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Rustam Ibragimbekov, the renowned Soviet-era writer behind films including 1994 Oscar winner Burnt by the Sun and the 1970 classic White Sun of the Desert, died in Moscow on Friday, according to multiple reports. He was 83.

Born in Baku, Azerbaijan Ssr on February 5th 1939, Ibragimbekov penned more than 50 films throughout his career, including Guard Me, My Talisman (1986), Close to Eden (1991), The Barber of Siberia (1998), East/West (1999), Broken Bridges (1999) and Nomad: The Warrior (2005), breaking out with the action-comedy White Sun of the Desert, which he and Valentin Ezhov wrote for director Vladimir Motyl.

He co-wrote the historical drama Burnt by the Sun with director Nikita Mikhalkov and watched that film claim the Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prix on its path to the Oscars.

Ibragimbekov was also a director, producer and playwright who helmed the films Aila (1998), Telefon doveriya (2001) and A Trap for the Ghost, (2011), along with a segment of 1977’s Günlarin bir günü.

MOSCOW -- Nikita Mikhalkov, president of the Moscow Film Festival and one of Russia's best-known directors, will play the part of a gangland boss in a new film by director Alexsei Balabanov, Mikhalkov's production studio Tri-T said Wednesday. Mikhalkov -- who last appeared onscreen in the 1998 Julia Ormond starrer "The Barber of Siberia" -- will play mafia boss Sergei Mikhailovich in "Zhmurki" (Blind Man's Buff), produced by award-winning producer Sergei Selyanov's company STV. Shot at Moscow's Gorky Film Studios by Balabanov -- whose credits include such Russian boxoffice hits as gangster movie "Brat" (Brother) and Chechen war drama "Vojna" (War) -- the film, billed as a madcap comedy, is due for release in Russia in early June. Set in the 1990s during Russia's wild post-Soviet days, the movie stars many of Russia's most popular young actors, including Alexei Panin and well-established names such as Viktor Sukhorukov and singer Garik Sukachev.

Chiseled down to three hours, and suffering badly in the process from super-fast storytelling, Hungarian auteur Istvan Szabo's "Sunshine" started as a 600-page first draft and still feels like three movies crammed into one. And, unfortunately, all three star Ralph Fiennes as hardheaded womanizers of the same Jewish Hungarian family, trying to survive periods of personal and societal strife during the past 100-plus years.

What sunshine there is in this Paramount Classics release -- the title refers to the family name as well as to the source of the family fortune, a healing tonic with a secret formula -- occurs early on, with the steady march of events including World War I, World War II and the Cold War. Intriguing in the way it presents unsympathetic but realistic individuals who struggle with their inner demons as much as the terrifying bludgeons of history's bad guys, the film finally exhausts one with themes, characters and shifting political and cultural details that go whizzing by faster and faster.

Like Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov, Szabo has had a long career that includes an Oscar winner ("Mephisto"). But also like Mikhalkov, whose disastrous 1999 Cannes opener "Barber of Siberia" still hasn't been distributed in the United States, Szabo in his most monumental film made hugely disastrous casting decisions. He also shot the film in English, which certainly makes following the endless procession of dialogue-driven scenes a breeze but doesn't do much to overcome the project's many other shortcomings.

The story of the Sonnenschein family starts with a bang in the mid-1800s as the father of young Emmanuel David De Keyser) blows himself to bits in an accident, but the recipe book for the family's "Taste of Sunshine" herbal tonic is spared. Emmanuel treks to Budapest, makes a small fortune and raises a family with Rose (Miriam Margolyes) while holding on to his religious convictions and customs. They have two sons, Ignatz (Fiennes) and Gustave (James Frain in the early goings-on).

Reared during the height of the Austro-Hungarian empire, lawyer Ignatz is loyal to his country and longs to assimilate into the mainstream culture.

Gustave becomes a revolutionary, disgusted with monarchies and corruption. Both are in love with orphan girl Valerie (Jennifer Ehle), raised with them as their sister. She and Ignatz are destined for each other despite objections from various parties. This is the movie's lightest, most entertaining stretch, but, like everything in "Sunshine", it's over fast.

Indeed, as Ignatz goes through World War I and Hungary's brief communist period shortly thereafter, he doesn't change much except the family name (to the non-Jewish Sors). He loses Valerie to Gustave and later dies without much fuss. The focus shifts to Ignatz and Valerie's two sons, Adam (Fiennes) and Istvan (Mark Strong). A talented swordsman, Adam marries sweet, grounded Hannah (Molly Parker), but he's hotly pursued by Istvan's wife, Greta (Rachel Weisz).

This central portion of "Sunshine" chronicles the rise of fascism and Adam's heroic but tragic attempts to assimilate into the restricted world of professional fencing, which results in him becoming the national champion as he seriously shies away from his Jewish heritage. Between competitions and unsuccessfully fending off Greta, Adam becomes a father with Hannah, but all become vulnerable in the hateful climate before and during World War II. Adam and his son Ivan are sent to a concentration camp, where the shattered but defiant man is horrifically made an example of while the boy is forced to watch.

Most of the rest of the family dies offscreen during World War II, leaving aging Valerie and Gustave (now played by Rosemary Harris and John Neville) to welcome back haunted Ivan (Fiennes). The final section chronicles Ivan's crusade to wreak revenge against the fascists, until he sees the communist regime as just another totalitarian nightmare. Meanwhile, he bonds with his doomed boss (William Hurt) and has a risky affair with a powerful party official's philandering wife Deborah Kara Unger).

