Yippee-ki-yay…
Very much aware of the danger that lurks everytime Kusturica is mentioned on this blog, and in any kafana politics conversation, for that matter, this recent case of Kusta’s insanity is too much for me to let it go by unnoticed:
„God forgive Bruce Willis for all his earthy sins that he commited on and off movie screen, by day or night… he lived and died hard, may he rest in peace in this Serbian Mokra Gora soil.”
Kustendorf festival was opened to public with the above words and symbolic burial of all four “Die Hard” movies, that is, their DVD copies, with Kusturica’s son carrying a cross with Die Hard written on it in Cyrillic.
Why open a festival in a stupid manner like this? Beats me. I’m certain there’s a point to all this – and I am guessing that what the author wanted to say is that Hollywood sucks. But I’m also certain there are much better ways to say it – for instance, making one good movie since Undergound would be a good way to show all those Holywood directors their place.
But I guess it’s easier to invite Mikhalkov, Kostunica and Handke to pat you on the back and say: Hollywood bad, Kusta good.
Kustendorf festival may be good, but for me the stupid move like this casts a shadow over it, and the “vip” crowd at the opening ceremony leaves a bitter taste – we don’t have a saying s kim si, takav si for nothing.
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Angelina Jolie’s Anti-Serbian Movie… or is it?
I’ve always found it interesting how things generally work in Serbian public domain: one person writes something, then 20 cyber parrots who think it’ll make a good argument in their overall political diatribe repeat the same thing and before you know it that thing becomes some sort of a set-in-stone gospel among the group whose members share the same ideological views.
Here we have an excellent example. Over the last 5 days I’ve read the sentence “Kusta hasn’t made a good film since Underground” at least 50 times on various forums and blogs such as this one that are frequented by substantial numbers of visitors who share similar ideological views (obviously different from those of Kusturica’s).
Before “Kusta hasn’t made a good film since Underground”, the accepted gospel among the same crowd was: “Kusta hasn’t made a good movie since the war started in Sarajevo and he escaped the city thus becoming a traitor of his people – ‘Dom za vjesanje’ was his last watchable film”.
When they’re reminded he actually moved to Paris in 1988, 4 years before the war in Sarajevo, and that he already wasn’t living in Sarajevo when he made ‘Dom za vjesanje’ they return with a modified gospel: “OK, then, his only two good movies are ‘Dolly Bell’, and ‘Otac…’ the ones that Abdulah Sidran wrote. Sidran probably did most of the work on them anyway and Kusta just took the glory. The rest of Kusta’s movies after that suck”.
Then when they’re reminded that Kusta actually wrote about 95% percent of Dolly Bell’s screenplay by himself because Sidran quit and disassociated himself from the film early into the project and was only signed on the end product as a second writer out of Kusta’s gesture of good will, they return with the FINAL gospel: “Oh fuck it, man, I don’t actually care about the bloody details, I just don’t like Kusta’s politics”.
So instead of bending over backwards to actually make it appear as though you have some actual issues with Kusta’s craft you could have easily saved the poor readers like me the trouble of going through your bungling post by simply writing down the key thought: s kim si, takav si.
So next time, instead of inviting Koštunica and Matija Bećković, Kusta should throw Čeda and Vesna Pešić a bone by inviting them over and all would be fine in the universe.
PS: Kusta should also steer clear of bringing people like Maradona, Manu Chao, Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Mikhalkov, Fatih Akin, etc. to Mokra Gora because that also gives too much international cache to Koštunica and his political option.
Thank you for this lovely chronology, but did he really make a good film since Underground?
He most definitely did.
I think ‘Black Cat, White Cat’ is his best film. It is absolutely delightful. Furthermore I’m tickled pink that it remains as kind of a cult classic in North America becuase I still keep running into it on different festival theatre’s repertoires. I’ve also seen it included in several of these ‘Best of the Decade’ glossy books.
‘Super 8 Stories’ is pretty entertaining.
Haven’t seen ‘Life is a Miracle’ and ‘Promise Me This’ yet.