All-inclusive Randomness

This is not a review (but I’m pretty sure I liked the movie a lot). This is about how they fooled me. While watching the movie, I kept thinking, hmm, the Ukraine is so beautiful. Wow, it looks just like Slovakia. I absolutely have to go visit! I even made preliminary dream travel plans to check out Uzhorod, and Kiev, and Odessa and some obscure places in addition to that. Well, no wonder I felt such emotional connection to the film’s landscape — IT WAS FILMED AROUND PRAGUE (yes, prague is not in Slovakia, but I claim it as part of my “motherland” anyways).

First I was mad. But here’s their reasoning:

Although the filmmakers had initially scouted the Ukraine, they decided to film in and around Prague. Says Schreiber, “The Ukraine was beautiful and a wonderful place to shoot, but there just weren’t the back up resources. I was lucky enough to have shot a film in Prague as an actor and had become great friends with Matthew Stillman who runs Stillking, one of Prague’s best production companies. I sent him the script and he was convinced we could shoot it there. He invited us to Prague and when I saw the locations I realized they were not only a perfect match for the Ukrainian countryside, but they were also really beautiful.”

Also, another thing that became illuminated while looking into this issue: the reason why I liked the cinematography of the movie a lot is because it was done by Matthew Libatique of Requiem for a Dream (as well as Phone Booth and Pi and I’m sure many other things).