The author Dmitry Bykov wrote an article in Ogonyok last week arguing that there aren't any Russian sex symbols, only Hollywood ones. This was a touch harsh, I think, especially since the writer and his shorts recently starred in a Moskovsky Komsomolets gossip column.
Bykov just won the Big Book literary prize for his biography of Boris Pasternak, but he's also a populist figure who appears on television and radio shows, and probably isn't above flicking through Seven Days magazine. So I can only blame the months spent on Pasternak for his shocking ignorance about Scarlett Johansson's love life: Jared Leto was so 2005.
By "sex symbols," Bykov means actors, and he goes through the possible candidates, discarding them one by one. He says Konstantin Khabensky wastes his talent in the "Night Watch" films -- not even mentioning the ears -- while Oleg Menshikov just looks tired all the time, and tough-guy Vladimir Mashkov was far hotter back in the early 1990s.
Arguing about sex symbols in Russia is pretty pointless, though, as I realized this week when I read that 74 percent of Muscovites questioned by My Plyus magazine preferred Pierce Brosnan to Daniel Craig. Of course, it doesn't help that the title of the latest Bond film means "Casino Grand Piano" in Russian, but still, I fear for the nation's sanity.
Judging from my less scientific surveys, Russia's main sex symbols seem to be people like Andrei Malakhov and Dima Bilan, and even, God help us, Nikolai Baskov. In other words, you can never wear too much fake tan or be too blow-dried. Which I suppose explains why Brosnan goes down well.
Unfortunately, Bykov doesn't dip his toe into the Bond debate. But then again, if he doesn't know that Johansson has been going out with Josh Hartnett and they've put extra sound insulation in their bedroom, then he has got a lot of Seven Days to catch up on.
I certainly hope that Bykov saw Johansson's swimsuit scene in "Scoop," since he writes lovingly of her vital statistics. He's not so keen on Russian actresses. The only one he sees as a potential sex symbol is Chulpan Khamatova, but he says that she's unconvincing in love scenes. It's an unfair comparison, though, since her period dramas don't give the same opportunities to wear Lycra.
It seems pretty unbelievable that Bykov can't think of any other female sex symbols. I mean, have the girl groups Blestyashchiye and VIA Gra been living in vain? I used to get the two groups mixed up, but not any more, since Komsomolskaya Pravda pointed out that -- perhaps counterintuitively -- Blestyashchiye has breasts, while VIA Gra has legs.
Bykov himself isn't exactly a traditional sex symbol, but I warmed to him in September when Moskovsky Komsomolets gave him a massive dressing-down for, well, dressing down. He turned up at a film premiere wearing what was admittedly a rather eccentric outfit: fishing vest over bare torso, denim cut-offs and those sandals with T-bars that you had to wear in primary school.
True, the author isn't slim enough to throw this lot together in a Kate Moss sort of way -- he is quite a large man -- but MK went after him in the manner of a babushka on a trolleybus scolding someone with wet hair or an incorrectly tied scarf.
"The audience couldn't look at the screen or at Dmitry Bykov without tears," a society columnist wrote sniffily, zooming in on his dirty toenails. The tabloid also runs a weekly fashion-police feature, but its two arbiters refused to assess Bykov, presumably fearing that he might pollute their finely tuned palates.
In any case, they would definitely have given him two scowls, their lowest mark. But I think he would have taken that as a compliment.
Bykov just won the Big Book literary prize for his biography of Boris Pasternak, but he's also a populist figure who appears on television and radio shows, and probably isn't above flicking through Seven Days magazine. So I can only blame the months spent on Pasternak for his shocking ignorance about Scarlett Johansson's love life: Jared Leto was so 2005.
By "sex symbols," Bykov means actors, and he goes through the possible candidates, discarding them one by one. He says Konstantin Khabensky wastes his talent in the "Night Watch" films -- not even mentioning the ears -- while Oleg Menshikov just looks tired all the time, and tough-guy Vladimir Mashkov was far hotter back in the early 1990s.
Arguing about sex symbols in Russia is pretty pointless, though, as I realized this week when I read that 74 percent of Muscovites questioned by My Plyus magazine preferred Pierce Brosnan to Daniel Craig. Of course, it doesn't help that the title of the latest Bond film means "Casino Grand Piano" in Russian, but still, I fear for the nation's sanity.
Judging from my less scientific surveys, Russia's main sex symbols seem to be people like Andrei Malakhov and Dima Bilan, and even, God help us, Nikolai Baskov. In other words, you can never wear too much fake tan or be too blow-dried. Which I suppose explains why Brosnan goes down well.
Unfortunately, Bykov doesn't dip his toe into the Bond debate. But then again, if he doesn't know that Johansson has been going out with Josh Hartnett and they've put extra sound insulation in their bedroom, then he has got a lot of Seven Days to catch up on.
I certainly hope that Bykov saw Johansson's swimsuit scene in "Scoop," since he writes lovingly of her vital statistics. He's not so keen on Russian actresses. The only one he sees as a potential sex symbol is Chulpan Khamatova, but he says that she's unconvincing in love scenes. It's an unfair comparison, though, since her period dramas don't give the same opportunities to wear Lycra.
It seems pretty unbelievable that Bykov can't think of any other female sex symbols. I mean, have the girl groups Blestyashchiye and VIA Gra been living in vain? I used to get the two groups mixed up, but not any more, since Komsomolskaya Pravda pointed out that -- perhaps counterintuitively -- Blestyashchiye has breasts, while VIA Gra has legs.
Bykov himself isn't exactly a traditional sex symbol, but I warmed to him in September when Moskovsky Komsomolets gave him a massive dressing-down for, well, dressing down. He turned up at a film premiere wearing what was admittedly a rather eccentric outfit: fishing vest over bare torso, denim cut-offs and those sandals with T-bars that you had to wear in primary school.
True, the author isn't slim enough to throw this lot together in a Kate Moss sort of way -- he is quite a large man -- but MK went after him in the manner of a babushka on a trolleybus scolding someone with wet hair or an incorrectly tied scarf.
"The audience couldn't look at the screen or at Dmitry Bykov without tears," a society columnist wrote sniffily, zooming in on his dirty toenails. The tabloid also runs a weekly fashion-police feature, but its two arbiters refused to assess Bykov, presumably fearing that he might pollute their finely tuned palates.
In any case, they would definitely have given him two scowls, their lowest mark. But I think he would have taken that as a compliment.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home