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и скачивай.

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второй ДВД ушел за 860$!!!

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Дурдом!!!

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Posted by morana on 3/11/2005, 10:47 pm

In this weeks LDN episode Iva finally meets his future wife. Her name is Vera and she is a member of the partisan antifascist movement too. I was expecting a bit more of seducing rituals between them; in one scene they are flirting and in the second they are putting their cloths on… Well, what can you do, it is wartime, and they could both be dead tomorrow, so I guess there is no time for romance… But I better start from the beginning…
Most of the events in this episode are taking place in the improvised partisan headquarters (the whole facility looks more like a big old barn). In the last episode Elza had murdered German officer Stephan, and now she can’t go back home anymore, so she takes her son, runs to the woods and joins the partisans. Namely, since her husband was murdered by Nazis, who shortly after, build their headquarters practically in her front yard, she becomes a partisan spy, we can also see that her maddens which was so obvious in last episode was just a cover up, so the Nazis wouldn’t find her suspicious.
In partisans headquarters the first meeting of a new formed German partisan squad »Ernest Thellman« is being held. This is the first formed antifascist German squad in Europe; all members are Volksdeutchers from Croatia who decided to prove that not all Germans are Nazis.
Elza had provided classified information from the German headquarters about a train that arrives in the neighboring train station in the middle of the night with a very important shipment. The “Ernest Thellman” squad disguise themselves in Nazi solders and took over the station; they welcomed the train, evacuated it and then blow it up with explosive. This was a big box on the ears for the Nazis, they ware shocked when they found a ruins of the train in the mourning along with a big inscription on the wall that read: “German antifascist squad”.
Iva is still a newcomer among the partisans, but he yet in the beginning comes in to confrontation with one of the senior officers. Partisans captured two extremely young ustasa soldiers, and it is decided without any hesitation that they should be executed immediately. Iva strongly disputes with that decision and demands at least a fair trial for the two unfortunate soldiers. The promise him a trial but a half an hour later when he comes back from a short walk he finds out that they had held a “trial” without him and that the privates are already executed. He is shuddered with how ease are these men being executed, but he can’t do nothing about that. At this point he meets Vera. They started exchanging glances yet on the meeting. He’s been assigned to sleep in a room (barn) with her and two more solders (who ware on the watch that night). He walked in the room while she was washing her self and was naked from the waist up, at first he was spellbound but she didn’t felt awkward at all so they started to flirt, and one thing lead to another…(I’m hoping that Enza will up load that scene on her site).
Sorry for this weeks review being so short and confusing, but I had a tough weak and I wrote this in a hurry. I had a problem with inspiration and concentration, as well…

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There was something that I wanted to write when I was writhing a third episode review, but I didn’t manage to catch time and enough motivation to write it. When Nancy Lionstorm wrote her reply on my last review about this series being controversial in Croatia for allegedly equalizing sufferings of Volksdeuters and Croatian Jews, that motivated me to start writing my comment on that subject. I started writing it few days after my last post, but I didn’t finished it until now, so I’ll post it along with this review.
(I’ll first quote Nancy’s massage so my answer would be clearer)
Nancy Lionstorm: “Now I understand an earlier message you once wrote, telling us that the movie, LONG DARK NIGHT (2004) was controversial in your country and that Antun Vrdoljak was criticized by one professional movie critic for supposedly equating the Volksdeutchers’ suffering with that of Croatian Jews. I mean no disrespect to Croatian sensibilities, but as an outsider I must disagree with that film critic’s assessment. I think it was both brave and necessary for Mr. Vrdoljak to depict the experiences that motivated Croatian Volksdeutchers to embrace Nazism, as it was for him to depict the motivations of the Partisans. This bravery perhaps makes the director a “man ahead of his time” but I applaud Antun Vrdoljak for giving us a multi-dimensional picture of the time period.”
Critics didn’t criticize Vrdoljaks presentation of Volksdeuters, but Ustasas. Joseph is not the controversial character, Vrdoljak gave him a personality, but, by doing that, he didn’t justify his deeds in anyway (in the slaughter scene the women carrying the baby on her chests is screaming and begging, him particularly, to spare her child, but he doesn’t do a thing). The controversial character is Mata! I’m all for freedom of speech, but there is a certain atmosphere in Croatia at this time and that’s why I thing that his character is very dangerous. There are strong neo-Ustasas tendencies in Croatia at these days, and they are the strongest among young generations, which are easy to be manipulated with. When teenagers in America what to do something out of revolt they listen to Marilyn Manson or something similar, and in Croatia there is Thomson. He is the man who can gather the largest number of Croats on his concerts then any other Croatian musician, and I consider this to be a very disturbing fact. On his concerts, every other man in a crowd is warring Ustasa symbols including Thomson himself, he starts his performance with shouting Ustasas slogans and in his songs he directly promotes violence and xenophobia primary against Serbs. His songs contains lyrics like “We’re going to slaughter Serbs, they are going to float in Neretva(the river) to the Adriatic sea” and he is glorifying fascistic concentration camps as Jasenovac and Nova Gradiska in one of his songs.

