My Infatuation with Russian Movies

Browsing videos on YouTube is my favourite passtime.Digging deeper, I came across a few movies. I prefer watching movies of genre action or war.I happened to come across a few Russian movies as well which to my delight were war based, adventure based Russian movies.

Over a period of  5-6 months, I have watched over 10 Russian movies and honestly, I have enjoyed all of them.Russian movies happen to be very different from my country's movies in terms of person-to-person behaviour and tune of their language(which I enjoy).I have been recommending the same to my friends.

On a short note, I ll give a gist to a few movies and try reviewing them so as to persuade the reader to feel the elegance of Russian movies I have witnessed all this while.

So the countdown begins

1. адмирал (Admiral)
     
   Based on the life of Admiral Alexander Vasileyvich Kolchak, movie begins with flashes back             to the Baltic Sea in 1914 in a naval battle with the Germans.Later, the Russian civil war breaksout       and the Tsar  having been exiled, the Admiral establishes an anti-communist government in                 Siberia to fight the Communist forces.The story also revolves around Admiral's love Anna                   Timiryova who is a poet.
  The movie Stars: Konstantin Khabensky as Admiral and Elizaveta Boyorskaya as Anna Timiryova.
  Year: 2008
  IMDB: 6.9/10
   Link to the full movie

          


2.  Брестская крепость (The Brest Fortress)
                  

1. The movie begins with a glimpse at the simple lives of soldiers and their families in the Soviet Union garrisoned at The Brest Fortress situated at Minsk, Belarus.Nazi soldiers carry out Operation Barbarossa and enter Russian territory and a group of Russian soldiers must protect the stronghold at all costs.
   Year:2010 IMDB: 7.5/10

        Link to the full movie    

       


3.  9 рота (The 9th Company)
           
 Based on real-life events, 9th Company recounts a year in the shared lives of a group of young soldiers drafted to serve in Afghanistan during the final year of the Soviet conflict. It is a poignant story of the unit's dedication to each other during their valiant defense of Height 3234.A futile battle that ravaged their forgotten company, who kept fighting, unaware that the war ended.
Year:2005, IMDB:7.2/10

Link to the full movie

        


4. Блокпост (Checkpoint)
      Blokpost is a film about the madness of war. Somewhere in the Caucasus, which looks like Chechnya, a dirty war is raging. There are no battlefields as such, but every peasant is either a suspect or a victim.  The film, which is shot in quasi-documentary style, aims at displaying the madness of war in which everyone suffers, including the soldiers.
Year: 1998      

         

5. The Fall of Berlin
        

          The Fall of Berlin is split into two parts. The movie is about the attack on Russians by Germans, and the retaliation leading upto the flag hoisting at the Reichtag, Berlin.Although this movie is a soviet propaganda  portraying Stalin as the darling of the Soviets, it provides some elegant view of the great war which engulfed Europe.

Year: 1953

Link to Part 1

Link to Part 2

6. Come and See 

1. The invasion of a village in Byelorussia by German forces sends young Florya (Alexei Kravchenko) into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes. There he meets a girl, Glasha (Olga Mironova), who accompanies him back to his village. On returning home, Florya finds his family and fellow peasants massacred. His continued survival amidst the brutal debris of war becomes increasingly nightmarish, a battle between despair and hope.
2. IMBD: 8.3/10
3. Year: 1985

         

   The intention of the post remains exploring, sharing and discussing movies which makes brighter sense.I am also trying to explore the emotions common to all humans in the past and  in the present.

Movies other than War Genre

 Siberie Monamour
IMDB: 7.7/10

Note: I was completely reliant on the subtitles for watching these movies.
Your comments or suggestions are always welcome.

Different View of India: Pictures of Indian cities you don't see in overseas media.

Author: Balaji Vishwanathan @Quora

In the western media, we often see only one type of Indian image. Crowded, dirty and polluted. The pictures would be often taken from random sewage canals and slums. The problem is that those underbellies exist in every part of the world. Shanghai can be like this or like this: 

This is not to deny that Shanghai and other great world cities have nicer infrastructure than the Indian metropolises. It is just that we are seeing things in binary instead of shades of gray. Indian cities sure have more than their share of dirtiness. Those are the reality and so are the ones below. The problem is that if only one type of pictures are shown it totally distorts the reality. Here is the other side. 

Mumbai skyline:

Driving through Mumbai's marine drive. 

A few kilometers north, Bandra-Worli sealink that connects traditional Mumbai city with its suburbs:

The new Mumbai airport & its environs

The serene Sabarmati river running through Ahmedabad

Jaipur: The land of palaces - now getting modern

The heart of Bengaluru: Vidhan Soudha

Mysore: Bangalore's royal cousin

Heart of New Delhi during the parade

The sparkling clean Delhi metro

Heart of Chennai in lush greenery

Chennai's iconic Marina beach

Chennai's southern skyline - not as good as other Indian metropolis but getting better

Kochi's aspirations to enter as a Tier-1 Metropolis

Hyderabad center around the Char Minar

Rapidly growing skyline of Hyderabad:

Kolkata - the old capital of India

Kolkata's Vidaysagar Setu

Heart of India's former summer capital - Shimla

Chandigarh: One of India's most planned cities

Gangtok: The serene northeastern city

Jodhpur: India's blue city

Chennai's Anna Memorial

New Delhi's Lotus Temple to rival the Taj

The Yamuna Expressway to Agra.

