Goold Bye Lenin! (2003)

Very good movie,both comedy and drama,fantastic. The young boy's mother is ill and can not survive another shock so he tries to hide the collapse of East Germany from her :)

Highly recomended! This is the IMDB link.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

I came across this very long movie(3.5 hours), Lawrence of Arabia on Digiturk. The Europeans honestly admit that they fooled Arabs with various tricks and lies to make them fight agains Turks.

Anyway it was a nice watch,I recomment it to everyone.
Here is the IMDB link.

Book Review: Gezgin Gozuyle Rusya ve Kafkasya (2008)

I heard about this book's coming in a topic on forumrus.com board. The book is a collection of travel articles in the Russia and Caucasus region and one of the writers is also a member of the forum board.

Anyway I ordered the book online with great wonder since it was the most recent publication on Russia, the book arrived with a nice size,367 pages.

Soon after,my happiness lead to disappointment, despite its great size the book content was low-quality, most of the writers traveled to the same cities and regions! It was so boring to read 5-6 articles on Moscow ,all mentioning about Kremlin, snow..etc
It would be useful to make a coordination between book chapters other then just putting them together.

But half of the book was nice, the Kaliningrad article deserverves mentioning.

History Channel's Desicive Battles -Stalingrad 1942

Although our history books mention the end of WWII with one simple paragraph : "The US, Atom-bombed Japan so they surrendered and the was is ended" as if Germany is not involved in the war and the war is between US and Japan.

Well..this is not the case :) The war ended when Russians marched to Berlin and stopped Hitler and one of the bloodiest battle was held in Stalingrad.

It is also said that Hitler lost the battle due to bad weather conditions and his rifles and tanks froze :) This documentary tells more, that Germans could not logistically supported their troops and even the generals wanted the surrender,Hitler asked them to hold on...

The documentary tells German soldiers even started cannibalism towards the end due to hunger

CBS TV's "Putin Legacy"

Yet another anti-Putin program from CBS News, "The Putin Legacy" is about Putin's anti-democratic applications in Russia.

The 20 minutes program is mainly based on interviews with Robert Amsterdam,the oligark Mikail Khodorovsky's lawyer.

Khodorovsky is the former CEO of Yukos, now in fail for tax falsifications.

I found this one on docuwiki.net.

CBS TV's "The Putin System" documentary

This documentary titled "The Putin System" is
consistent with the books of Anna Politkovskaya books. The documentary starts with young Putin, his very first days in KGB and his rise to power, first in Petersburg then in Moscow and finally to the presidency.

The documentary gives the idea that Putin is a KGB guy loyal to the KGB system, he wants to rebuild the good old days of KGB system.

The 1.5 hour documentary has interesting Putin photos.

Two Anna Politkovskaya books

Recently I finished two books by Anna Politkovskaya who was Russian journalist but murdered in her own apartment in 2006.
The first one is "A Russian Diary" is her last book, the book is even compiled and published after her death in 2007. She wrote the book in a diary style, short articles with dates upon each.

The second one is Putin'in Rusyasi which was published in 2004. And the original one is I guess here.

Even though they are two separate books they seem live two books volume I and volume II, both mention that Putin is re-creating the Soviet system together with its dictatorship and corruption. Both books tells crimes against innocent civilians or privates and low-rank officers.

Anne Frank - The diary of a young girl

Years ago,during my first days in Amsterdam I always saw marks 'Anne Frank Huis' on the touristic maps of Amsterdam or city guides which I clearly understood meant House of Anne Frank but I did not know who she was.In the beginning I thought Anne Frank was a popular singer or cinema artist [shame on me]

On day in a bookstore I came across the book 'Anne Frank's Diary'
and read the back-cover... and learnt the awful truth..

If you don't know Anne Frank's story read here, on wikipedia.

Recently I came across the book again,The Diary of a Young Girl The Definitive Edition, and bought it for sure. I quickly read the diary since she had a good talent on writing.




My interest in her story guided me to find two movies on her, first one is "Anne Frank: The Whole Story (2001)" which is a rather long movie[3 hours] but I liked it very much, although the concentration camp stories during the end were...














The other movie is the 1959 dated "The Diary of Anne Frank" which has 3 oscars & 4 nominations.

The movie is in black& white and I think the former movie is better since Anne is player by a smaller girl and shows the hope and character of Anne better.














History Channel also has a 45 minute documentary on her life which has interviews with Anne's father Otto Frank, Miep,the nice lady who helped them during hiding and Anne's childhood friends.

I need to visit Anne Frank Huis one more time...

Novodevichy Cemetery, @Nazim's

During my various visits to Moscow,I always wanted to visit Nazim Hikmet, unfortunately I did not have time. During my last visit we managed to visit Nazim at Novodevichy Cemetery.He was lying there with his latest wife Vera Tulyakova.














I was hoping to visit Nadejda Alleliyuva's grave also,but the graveyard was so big and since we payed a visit to Novodevichy Monastory before the cemetery we were already tired so everyone wanted to leave.

The biggest grave belongs to Boris Yeltsin, it is the biggest and just in the center that you can not possibly miss.






Novodevichy Monastary is worth visiting also, it is in the list of UNESCO's World Heritage.

3 Sites for alternative movies to hot-topic hollywood films

I came across these 3 sites while I was looking for Sergei Einstein movies.

ForiegnMovies http://www.foriegnmoviesddl.com/
Criterion Collection http://www.criterion.com/
Janus Films http://www.janusfilms.com/

The first one has an extensive rapidshare collection of movies,current number of Russian movies is 87 for example,55 for Turkish films,21 Dutch and 18 Romaian

Discovery Channel's The Most Evil Men in Hostory - Vlad the Impaler

This is the third documentary that I wanted from the series.The previous ones were Rasputin and Ivan The Terrible.

The first two episodes of the series was far from being informative but this one was better.

Vlad's father's nameDracul means Dragon in Romanian language hence the name Dracula means son of Dracul/Dragon.

Vlad, together with his brother was handed to the Ottomans by their father as an insurance policy to support his treaty agreement with the Turks. The Ottomans trained Vlad to be the man after his father which he did but later he turned his back to the Turks, and punished for sure :)

The best blog on Russia&USSR

One of my colleques in Russia pointed me to this very best blog on Russia&USSR.The name of the blog is Turkish Invasion.

I enjoyed every single post and it has really nice soviet-era photos.Personaly,the one showing Brejnev in pool is the best.

You should check it yourselves!

God Bless docuwiki.net

I have found,downloaded,watched and loved many documentaried from http://docuwiki.net/. This is a site with great documentaries with emule or rapidshare links.I wish this site grows bigger with contributions and lives for ever!