NB! · Cinema · Pop Culture

Poster for the film “Star Wars: Episode I”, 1999

A rider in a yellow robe and cap on a black horse, with a man in an orange robe standing beside him against a white wall.

NB! · Faith · The East · Art · Ethnography

Kalmyk lama in an 1870 painting by Vasily Vereshchagin

Kalmyk Lama. Painting by Vasily Vereshchagin, 1870

Cinema · Paris · People · Pop Culture

Catherine Deneuve and her elder sister Françoise Dorléac on the Place Vendôme, 1965

Catherine Deneuve and her elder sister Françoise Dorléac on the Place Vendôme, 1965. Françoise Dorléac appeared alongside Deneuve in Jacques Demy's musical The Young Girls of Rochefort and in the film Where the Spies Are. Françoise was 18 months older than Catherine. Françoise Dorléac was a very well-

Cinema · Observations · Pop Culture · Saint Petersburg

I watched the new Major Grom: what is the film actually about?

In the first film, the protagonist, Igor Grom, an officer of the Saint Petersburg police, appears as a veritable Russian superman without any evident weaknesses or, as critics noted, motivation. One is left with the impression that people endowed by nature with incredible willpower and a sense of justice invariably

Geography · Observations · Science · Nature

The history of Canis Major and Sirius, from bow and arrow to the hound Lelaps

Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky, but in fact it can be seen in the daytime sky too, if you know where to look. It is also known as the Dog Star, or Alpha Canis Majoris, for its reliability, constancy and unrivalled ability to help people find

Black-and-white photograph of a man in round glasses and a dark suit seated in an armchair in front of a blackboard.

Observations · Science · People

Kurt Gödel on his conviction in life after death and a rationally constructed world

I am convinced of an afterlife, independently of theology. If the world is constructed rationally, there must be an afterlife. The Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel (1906-1978)

Art · People · Society Pages · Humour

Vladey has opened a delightful exhibition to mark Pavel Pepperstein's joining the glittering Pleiad of painters of feasts and bards of the banquet table

The exhibition is called "Dinners", and every work depicts a dinner that might have taken place in the various halls and museums of contemporary art. Among the guests at these dinners one can make out Vladimir Lenin and Kazimir Malevich; Yayoi Kusama, whom the artist has surrealistically flattered

Detail of a painting on grey ground: four figures with large blue, red and orange hair; below, the inscription “Dinner for philosophers… Halle, 1922” with a Russian translation.

NB!

Painting “Dinner for Philosophers-Collectors,” Halle, 1922: figures with colourful hair

NB! · Archive · People · Pop Culture

Charles Aznavour's Selfie

An elderly man in white vestments and a white skullcap drinks beer from a glass mug, beside a person in black holding another mug.

Faith · People · Humour

Saint Albert the Great on wine, milk and beer as both food and drink

Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022) and a Mug of Beer. As Saint Albert the Great once said, wine, milk and beer are both food and drink

Archive · Books · Moscow · Observations · Education · Humour

“Boris Godunov” from Academia as a gift to a delegate of a trade union conference in 1936

They really knew how to give presents in those days. A dedicatory inscription to a Delegate of the first district trade-union conference of the union of primary and secondary school workers of the RSFSR, 22 September 1936, from the Krasnogvardeisky District Committee of the city of Moscow. And on

Coming Up · Books · Moscow · Science

Book presentation, lectures and seminars from 22 to 28 May in Moscow and Saint Petersburg

On Wednesdays, as is our custom, I share a selection of intellectual events for the coming week. 🧩22 May at 18:00 Presentation of F. Holt's book «When Money Talks: A History of Coins and Numismatics from Antiquity to Pop Culture» at the State Public Historical Library of

Alexandr Radayev