New 8-laned expressways of Hyderabad

Chennai's Kathipara junction

India's new highways.

India is moving. Not one or two cities, but the whole nation. By not looking at the pictures above we get the distorted view that India is not progressing. If a media house shows a picture of New York, which of the following would they normally use?

Both of them exist in the same city, but we use only one of those pictures as representative. Same for most cities in the world. However, when it comes to the Indian cities, we take only the negative images as default art to portray and that is a travesty to people who are working to build the country. Let's be fair in representing cities of the world as that impacts investments and poverty alleviation. Romantic skylines for one city and a dirty sewer for the other city is not fair.

We need to be real. But, that doesn't mean dwelling in pessimism.

Amazing display of Hindu ancestry in Indonesian

Indonesia is a unique cauldron of cultures. The country with the highest population of Muslims in the world, has Hinduism so deeply embedded in its culture, it's hard to believe.

My Indonesian friend in office is Muslim and his name is Eka - Sanskrit for "one".
A colleague in Jakarta who I contact very often - Sudama
Another is Visnu, and one Indra. These are all Muslims.
Almost everyone in Indonesia has a Sanskrit name.

This one day, I discovered that Eka actually knows more about the Mahabharata and Ramayana, than me.
I used to think I know quite a lot.
In Indonesia, on the night before Eid, families sit together and read through short stories from these epics. 
I was truly amazed. Do we EVER do that?

In fact, Indonesians use the Hindu gods and their symbols in every sphere of their life. Be it at the entrance of their houses or to mark the beginning of something auspicious.

Don't believe me? Here is the logo of Indonesia's most elite engineering college(where Eka studied.)
(That is the Hindu god Ganesha marking the most sought after educational institution in a country with Muslim majority.)

The badge for Mechanical Engineeing students - which is on their school jackets.

For electrical guys,

Winners of competitions/tournaments usually receive a statue of Ganesha as prize.

EDIT: 
First hand account of Brinda Sarkar in the comments: 

Hinduism is part in their culture and Sanskrit in the language. Their philosophy of their constitution is called Pancha Sila, meaning Five Principles in Sanskrit.

When we lived in Jakarta, our domestic help’s name was Sita and our doctor was Mohammed Vishnu. Their national airline is called Garuda, the mythical bird from the Ramayana

Another post in the comments.
Qonita Gws went to this high school in Indonesia.

And she also shared a picture of Indonesia's currency note which boasts of Ganesha along with their father of education - Devantara. 

Sai Nellore's post in the comments. He witnessed the below in 1995.
http://faculty.ece.illinois.edu/...

Courtesy: Quora

The Best Route by Train in India

Its en route to Rameswaram also known as Pamban

1.Sea on the side of rail network(both sides).

2.The railway bridge is 6,776 ft (2,065 m) long and was opened for traffic in 1914. The scenery which you will see through the journey of 10 minutes will be full of excitement and you will cherish it for the rest of your life.

3.The road route from the Peninsular India to the Rameshwaram (Island) will add to the scenary. Many people would come to the side of the road and see the train passing by.

4.You can also see the view from above later on. But for that you have to travel 10 km from Rameshwaram to the side of the Island. It looks like this.

5. It is the the only rail route over sea in india.

6.Whenever the ships passes by. The bridge is opened like this.(only at one point in the middle of the route .

This shows  that Pamban Bridge is one of the best train routes in India and one of the oldest too .

Which is the most well planned city in the world?

Courtesy: Abhiram Iyer @ Quora
Chandigarh

I accidentally stumbled upon the rectangular plots of land in the map of India while exploring it. Zooming in, I found an entire city meticulously planned and arranged in rectangular blocks. The city, Chandigarh. 

• Design by Sectors.

The primary module of city’s design is a Sector, a neighborhood unit of size 800 meters x 1200 meters. It is a self-sufficient unit having shops, school, health centers and places of recreations and worship.

                         Map view of the city from Google maps

• Shopping streets and green sectors.

Each sector has a shopping street, and the shopping street of one sector connects  to that of the adjoining sector. Also every sector has a park and stretches to the green of the next sector.

• Landscaping

The plantation along the roads add to the beauty of the city, also providing the needed shelters over many of the city's roads. The city apparently has close to 100 different species of trees planted across all sectors! And enough open spaces for playgrounds like the one below.

• Roads and Transit

The roads are immaculately planned to ensure minimum traffic snags. The hierarchy of roads is made up of 7 V's. V1 for Arterial roads. V2 for major avenues. V3 for vehicular traffic. V4 for Shopping streets. The roads also include pedestrians paths and cycle tracks! 

Chandigarh is flawlessly beautiful in it's planning all credits to the Swiss and American architects.