so much to do, so little time
When someone asks me about my roots, it feels odd to say I am from Russia. I am Russian but from the Soviet Union. To me, Russia before the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union, and Russia after the Soviet Union are three completely different countries. …
“If you want to see a city like a local and understand it, visit a market, a train station, and a cemetery.” …
“In Moscow, you’d sit in an enormous parlor of a restaurant where you don’t know anybody and nobody knows you and you don’t feel that you’re a stranger. And here, you know everybody and everybody knows you, and you’re a stranger, a stranger… and a …
Our firm plan was to fly a red-eye. Direct. JFK to Moscow. Nine hours and some. We did get a few sympathetic words from friends about night flight hardships. The plane was scheduled to take off after midnight NY time and land in Sheremetyevo early evening. The …
French comedy at its best. Marianne (Laetitia Casta, familiar to most probably as a former Victoria’s Secret model) announces to Abel (Louis Garrel, known outside French cinema as one of the twins from Bertolucci’s The Dreamers) that she is pregnant and the baby is not …
— Did you tell her she can eat!?!? It was a little after 8 AM on a sunny April Sunday of 2009. I was upstairs in the bathroom getting ready. Downstairs, Tom caught our nine-year-old Lizzie sneaking cereal in the pantry. No, I didn’t tell …
Lizzie saw an ad for Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo in one of The New Yorker issues lying around the house and got four tickets including Charlotte, me, and one of her friends. She knew the show was the day after her wisdom teeth …
——— MILD PLOT SPOILERS ——— This Cannes Festival winner is the story of six people from three different generations living together in a tight quarters somewhere in an area of Tokyo that would never be marked in tourist guides. At first, they appear to be …
Aurore Dudevant, better known as George Sand, once referred to men kidding themselves they hold power: Let them think they decide. It seems like this is the bottom line of The Favourite, a movie with three strong female leads and a bunch of men in …
The original plan for the weekend was Jersey Shore but the weather was not cooperating. Over Central Jersey, the radar loop was showing solid green band with occasional yellow-red spots. Since the skies up north looked better, we decided to cross another trip off our …