MOVIE OF THE WEEKEND: THE SCARLET EMPRESS! Coming to Astoria's Museum of the Moving Image on September 30 and October 1, 2006: the Josef von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich film The Scarlet Empress (1934).

The synopsis says "This sexually and politically charged chronicle of Russia’s Catherine the Great was Sternberg’s most opulent film. Marlene Dietrich’s seven-year-old daughter Maria plays the young Catherine."

That hardly captures the through-the-looking-glass bizarreness of The Scarlet Empress, which is full of production details that can best be appreciated on a large screen. Highly recommended!