March 30, 2007

Official Website for Fyodor Bondarchuk's Big Budget Russian Sci-Fi Inhabited Island

(Posted In Continental Europe and Russia Film News Sci-Fi / Fantasy )

ostrov.jpgBig, big thanks to regular reader Andrey for pointing the way to a film that sci-fi fans of the world will want to pay very, very close attention to. The official website for Fyodor Bondarchuk's big budget adaptation of the Strugatsky Brothers' novel Inhabited Island is now online and there are two reasons that fans of science fiction should be very, very excited about this.

First, the Strugatsky Brothers are widely considered, along with Stanislaw Lem, to be the very finest examples of Iron Curtain science fiction authors. Their works have been widely exported and translated for decades now and have provided the basis for, among other film works, Days of Eclipse by Alexander Sokurov and Stalker by Andrey Takovsky.

Second, as anyone who has seen his stellar war picture The 9th Company will attest - my own review is here - director Fyodor Bondarchuk is one of the absolute brightest lights in the current wave of young Russian film makers. The man has a fantastic eye, technical skills that invite comparisons to the likes of Ridley Scott and Michael Bay, an excellent sense of story and character, and the ability to stretch a dollar much, much farther than it has any right to go. The man's just flat out good.

More good news? The website includes a fully functional English version.

Check it out here.

» Posted by Todd at March 30, 2007 01:47 PM
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Reader Comments

Excellent! Will be following this one closely.

Will be very interested to see the visual environment they create for the film.

» Posted by Iain Norman at March 30, 2007 03:26 PM

Seems interesting. You should correct one thing, though. Stanislaw Lem was not a Russian author - he was Polish.

» Posted by And at March 31, 2007 09:23 AM

You are correct, sir ... I shall go fix that ...

» Posted by Todd at March 31, 2007 12:06 PM

Bondarchuck's got a great eye - this sounds like an ideal project for him. But I wonder - why the decision to go with a cast of unknowns? Especially after working with so many of the most talented young actors working in Russia... No doubt he'll be able to extract great performances from them, but isn't it a risky proposition for the producers - or is it that Russian audiences are more attuned to the director than to stars?

» Posted by Jon Pais at March 31, 2007 10:23 PM

I'm sure it's more of a budgetary reason than anything else. Stars demand a sertain price that would otherwise go in to special effects. I think they are banking more on the director's name and the author than anything else.

» Posted by swarez at March 31, 2007 11:57 PM

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