December 23, 2020

Best Shows of This (We Think?) Year


Best Shows of This (We Think?) Year

With the end of the year comes a time to review what went well and what was popular in 2020. Yet, according to VTsIOM, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, the majority of Russian viewers were not able to decide what was 2020's best film. Instead, they name films that debuted the previous year.

VTsIOM conducted a telephone poll with over 1,600 participants over the age of 18 in November-December of this year, and 71% of respondents found difficulty answering the question.

The movies voted best for this year were ones that were released in 2019: the comedy film SerfХолоп»), the military action film T-34, and Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen. Some respondents even selected the sports film Going VerticalДвижение вверх»), which was released in 2017. The poll also surveyed popular TV shows; the most popular, according to a plurality of six percent of respondents, was The Dog («Пёс»), followed by Secrets of Investigation («Тайны следствия»), Grozny («Грозный»), and Trace («След»), which each received three percent.

Tags: film
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Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 

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