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I am feeling a little starry-eyed, after feasting on too many films at the Moscow International Film Festival. Stardom is not a new phenomenon – Hollywood has been manufacturing stars for nearly a century but if their price has gone up, their value has gone down. Take many a film star out of the limelight, and you might not blink at all. But there are some actors and actresses who have star appeal, on and off the set – Nicole Kidman is one of them, and also a new star in the making, Yelena Lyadova.
In our Star Interview Yelena tells us more about her part in the film Dreaming of Space (which had its premiere at the festival). She also talks to us about the acting business, and reminds us how cheap it was to live in the old USSR. Oh, and Donald Duck bubble gum, which I had forgotten about until she said that it was what she missed most about the ‘Good Old Days.’
If you want to know how much we like the film, you can read about it in our Film page.
Alexei Uchitel is the director and producer of Dreaming of Space, and I very much wanted to meet him to talk about his own film, and the film business in Russia. In Dinner with the Editor Alexei reveals the process of bringing a film into being.
The Moscow Riviera is not quite as well known as the French Riviera, but what it lacks in beaches, it makes up for in chic and the size of its boats. In our Leisure section we show you where to go for the best yacht clubs, and in our Shopping pages we have some ideas as to what to wear on deck.
Hopefully the greens will stay dry for the golf tournament in August. Golf is not as big as it is in the US; but our Sport pages show that with all the businessmen promoting and playing it, golf is set to become a popular game.
Our Business section looks at Serge Bakery, a new business in Moscow. If they sell the cakes as quickly as we ate them here in the office, the business will do well.
One makes the money so that one can enjoy it, and in Spending It we look at an expensive hobby, the sport of motorcycle racing.
Piers Gladstone said that he absolutely had to see for himself what Sochi was really like – was it really Russia’s own answer to Coney Island? Read his article in our Travel section and decide for yourself.
If you didn’t get to see the Gardening Week Exhibition, you can still see what you missed in our Gardening pages. We gave The Last Word to Robin Templar-Williams, not only because he created a very beautiful garden in the centre of Moscow in only 10 days, but also because his profession of landscape gardener is one with a long history in Russia. The very spot where he built “The Haven” was where the fashionable used to promenade two hundred years ago. Last week, the fashionable were still very much in evidence. It was as if the USSR had never been.
Jeremy Noble
Editor
jnoble@passportmagazine.ru | 
