Shawn Levy Has Monster Problems

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Film-maker known for his dark take on post-Soviet RussiaAleksei Balabanov, who has died aged 54 after suffering a seizure, saw himself as the "anti-establishment rock'n'roller of Russian film" with an aim to make "scandalous, harsh cinema". Many of Balabanov's films are metaphorical black comedies that gaze unflinchingly at the bleakness and violence of the last days of communism and post-Soviet society, with classic Russian rock music on the soundtrack. His first two features, Happy Days (1991) and The Castle (1994), were based on Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka respectively, and Balabanov's nihilistic oeuvre also takes in Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Mikhail Bulgakov, whose Notes of a Young Doctor was the basis of Balabanov's Morphia (2008)."I don't make movies with ideas. Ideas make for bad cinema," he said. "I don't make my movies for the intelligentsia, but for the people. That's why they like my films." This was demonstrated by the commercial success of Balabanov's films in Russia, starting with the groundbreaking gangster movie Brother (1997)."My films are about me, always," he claimed – a statement that should perhaps be taken figuratively given the extreme nature of his characters. However, many of his films share the theme of an outsider entering an unfamiliar and often hostile environment, and as a young man from the provinces – he was born in Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) – Balabanov himself set out to conquer Moscow and Saint Petersburg, while remaining outside the cinema elite, which he opposed. Therefore, in 1994, Balabanov together with Sergey Selyanov and Viktor Sergeyev founded the company CTB, which produced all his films independently.After graduating with a degree in foreign languages, Balabanov served in the Soviet army as a translator, travelling with his unit as far as Africa and the Middle East. Then, with the help of his father, who was an editor, he became an assistant film director at Sverdlovsk film studio. It was some years before he arrived in Saint Petersburg, which is often depicted in his films as a hellish place that destroys the bodies and the souls of its inhabitants.In Brother, Saint Petersburg is a city of decay and poverty, where crime is rife. A young innocent-looking ex-soldier (Sergei Bodrov), who has been through the Chechen war, arrives to emulate his hitman older brother by becoming an assassin, though he is more interested in cheesy western pop culture and a Russian rock band called Nautilus Pompilius. After leaving a trail of dead Chechen thugs and local mafia, he hitchhikes to Moscow, the initial setting of Brother 2 (2000), determining to protect the "insulted and humiliated" wherever he goes. The sequel, which follows Bodrov to the US, was also an immense hit in Russia, where audiences enjoyed seeing the Russian as hero and the Americans as heavies.Of Freaks and Men (1998) differed vastly from the bruising realism of the Brother films, being an idiosyncratic take on the pioneers of film and photographic pornography in Saint Petersburg in the early 1900s. Shot in glorious sepia, it exposes the corruption and hypocrisy of the period. After two parodic gangster movies, Blind Man's Bluff (2005) and It Doesn't Hurt Me (2006), Balabanov made a horror flick with political undertones, Cargo 200 (2007), the title being a code name for the bodies of the fallen Soviet soldiers shipped back from Afghanistan. Using grotesque imagery reflecting the reality of Soviet life in 1984, shot in the muted colours of Soviet films of the time, Balabanov wrings some grim amusement from a group of pathological characters, headed by a sadistic police chief.The Stoker (2010) focuses on an elderly Yakut boiler worker (Mikhail Skryabin), who spends his days shovelling coal to keep its three furnaces burning. He also allows gangsters to use his furnace as a convenient way to discard of inconvenient corpses. The film is one of Balabanov's most savagely sardonic and entertaining examinations of Russian society.His last completed film was Me Too (2012), a cheeky, darkly humorous response to Stalker (1979), Andrei Tarkovsky's much-revered sci-fi parable. Balabanov's seekers of truth – a bandit, a punk rocker, a prostitute and a racist ex-army officer and his father – set out in a large black car to a mythical bell tower situated in a desolate area with Chernobyl-like levels of radiation. The film was consistent with Balabanov's cynical view of modern Russia and a crumbling European economy. He presented Me Too at the Rotterdam film festival a few months ago. The Stoker was belatedly released in the UK days before his death.Balabanov is survived by his wife, Nadezhda Vasilyeva, a costume designer, and two sons.• Aleksei Balabanov, film director, born 25 February 1959; died 18 May 2013RussiaEuropeRonald Berganguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

James T. Kirk and crew were No. 1 in the United States and Canada, taking in about $70.6 million over the weekend.    

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