konstantin khabensky Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Remember when 3D was considered tacky? It doesn't seem so long ago that I would mention old, wacky 3D films in conversation and get strange looks from people. "Why would you want to wear those annoying glasses?" It seemed like a quickly-faded fad, but not anymore. It looks like 3D is here to stay, and it isn't just influencing North American film. Variety reports that after the current rise in popularity of animated features, Central Partnership, an independent Russian production company, is getting into the game with a pricey stake in an upcoming 3D cartoon based on William Shakespeare's ultra-classic romance, Romeo and Juliet.

Peregrine is the working title for the film, which focuses on Mitya, a peregrine falcon who is adopted at birth by a family of pigeons. I imagine Mitya will fall for another bird species and thus tap into all that Romeo and Juliet goodness with warring families and ruffled feathers -- the film is set to include Moscow pigeons, sparrows, and falcons. Konstantin Khabensky, who will soon appear in the Angelina Jolie film Wanted as The Exterminator, will voice Mitya, while Renata Litvinova (The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 3: From Sark to the Finish) will voice a pigeon named Galya. The film is set to fly into theaters later this year or early 2009.

If you're unfamiliar with the Byzantine history of the Night Watch fantasy film series -- the actual films, their amazingly sophisticated special effects done on non-existent budgets, their massive popularity in Russia where they've outperformed Lord of the Rings, the who's-who of Russian pop culture that do cameos throughout the films reflecting the nearly iconic status of the series at home -- then there's no room in this review to get into all that. I'm only here to talk about Day Watch, the middle entry in the planned trilogy, which was preceded by Night Watch in 2004 and will conclude soon with Dusk Watch. Day Watch continues the story of the Light Others and Dark Others, two opposing groups comprised of random supernatural beings -- vampires, witches, shape-shifters, sorcerers, etc. -- who live amongst normal folks in modern day Russia and adhere to a peace treaty, in effect since medieval times, that aims to keep everyone's powder dry. The Night Watch is the KGB of the good guys -- they keep tabs on the Dark Others. The Day Watch does the opposite.

Various things can upset the peace, but chief among them is -- hold for laughter -- a mystical piece of chalk. Yeah, like blackboard chalk. The Chalk of Fate, as its called, has its own backstory prologue in Day Watch, which I find to be off-putting and superfluous -- the bottom line is that with the chalk, you can write your own fate and it will come true. You'll have to take my word that it's not nearly as lame on-screen as it sounds. The chalk is sort of a MacGuffin, because if any rogue Light Other or Dark Other gets their hands on it, they can upset the balance of power that keeps the peace and everyone has their own reason for wanting to do that, of course. Whereas Night Watch dropped us into all of this in media res, and was massively confusing, Day Watch has internalized that criticism and taken strides towards making a movie that's understandable, if still Tolstoy-like in its character roster and just very Russian in general with its story-underpinnings of bureaucracy and rule-making.