First Key Art For Pavel Ruminov’s CIRCUMSTANCES

Reader Comments

1. Vladimir 03/30/2008 @ 3:26pm

   Well, i expect some weird vintage freaky “comedy”.

2. Marwood 04/02/2008 @ 4:06am

   Let’s be perfectly honest - Dead Daughters was such a banal and overhyped film that calling it a B-Movie would be an act of mercy. The guy just isn’t a filmmaker. He’s in love with movies and films but that doesn’t mean he can make them himself. “Life is a pizza with toppings you didn’t order” If this banality is what Mr Ruminov believes passes for insight into the human condition then I truly pity him.
   I really doubt whether such a talentless person will ever make a decent film. His last three films were so derivative of better films (Ringu, Blair Witch Project - a million others) with a such tin-ear for dialogue that I cannot believe he can improve. Let’s just hope he can hold the camera still in this one.

3. Collin Armstrong 04/02/2008 @ 6:15am

   I don’t know.  This looks like six kinds of trite up front.

   I didn’t hate DEAD DAUGHTERS, but I can’t say I was blown away in the fashion I expected after all the pre-release buzz and high-profile festival play.  It took me a few sittings to get through it, in fact.  I’d like to re-watch it, end-to-end - might do something for my impression of the film.  There’s good filmmaking there - it just didn’t jell for me.  Maybe this one will?  I’d give it a shot based on the (partially realized) promise I saw in DAUGHTERS.

4. Marwood 04/02/2008 @ 7:19am

   I’m sorry but I didn’t see much promise in DD. As a first year film-school project it would pass muster but as a commercial film it’s an amateurish affair.  However many times you watch the DVD you won’t discover profundity as there is none. I saw a film that didn’t know what it wanted to be - art house drama or horror pic - and was ultimately neither. I saw wooden actors spouting irrelevant dialogue and half-baked philosophy about throwing apples off balconies, letting kids decorate their parents’s flats, and people’s kidneys being damaged. If these vignettes had the intention of helping us “know” the characters then they failed. The characters were cardboard cutouts whose sole reason of existence was to be murdered by invisible ghosts or as in the final scene to allow the lead actress to go topless.

   Whether a “chamber piece” full of witty dialogue can come from the pen of Ruminov seems on paper to be highly unlikely. He knows his films and film history but I suspect this love of cinema comes at the expense of life experience and “real life” and that can’t be faked. It also cannot make up for a lack of writing ability.  I still think he might benefit from filming someone else’s script. Some filmmakers only come alive when they are filming the words of others.
   Look, let’s wish him all the luck in the world. Miracles do happen!

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