In brief - t.A.T.u. ‘were offered to buy’ Eurovision victory

Yelena Katina, who is one half of the pop duo t.A.T.u. - one of Russia's most successful export acts of the 2000s - said the duo was made a proposition to pay for winning the Eurovision Song Contest back in 2003. "We were offered to buy the first place," she told RIA Novosti. "But we refused because it's talent that should win." t.A.T.u. ended up in third place, still an impressive achievement compared with most other Russian contestants before that time. This year, Russia is to host the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time, thanks to last year's victory by Dima Bilan.

‘Brest Fortress' going ahead despite crisis

The film "Brestskaya Krepost" ("Brest Fortress"), an ambitious co-production between Russia and Belarus, will be completed by the end of this year despite the economic crunch and problems with finalizing its script, Igor Ugolnikov, the movie's general producer, told RIA Novosti. According to Ugolnikov, who is also head of the broadcasting organization of the union state of Russia and Belarus, the shooting was postponed from 2008 to 2009 as the finalizing of the script took more time than originally expected. "Brest Fortress" is the first movie "commissioned" by the state since the collapse of the Soviet Union and completely financed from the two countries' state budgets. The movie's budget of 225 million rubles has lost almost a third of its dollar value due to the recent devaluation of the ruble, from $9 million last year to $6.5 million at this point.

An ‘alternative' textbook on Russian literature

St. Petersburg-based Limbus Press is preparing a textbook on 19th and 20th century Russian literature for high school students, in which contemporary authors express their opinions about literary works included in the high school curriculum. "This textbook is meant to complement rather than replace existing high school textbooks," Vadim Levental, an editor at Limbus and the author of the idea, told RIA Novosti. He added that it would contain articles on about 40 authors, and stressed that the publisher deliberately avoided authors who could express "controversial" or "extremist" views. "An adult would read [Vladimir] Sorokin and would be fine, but a high school student has to read a lot before they should find out what Sorokin thinks, for instance, about Pushkin," Levental said.

William Turner exhibition ‘taken by storm'

The exhibition of works by British painter William Turner from the collection of the Tate Britain gallery, which recently came to a close at Moscow's Pushkin Museum for Fine Arts, was so popular that people "took it by storm," said museum director Irina Antonova, RIA Novosti reported. According to Antonova, the exhibit included about 130 paintings, and 200,000 people, mostly under 35 years old, attended it during the three months it was open. Responding to the large numbers of people who wanted to visit during its final days, the museum extended the hours, closing at 9 pm instead of 6 pm. The museum plans to continue cooperation with Tate Britain with an exhibition of works by the Pre-Raphaelites in a few years.
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