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Welcome to Nostalgia Komrade
Today we are looking at Cast Away.
The beginning of the movie is set in Russia, so we are here to count
kranberries.
The delivery boy sings "Onegin, I won't hide, I love Tatiana with all my heart"
which is a line from "Eugene Onegin" opera written by Alexander Pushkin
in 1831. The lyrics are studied in schools, and almost everyone is familiar
with the text.
Okay, this is Nikolskaya street, just near the Red Square and Kremlin.
The cafe is supposed to be in Russian style: a bear, a babushka
and those black things on the wall are not pictures, they are traditional
Russian tea trays from Zhostovo. That is one of the most expensive property
in Moscow. A family keeping a restaurant there doesn't get their kids
to work as delivery boys.
The memorial plate the guys are removing reads "This house was frequent
by Vladimir Lenin". That plate looks authentic, there were hundreds of
similar inscriptions in Soviet Union. However, number 3 at
Nikolskaya street never had one.
Oh, and that is the mall I was talking in about in my Jackal review.
Ok, he sets off towards St Basils and get's to the Moskva River.
I stumbled upon this comment on moviemistakes.com site, at it says
that the boy runs by St. Basils, Moscow State University and Big Stone
bridge, making this a 5 hour run. Well, it looks like the moviemistakes
site also has mistakes. That is Hotel Russia, a controversial Soviet
addition to the Kremlin ensemble, that was finally demolished in 2004.
And this is the Kotelnicheskaya building, not the University,
even though they look somewhat similar. Which makes it the
Big Moskvoretsky bridge, not the Big Stone one.
The distance is roughly 750 meters, which is not long at all.
And by the way, the shape of the package and his enthusiasm about it made
me think it contains an air gun, not some damn timer.
So, his final destination is Kaluzhskaya 14. I had to get a HD bluray copy
of the movie to get a clearer look at the plate, but the lower letters are
still not visible. But there's no Kaluzhskaya street in Moscow,
so it's obviously Kaluzhskaja square.
His route from Nikolskaya street to Kalzhskaya square is roughly 4 kilometers.
That's a 30 minutes trip for an average runner, not the 4-5 hours as
moviemistakes.com suggests.
The question that remains is WHY the boy is running with that parcel along
Moscow landmarks? Why did the babushka signed for the parcel, not the
recipient? There are no hotels on Nikolskaya, did Tom Hanks character
stopped at a restaurant?
Perhaps, that is just a plot device for the boy to earn a cd-player.
Well, the movie was shot in 2000, many children already had players
by then. However,the plot seems to be taking place in 1995.
Anyway, with his family operating a restaurant at the heart of Moscow,
the boy could bathe Tom Hanks in players, not vice versa.
The boxes say "Lux 1" which is derived from "luxury". They probably
meant First class.
The interpreter sounds like a Russian, who spent too many years in the States,
and that affects his intonation. I don't know why didn't they get a native
speaker, they are on-location!
Why the car had to be stopped near the St Basils. An average
muscovite passes by St Basils 1 or 2 times a year, or maybe even less.
That's a tourist attraction. It's like expecting new-yorkers to take daily tours
to the Statue of Liberty.
What's that? A hammer and sickle? On red background? WHY?! The inscription says GAZ, which is Russian
cars manufacturer, including this one used by FedEx in the movie.
Anyway, those wheel blockers are not used in Russia. In most cases,
illegally parked cars are just pulled away to a special police parking,
and each day spent at this parking costs a fortune in fines, so if you're not
fast enough, very soon it's cheaper to buy a new car that evacuate the taken.
Heh, this is so true! A
priority mail package from USA arrives in about 2 to 3
weeks, but those chinese stuff on Ebay will take up to 6 weeks to arrive.
That is longer than 45 days Paypal allows you to start a non-receipt dispute.
Add the low quality of chinese products in general and added risk of a dead
on arrival item, and you'll get a pretty lousy lottery, with only one victim -
the customer.
However, this whole idea of Tom Hanks trying to impose western business practises in
Russia is just hilarious.
This completes this review. See you next time.