By casting Fiennes in the three roles, Szabo asks too much of his actor and the audience, particularly when the rapid pacing results in all the performers rushing through scenes. Managing some aspects better than others in a performance of unquestionably rigorous effort, Fiennes is very busy with the repetitive nature of the love stories. The frenzied seductions are not nearly arousing enough.

"Sunshine" is a history lesson poorly illustrated by overblown dramatics and with only a few sequences that take the time to believably build up tension and provide unforeseen payoffs.

SUNSHINE

Paramount Classics

Alliance Atlantis and Serendipity Films

in association with Kinowelt

A Robert Lantos production

Director: Istvan Szabo

Screenwriters: Istvan Szabo, Israel Horovitz

Producers: Robert Lantos, Andras Hamori

Executive producers: Rainer Kolmel,

Jonathan Debin

Director of photography: Lajos Koltai

Production designer: Attila F. Kovacs

Editors: Michel Arcand, Dominique Fortin

Costume designer: Gyorgi Szakacs

Music: Maurice Jarre

Color/stereo

Cast:

Ignatz, Adam, Ivan: Ralph Fiennes

Older Valerie: Rosemary Harris

Greta: Rachel Weisz

Young Valerie: Jennifer Ehle

Hannah: Molly Parker

Carola: Deborah Kara Unger

Rose: Miriam Margolyes

Young Gustave: James Frain

Older Gustave: John Neville

Emmanuel Sonnenschein: David De Keyser

Running time -- 180 minutes

MPAA rating: R...

Just as the lead character named Tolstoy suffers a little whenever he must own up to not being related to the famous Russian novelist, "The Barber of Siberia" is a sprawling, period epic that suffers in comparison to its rich cinematic and literary heritage. Prospects for a major American distribution deal are dim.

The much-anticipated opening film of the 52nd Cannes International Film Festival, and the first feature from director Nikita Mikhalkov since his Oscar-winning "Burnt by the Sun", "Barber" is ostensibly a love story, but not a very complex or compelling one. At nearly three hours, the mostly English-language film indulges in long sequences of Slavic-style comedy that don't necessarily further the story of an enigmatic American woman's love affair with a charismatic Russian army cadet.

Although she confidently attacks the role, Julia Ormond is allowed to indulge in far too many contemporary nuances in her performance as Jane, a lone woman in Czarist Russia circa 1885 on a mission to help desperate inventor McCracken (Richard Harris) secure funds to finish creating a steam-driven forest-harvesting machine, which he hopes will make him rich. Like most of the cast, she tries to keep the energy level high, but one never feels very connected to her character and rarely laughs with the bemused outsider at her zany hosts.

Oleg Menshikov as Cadet Tolstoy, on the other hand, is terrific as the passionate young man who meets Jane on the train to Moscow. They share some champagne in her compartment and a few laughs as his comrades fumble about. Later, they are both on the street in Moscow when mysterious shooters in black assassinate an official. In one of the film's best scenes, Tolstoy shows he's not the best soldier-in-the-making when he lets one of the assassins go free.

Jane visits McCracken's workshop and watches the old coot almost destroy his invention in one of many comic scenes that fall flat. The plan is for Jane to butter up one Gen. Radkov (Alexey Petrenko) in order to gain access to the grand duke -- a source of completion funds, if you will, for McCracken's tree "barber." Open, aggressive, a smoker and seemingly free to wed, Jane succeeds in charming Radkov, but Tolstoy is thoroughly smitten and obviously a much better match despite his lackluster social status.

From cadets polishing a dance floor to outdoor festivals with vodka-drinking bears to a climactic performance of "The Marriage of Figaro", there are some entertaining moments, but the pacing often slows to a crawl, and the framing device of the story -- Ormond's character revealing to her American Army recruit son his origins -- has weak ongoing gags involving gas masks and crude insults aimed at Mozart.

At one point, Tolstoy risks everything to fight a duel over Jane's honor. But he goes even further down the road to ruin when he becomes convinced she's playing all the angles, which she is. Still, he proposes to her, barely beating Radkov to the punch. She is then forced to reveal that she's not who she seems to be -- certainly not McCracken's daughter, as she claimed -- and relates a horrible fact about her past.

Eventually, as in seemingly all Russian love stories of this size and breadth, the lovers are separated -- he's sent off to prison for attacking Radkov in a jealous fit, and she goes back to the States. Ten years later, she accompanies McCracken to Siberia for a test of his machine and goes searching for Tolstoy, who settled there after serving his sentence.

While visually the film has some nice touches, with Mikhalkov working in widescreen for the first time, the overused narration of Ormond's character doesn't wait for one to absorb the story visually. Time and location titles are also employed needlessly, accentuating the overall stodgy feeling to the storytelling. The director has a splendid cameo as Emperor Alexander III, but Harris is disappointing as the mad inventor -- except for a shot of his character yelling on top of a train steaming through the forests in one of this film's rare transcendent moments, the kind one expects a lot more of from Mikhalkov.

THE BARBER OF SIBERIA

Camera One, ThreeProds.,

France 2 Cinema, Medusa, Barrandov Biografia

Michel Seydoux presents

In association with Intermedia Films

Director: Nikita Mikhalkov

Screenwriters: Rustam Ibragimbekov, Nikita Mikhalkov

Producer: Michel Sedoux

Executive producer: Leonid Vereschagin

Cinematographer: Pavel Lebeshev

Production designer: Vladimir Aronin

Editor: Enzo Meniconi

Costume designers: Natacha Ivanova, Sergey Struchev

Music: Edward Nicolay Artemyev

Color/stereo

Cast:

Jane: Julia Ormond

Tolstoy: Oleg Menshikov

McCracken: Richard Harris

Radkov: Alexey Petrenko

Running time -- 176 minutes

MPAA rating:...