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Thomson and neo-Ustasa followers are mostly war veterans, persons who had been hit by the war in all sorts of ways. Majority of his followers are low educated people that aren’t familiarized with all aspects of what Ustasa ware, all they know (or want to know) is that Ustasas ware constituted “Independent state of Croatia” 50 years ago and that they wanted to exile Serbs from their (Ustasas) country, when you look things from that perspective this has some since to a traumatized person who had lost a lot (so many people lost their dearest ones – fathers, husbands, brothers, suns…) in a war ten years ago because of the disputable Serbian aggression… There is a detail article about Thompson phenomenon here, I agree with every thing that is said in there but the writer’s conclusion that Croatia is a small, dark, fascistic Balkan state.
As for the series, I must say that I agree with that critic. Though I have seen only 5 episodes of the series, I haven’t seen nor one Ustasa doing anything wrong. All crimes, murders, incursions, fascistic proclamations, ware made by the solders warring Nazi uniform, all that we could see of Ustasas for now is Mata and he is presented as a nice guy full of life and a big patriot. There is one very important dialog between Iva and Mata in the end of the third episode. It goes something like this:

(Mata just rescued Iva who was arrested by the Ustasa police because of his engagement in that incident on university stadium. Standing on in a meadow, and saying goodbye to each other)
Mata: Watch your self, Iva. They’ll go after you again and then I wont be here anymore to help you. Aren’t you going to tell me why you have been arrested?
Iva: I’ve helped a friend.
Mata: A Jew!
Iva: Does it really matter?
Mata: You have betrayed your country because of one Jew?!
Iva: Because of a friend, Mata!
Mata: For me a homeland comes first!
Iva: Well then, I guess I’m more a people kind of person…
Mata: If I ware a proper Ustasa I would shoot you right now for saying things like that!
Iva: Then what are you if you’re not a real Ustasa?
Mata: I’m a Croat!
Iva: And I’m not a Croat?
Mata: No, a real Croat wouldn’t trade his country for a Jew!
Iva: For a man, Mata, a man!!!

And so on…. Finally Mata says to Iva that he loves him no matter what are his beliefs, and then a touching goodbye scene follows. Anyway, Mata’s point of view is exactly that today’s neo-Ustasas wants to hear….

Morana

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Iva: For a man, Mata, a man!!!

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Скачала фотки. Супер!!!

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Saturday, April 2 - 7:30 PM

Los Angeles Premiere:

THE LONG DARK NIGHT (DUGA MRACNA NOC), 2004, HRT/ Mediteran Film, 200 min. Dir. Antun Vrdoljak. Croatia’s official submission for the recent Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film, LONG DARK NIGHT is a sweeping, emotionally overwhelming portrait of an entire country caught in the devastation of WWII, and the irreversible changes wrought on one small village and its inhabitants. Heart-throb Goran Visnjic (SPARTACUS, «E.R.») delivers a stellar performance as Iva, a college student devoted to his family and friends, who finds himself forced to fight with the Communist partisans when war erupts in his homeland. Goran Navojec co-stars as Iva’s hellraising buddy, Mata, who winds up fighting on the opposite side with the Nazi-allied Ustasha troops. The tragic path followed by these two former best friends - both troubled by their respective choices, but determined to push forward to the end -- mirrors the complex and difficult transformation of Croatia itself in the 1940’s. Actor Goran Visnjic will introduce screening.

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Posted by morana on 3/19/2005, 8:47 pm

Here’s another Long Dark Night’s episode summery.
The sixth episode is divided in two thematically different parts.

