MOVIES/RUSSIA

WE ARE ALL BROTHERS UNDER THE SKIN

Shirli Mirli; Written and Directed by Vladimir Menshov The world's largest diamond is discovered in Siberia. The stone will rescue Russia from economic doldrums and allow every citizen to spend three years on the Canary Islands. Too good to be true? Da, but you can't have everything. The gimmick sets off goofy twists in a comedy that has Russians laughing at their post-perestroika selves. A Mafia boss nearly purloins the gem, but a petty criminal makes off with it. In the inevitable chase that follows, he runs into a puzzling and increasing number of fraternal look-alikes who happen to be of many races.

Vladimir Menshov, 54, who directed the Oscar-winning 1987 film Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, roughly translates Shirli Mirli as What a Mess. It is in the over-the-top mode of America's Naked Gun series, and many of its good actors are veterans of the Moscow theater and film community.

MOVIES/FRANCE

From the vodka-guzzling drunkard and the bungling policeman to the Mafia chieftain, stereotypical characters stride broadly across the screen. The movie, which has been playing since August in Moscow's largest theaters, addresses homosexuality, as well as the country's failing medical facilities, and is the first post-Brezhnev film to deal with the real and controversial issue of prejudice against Jews, Gypsies and blacks. Shirli Mirli is high-spirited slapstick with a politically correct, multicultural message. Who says you can't have everything?

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Le Hussard sur le Toit; Written by Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Nina Companeez and Jean-Claude Carriere; Directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau

With a budget of $35.2 million, Jean-Paul Rappeneau's epic Le Hussard sur le Toit (The Hussar on the Roof) is a middleweight film by Hollywood blockbuster standards. In France, though, it holds the record for the most expensive--and perhaps the most hyped--film in the country's history. Nonstop promotions in magazines and on TV have fed the public's curiosity about Rappeneau's first movie since his 1990 international hit remake of Cyrano de Bergerac. So when the director delayed the premiere of Le Hussard several times, wary critics began sharpening their knives. But the film that finally opened in France on Sept. 20 left most of the same critics gushing. "Rappeneau...lets loose the cyclones of history, the storms of the heart, the hurricanes of a thousand catastrophes," said Le Figaro. "Great art."

Loosely based on a 1951 cult novel by Jean Giono, Le Hussard stars Olivier Martinez as Angelo, a 19th century Italian cavalier, and Juliette Binoche as Pauline, a married gentlewoman, who are fleeing a cholera epidemic. Pursued by hysterical mobs and motley villains, the two ride across the breathtaking countryside, never acknowledging their love for each other before having to part. In its first week of release, the movie was tops at the French box office, attracting 500,000 viewers--but producers estimate that 4.5 million more tickets will have to be sold just to break even.

MUSIC/BELGIUM

MEMENTO MORI

Flamma Flamma: The Fire Requiem; By Nicholas Lens; Sony Classical

Contemporary classical compositions are breaking down the established divisions between popular and so-called serious music. Among recordings, notable crossovers include Polish composer Henryk Gorecki's mystical Symphony No. 3 and British minimalist Michael Nyman's score for the 1993 film The Piano. This year's hit is Flamma Flamma by Belgium's Nicholas Lens, 36. First performed last year in a church in the Belgian town of Mechelen, it has already made the giant step to pop fame with a video on MTV Europe, and is about to be launched in North America. In 14 sections, the somber score combines orchestra, chorus and six operatic voices that contrast with the eerie tonalities of three singers from the women's choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares. The Latin text by Herman Portocarero, which begins Hic Iacet Corpus (Here Lies the Body), concerns human mortality and the cosmic purification achieved through the flames of the title.

With its visceral strength and sustained emotional drive, Flamma Flamma has won a loyal audience and critical favor. Het Laatste Nieuws, the Flemish daily, judged it perfect and wrote that the music "gets to your bones and knuckles.'' Lens observed a funeral ritual in Papua New Guinea and was struck by the treatment in non-Western religions of death as central to life. He picked up ethnic elements from his travels around the world, and merged them into this powerful requiem that embraces death and sets free the soul.

MAGAZINES/UNITED STATES

THE DAY THEY STOPPED THE PRESSES

Classic Views; Produced by Michael Bronson and Ron Rich

Folded, bound, glued or stapled, magazines have been around for 330 years in one form or another. But not quite in the form of a quarterly that went on sale last week. The content is of the sort familiar to readers--interviews, critical commentary, scholarly essays and even ads--but Classic Views is meant to be seen and heard. It is a magazine on videotape about opera and classical music.

Offering at least 80 minutes in each issue, Classic Views is sold in U.S. and Canadian retail outlets for $9.95; a one-year subscription is $39.95. Features are diverse and lengthy, not the sound bites found on TV. In the premiere issue, American soprano Dawn Upshaw speaks about seeking simplicity and clarity in music and the pleasure she finds in singing. Her joy is immediately apparent in footage of her with the Brazilian guitarists Sergio and Odair Assad in a recording session for a forthcoming album. Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, who died in 1982, interprets a Bach fantasia in a rarely seen Canadian Broadcasting Company interview-demonstration. Bent over the keyboard, Gould plays a melodic line with his right hand, while his left reaches upward and seems to coax it from the air. Also included are a tribute to conductors plus British composer Gavin Bryars' reflections on his symphonic poem The Sinking of the Titanic and his homage to the small band that kept on playing a hymn until the waves closed over their doomed ship.

--By Julie K.L. Dam and Emily Mitchell. With reporting by Catherine Kotschoubey/Brussels, Carol Poirier/Paris and Constance Richards/Moscow