clap clap blog: we have moved


Tuesday, April 22, 2003
This review of Andrei Konchalovsky's House of Fools in the Onion AV Club sounds really good. It also sounds like something I might make if I were old and Russian:

Moving Konchalovsky about as far away from Hollywood as possible, House Of Fools heads to a remote corner of the former Soviet Union, revisiting a real-life 1996 incident in which the Chechen war spilled over into a mental hospital in nearby Ingushetia. When the hospital's small staff leaves it unattended–some leave to get help, some just leave–the inmates are forced to fend for themselves. What follows frequently resembles the French lunatics-freed-from-the-asylum peacenik classic King Of Hearts, but with blood and explosions in place of dewy idealism. As Chechen rebels move in, one reluctant soldier (Sultan Islamov) forms a particular attachment to the cheerful, accordion-toting Yuliya Vysotskaya. But several problems impede their potential romance, including the war and her imaginary fiancé, pop star Bryan Adams, who plays himself in sequences bringing Vysotskaya's glossy fantasies to life.

An insane asylum! Bryan Adams! That's the perfect movie right there.