Filed under “That’s Entertainment”. . . or not. *sigh*
Watching Episode 1 of “Gogol”–a Russian serial featuring a fantasy take on Nikolai Gogol (19th Century Russian author) as a paranormal investigator–via Amazon Prime Video: mixed bag.
The good/not-so-good: great atmosphere for a pseudo-Gothic 19th Century paranormal piece. Sets, locations, dark videographing, music, even costuming, props and etc. All excellent. All dialog in Russian: good (perfectly suits the atmosphere). Subtitles: OK, but with some problematic idiomatic translation issues (English idioms, not Russian. My familiarity with Russian is scant, depending on a brief flirtation with 19th Century Russian art songs ~ 50 years ago.) The English subtitles sometimes intrude in a jarring fashion.
Not good: Details that irk: “business” that conflicts Scene 1: guy hits another guy on head with ladle. Guy hit grabs OPPOSITE side of head and ladle strike sounds wrong, as well–little things like that; only visible wound on a dead body high on the chest–“above her breasts” is the line. Nevertheless, the investigator, after cracking open the body’s chest says “the aorta is severed.” From the location and size of the visible wound, the ascending aorta would be difficult to reach. Unlikely. (The ascending aorta is not large in any case, and is not found in the almost exact center of the chest where the wound was shown. In addition, after cracking the chest, the investigator was NOT looking anywhere NEAR the wound which was a bit above the pulmonary trunk, but much lower, where the throacic and abdominal aorta could be seen. Hence, I thought when the line was uttered, “Doesn’t EVERYONE find this odd?” *shrugs*)
More? “It was a dark and stormy night. . . ” *heh* OK, as to atmosphere, it worked. “You can ride a horse?” Urm, no he cannot. Runs into a windmill and falls off. Clouds blowing through the windmill blades, and. . . they do not move.
*sigh*
Sometimes it’s just the little things that throw one out of suspension of disbelief, you know?
But, though more interesting than usual TV fare, I don’t think I am interested enough to watch more than one episode (and I had to take a break from the irritating “little things” to write this, so I might well not finish Episode 1).
Most amusing line so far, “We got carried away by the local flavor.”
OK, fast forwarded through #2. Caught the gist and ditched a lot of less interesting stuff. Blacksmith picks lock on mystery trunk toward the end of the episode. Needs a pick and a torsion wrench (or another tool to provide tension) to do it with but only used a pick. Sad. As I have said, it’s the little things.
