My parents finally got a copy of the "Master and Margarita" mini-series on DVD, and over the last couple of weeks I've been trying to sit through it. I think I've now seen most of the first half. I can't be bothered with a proper review, but I have one rhetorical question:
How is it possible that this brilliant, witty, sparkling, scary book has been turned into something so boring?
Not only does everyone sound like their day job is in the mafia, but it's incredibly badly directed and edited -- scenes start too early and end too late (in other words, uncinematic editing), poor lighting, bad camerawork... For example, the facade of the Varietes is obviously "cardboard" -- nothing wrong with that, but why film it from an angle and make it so obvious? Not that this is important, but these things contribute to the sense of watching a very poor production.
But perhaps the thing that irritated me most of all was the use of sepia/black-and-white for the regular Moscow scenes. I realise there is a theory that the "real" story is the book-within-the-book, but must it be forced on the viewer through such crude means? The book relies on the Moscow scenes for most of the dynamism and humour, and it is those scenes that are supposed to hit us hard. They are not supposed to look outdated. When we see black-and-white, we think "this is in the past, it does not apply to me". And that defeats the entire point.