Michael Idov

5 days ago | nytimes.com | Michael Idov

The Trump administration's decision to take a hammer to the funding for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty might be legally dubious, but politically pretty safe: Its programming wasn't intended to reach American audiences, so who would miss it, really?

5 days ago | airmail.news | Michael Idov

Being an R.E.M. fan is like being orphaned in the nicest way possible. The band’s members are alive and well and still friendly with each other, but since its breakup, in 2011—in what must rank as the most amicable dissolution in the history of rock—a full-scale reunion has never been on the table. Nature, however, abhors a vacuum, and the band’s devotees have had some unexpected options lately.

1 month ago | businessandamerica.com | Michael Idov

On the other hand, since the start of the war, hundreds if not thousands of other Russian film and theater actors have found the courage to speak out against President Vladimir Putin of Russia and left the country. Given how tightly the acting profession is tied to one’s command of the language, for most of them the move meant sacrificing their careers in the name of principle. A select few have found occasional employment in the West.

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Michael Idov

"Anora" is my favorite film of 2024. It's brutal, hilarious, alive with a wild kinetic energy that feels like the essence of cinema itself. It's up for six Oscars, including Best Picture, and deservedly so. While most Hollywood movies don't care enough about Eastern European characters to even get the names right, the film's director, Sean Baker, went to the trouble of filling it with authentic native dialogue and casting actual Russian celebrity actors.

Nov 19, 2024 | gq.com | Michael Idov

Back in 2022, when I sat down to write my first spy thriller, The Collaborators, I knew two mutually exclusive things: that I wanted it to be as modern and realistic as possible; and that I wouldn’t be able to set it in the present. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I reckoned, had upended the world order to such an extent that any attempt to capture the global “now” would be outdated in a month. Little did I know. Reading a good spy novel should be not unlike solving a chess problem.