky) and how they captivated children and adults in the Soviet Union (you even get a bit of the famous song Мы в город Изумрудный/ Идем дорогой трудной ["We're going to the Emerald City by a difficult road..."]); visit the Emerald City website (Russian version, where all the links work); and see the wonderful illustrations at this site, which links to the texts of all six novels (click on Читать...)—in Russian, but the images need no explanation. (Fun fact: the word "Oz" doesn't occur anywhere in the Russian versions.) And if you're interested in other alternate versions, go to Oz Outside the Famous Forty. (Via P. Kerim Friedman.)
posted on Nov 25, 2005 - View this thread

Poignant Passports. At the beginning of the 20th century Hawaii sugar plantation owners began to recruit laborers of European background. Perhaps as many as 2,000 Russians and Ukrainians came to Hawaii. After the February Revolution in Petrograd some of these Russians were repatriated. [more inside]
posted on Sep 13, 2005 - View this thread

The Emperor's Bunker. "The Japanese, with sadness and irony, stressed that Hirohito couldn't even speak properly. This was partly to do with the fact that he didn't have to speak - people spoke in his name and he was isolated from real life". "The Sun", the third part in Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov's 'Men of Power' tetralogy after the gloom of Moloch (1999), about Hitler and Eva Braun, and the despairing tones of "Taurus" (2001), focused on the wheelchair-bound Lenin in his death throes, "The Sun" seems almost upbeat. This, after all, is a film about reconciliation. More inside.
posted on Sep 13, 2005 - View this thread

An ad stressing the importance of good translation, and various other animations, ads and announcements. Flash, in Russian, but generally funny & self-explanatory.
posted on Aug 27, 2005 - View this thread

Have you ever had one of those days where you can't decide whether you want to post about the recall of dog condoms or about the Russian mail order bride online service that tailors exclusively to amputee fetishists? I'm having that right now.
posted on Aug 8, 2005 - View this thread

Russian lessons from "Giant Heads"
posted on Jun 21, 2005 - View this thread

Are dictionaries the realm of the elite and the educated? For a change of pace, there is an extensive dictionary of Russian swears with hundreds of words translated into French and German .. Oh and it's also two way - French swears and German swears are both translated into Russian. [More Inside]
posted on Jun 20, 2005 - View this thread

Urban exploration in the Russian style.
posted on Jun 3, 2005 - View this thread

Our Victory, Day by Day. Russian news agency RIA Novosti counts down to the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, with songs, posters, photos, and stories. Be sure not to miss the first-person accounts in English (under "Frontline Album").
posted on Apr 9, 2005 - View this thread

"Russian Oligarachs Want Immortality". Vladimir Bryntsalov has had a course of stem cell injections and feels no older than 20, though his biological age is about 60. Treatment will cost you $10,000-20,000 in Moscow. In many Western countries, such clinics would not even get the opportunity to open their doors. During a recent speech, President Bush denounced stem cell therapy as "godless."
posted on Mar 19, 2005 - View this thread

Traditional Russian fairytales with beautiful illustrations depicting scenes from the stories.
posted on Feb 23, 2005 - View this thread

China's Latest Innovation: Fish Wine
The French used grapes, Russians fermented potatoes, Koreans put ginseng in their drink and Mexicans distilled cactus plants to make fiery tequila.
Now China has made wine out of fish.
posted on Jan 31, 2005 - View this thread

Black widow pop. "With tATu, Ivan Shapovalov took the media's obsession with paedophilia, and spun it into a chart-topping lesbo-schoolgirl pop act. Now he's trying to do the same with Islamic terrorism. On Sept 11 in Moscow, he launched nATo, a 16-year-old girl who dresses in a Burqua, much like the Black Widow suicide bombers who are currently terrorising Russia. With the Beslan massacre only a week old, Nato's launch - complete with invitations designed like plane tickets - was not a huge success... Mindful of the dire consequences of being a dissenting voice in Putin's Russia these days, Shapovalov is planning to launch nATo properly in London later this year, and get a recording contract here." stolen from popbitch
posted on Sep 24, 2004 - View this thread

A large catalog of interesting handmade Russian chess sets. Some that caught my eye: Soviet vs. American; "Soviet-Fascist Chess" (note the kings); and American vs. Russian politicians (note the American queen).
posted on Jul 19, 2004 - View this thread

The Bodhisattvas of Babylon is a fan page of the Russian rock group Akvarium (or Aquarium, if you prefer). I usually stay away from fan pages of any sort as if they were the plague, but this one . . . well, I think it's a little special. Read the review of Acoustics. Download a song or two (never mind that the written content, of which there is a lot, is in Russian, as are the songs). Now visit the band's website.
posted on Jan 2, 2004 - View this thread

Russian animations - from the simple, short, sassy, sad, and silly to the sophisticated, seamy, scary, sinister and surreal. - more -
posted on Dec 28, 2003 - View this thread

If you refer to Russia as the Soviet Union three times while discussing foreign affairs should you really be President of the United States?
posted on Dec 2, 2003 - View this thread

scary russian cartoons [note: flash]
posted on Nov 21, 2003 - View this thread

Sex for Money, Money having Sex? Ban on Russian ads depicting euro having sex with dollar. Immoral or are they just dancing?
posted on Sep 24, 2003 - View this thread