This recent Russian film is sort of a prequel to The Twelve Chairs.
The film is set in 1919. A young idealist named Osip ran into a Turkish swindler, Ibrahim Bender, who, like Osip, hunts for a royal relic. Osip learns from Ibrahim flattery, deception, blackmail and brute force, falls in love with a fatal beautiful foreigner and becomes the legendary Ostap Bender.
Ostap Bender is a fictional con man and the antihero central to the novels The Twelve Chairs (1928) and The Little Golden Calf (1931) written by the noted Soviet writing team of Ilf and Petrov. The character is so popular that he has inspired a minor cult, somewhat akin to Sherlock Holmes in that he has inspired not only several films and TV shows, but also pop artifacts and even statues.
(Mel Brooks made an English version of The Twelve Chairs starring Frank Langella as Bender. Although not as popular as some other Brooks comedies, it received four stars each from Siskel and Ebert.)
Excellent scene
Film clip here. Long scene, large download.
OK, comments are acting weird – it says 3 comments, it displays none. So I may be repeating, but I’m sure everyone’s thinking: “How do you say ‘Bite my shiny metal ass!’ in Russian?
I *maybe* have seen some recent weird behaviour too. There have been two instances where I was replying to a particular comment in a thread, but it just booted my post down to the very bottom, as if I was just replying to the thread in general rather than to a particular comment. I am not absolutely certain though that I did not make a mistake in each case, so I can’t be sure. I will keep an eye on it.
On a related note, is there any way to correct a post once made?