New Russian war film "White Tiger"

[fantail]

Lots of T34s, looks interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZnKZcGtHNlY

[itchy]

just reading about this , looks good but its a fantasy story rather than historical but still loads of tank action .

http://russiaprofile.org/film_reviews/60237.html

[Onebigriver]

Any new film about the Eastern Front is welcome, but must confess I'm not sure about this "talking to tanks" business. 

[Helen]

Thanks for the news, looks interesting.

Cheers,

Helen

[answer_is_42]

That dubbing is phenomenal.

[Sterling Moose]

That dubbing is phenomenal.

 

[Sarmor]

Watched it today.

First of all, I think this topic should be in the Weird War board. The movie has more to do with fantasy than history - think early Weird War Tales comics, with supernatural themes, but no monsters/super science/Nazi zombies.

That being said, I have enjoyed it very much. It's definitely amongst my top weird war movies (not that I have seen many of them...).
What I liked:
- the story,
- the visuals,
- the characters - they might lack depth (especially that the main protagonist is amnesiac), but they fit in the film,
- Soviet tank porn! 

What I disliked:
- unnecessary scenes (at least two, both at the end - the dinner scene and the ending monologue),
- minor historical issues, e.g. all tank rounds explode, main character's T-34 is crewed only by 3 men etc. - these can be ignored if you treat the film as fantasy,
- the White Tiger - it's made on the basis of an IS-2, and while it doesn't resemble it anymore (apart from the wheels, which are hardly visible), it doesn't resemble a Tiger either.

[Predatorpt]

The story of the Tiger replica is a sad one. Here's what I read in a forum (from a Russian source):

Well as i understand the idea from the beginning was to have two different Tigers - one correct model and one "fantasy vehicle"(White Tiger), transformed one into another as the main hero goes crazy after surviving his unit destruction in the battle. The correct model is discussed here, "fantasy" one was built on Is-2 (or 3) and looks more like Porsche Tiger. They have to have some similar features (note towing brackets on “correct” Tiger – they are so big to be similar to White Tiger’s one, covering Is towing hooks).
Film produces failed to arrange correct timing and when correct Tiger was ready - the summer time was gone, so there were impossible to shoot summer battles. More over, they droped the model from about 2 meters when offloading it at the studio location, resulting in some damage and additional time to fix it. So they re-arranged the plot to make correct vehicle unnecessary.

So, instead of this beautiful one:



Made from scratch

http://infinity63.com/voennaya-texnika/tank-tigr.html

We ended up with this  conversion based on a IS-2 (like  Sarmor) said:

[Slayer]

looks tragic imo

[cuprum]

The film and the story copy "Tiger has been discussed recently in the LAF:

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=35798.45

Here is a replica of the tank action, which unfortunately was not included in the film:

[Sarmor]

Now that replica looks great!
I read about it earlier and I've been wondering why it wasn't used in the movie... Thanks for the explanation, Predatorpt!

[Tacgnol]

This looks right up my alley. The metaphysical aspects are pretty intriguing.

[cuprum]

This is not the only workshop producing replicas in Russia.
We have a village near Novosibirsk was one person, Vyacheslav Verevochkin. It is made up of military equipment on a scale of 1:1. He has produced more than forty working models.! Here are three TV reports about him:

http://www.newstube.ru/media/ozv-syuzhet-gur'yanovoj-novosibirskaya-oblast'-tanki-bronevik-voennye-vezdexody-pushki-i-minomet-v?timeshift=84.97

http://www.1tv.ru/news/world/23405

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3qlQYgfexvY#at=59

Unfortunately, he died recently. What will happen to his collection - is unknown. Most likely it will get scrapped.