The first part’s story is taking place in Iva’s home village. We are witnessing the destruction of Ernest Thellman’s partisan squad (the first German antifascist squad), and another tragic event in Joseph’s family.
In the second part we are marching up north with Iva’s squad, and following a few interesting discussions between Iva and his commandant while he bravely expresses his antiwar aspirations.

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The Ernest Thellman. squad is making local Nazi commanding officers terribly upset. They are trying to cover this up so it wouldn’t get to their superiors. This squad is a big disgrace to German “superior race” philosophy, like a virus or bacillus that had to be thrown out of the system as soon as possible. The problem is they don’t know their hiding position. The Obersturmfьrer (a some kind of higher rang commander title) is making a lot of pressure on Joseph, because he knows his sister joined the partisans and he believes his father should know where his daughter and grandson are hiding, he expects Joseph to find this out from his father. Joseph knows his father doesn’t have a clue where Elza and her son are (he is also desperately trying to locate them, he terribly misses his grandson), and even if he knew he would never tell him (he is horrified with a monster his son has became since he put Nazi uniform on), that’s when he comes up with a “brilliant” idea. He somehow guesses where partisan vanguard is. A perfect vanguard is a house standing on an important crossroads. This house belongs to an old village “witch” called Marijana. Of course she is not a real witch, but just a bitter old (but good in a heart) lady that lives in a hut and makes a living by selling her unusual herbal products (this is probably why the superficial and primitive villagers call her a witch) on a stall right on the crossroads.

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This is a perfect spot to oversee all German actions and to supervise throughput of so many important information. She stood on the side of the partisans yet in the beginning of the war and she became their spy. Joseph somehow saw through this paravan and he decided to use her to find E.T. partisan squad. He provokes her sympathy by weeping and regretting all monstrous deeds he committed, he confounds to her how they (his superiors) want him to hand them his sister and how desperate he is because he could never hurt his sister and that innocent child (of course, all of this is just an act). In this “desperate” state he tells her that Nazis know where partisans are hiding and that they are planning on attacking them in the mourning. Mariana let her self believe this convincing Joseph’s bluff and as soon as he walked out of her sight she sends a messenger with a note about the Nazi attack in to the woods. This was exactly what Joseph was hopping her to do so he fallows the messenger and reviles partisan position to his superiors. In less then an hover a terrible battle occurred in which partisans ware highly outnumbered and they all died in a fight. The tragic fact is that in this partisan cam there ware not only soldiers, but also a lots of women, children and old people hiding from the Nazis among which Elza and her son. These people started running when they realized they ware under attack. Their only getaway chance was to cross the river in boats. Many of them died and drowned in that river, but we don’t see what happens with Elza and her son. Maybe the next episode will reveal this misery… Mariana, the witch, soon realizes what happened and that she was to blame for the death of so many people. Incompetent to carry this burden, she hangs her self before the evening. Josephs father leaded by the tank fire comes to the battle scene in the end, when all partisans ware already dead. He hides in the corm field and overhears a conversation between senior officers and Joseph in which they are congratulating him on successful mission. When they leave he comes out and just stands there terrified with the sight (dead people and body parts are just lying all around him) and the thought that his son was the one who caused all of this. Decisive to give these men ad least a little dignity that they had more then deserved he spends a whole night bearing them in agony. In the dawn he goes in to church and asks god for help and understanding for what he’s about to do. Namely, he decides that his son needs to be stopped before he does something like this again, and he, as his father, felt an obligation to stop him. When he steps in Josephs room with a machinegun he sees a sight that shocks him; his son, a fiancй and Obersturmfьrer lying in the same bed half-naked, dead drunk and exhausted from the whole night celebrating the great victory. He kills all three of them and then, in desperation he digs his eyes out.

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After a three-day march through a deep snow, Iva’s superiors decided that their squad should rest for one night in some old abounded building that they came across. We can see an interesting dialog between Iva and Brko (This is probably a nickname because he has sticking mustache - it means “a men with mustache” but in a funny, satiric way). I think Brko is Iva’s superior (but I’m not completely sure, he could be just his fellow solder), he was the one that executed (and even seam to enjoy that) those two young ustastas in last episode without a fair trial that Iva demanded. In the end while most of the partisans ware sleeping ustasas attacked them from an ambush. The last scene in the episode is a quick execution a dozen partisan solders that ware captured by ustasas. We will obviously have to wait till the next episode to find out what happened with Iva.

Morana

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