more Turkish films

Again it has been sometime since my last update. But I think I'm getting better at this :)
So after Knockout Ali Last Ottoman I have watched two awful Turkish comedies in theaters.
One of them is
Maskeli Beşler:Irak (Masked Five:Iraq) Masked Five are five orphans who remain friends since their years at the state orphanage. These guys are incompetent, unattractive and stupid but their hearts are in the right place. So when they watch Iraq causing trouble at the petrol line, they decide to go to that particular pump area and take the US soldiers hostages and turn the tap on for the petrol line from Iraq to Turkey. Yeah this is like a fantasy comedy. And it was bad. The cast is all overacting side kick actors we get to know from TV series (one of them Peker Açıkalın, in the picture, became sort of the flavor of the month with his role in one of TV comedy series) and none of them really stand out. Obviously the majority of the budget went into explosion scenes (there are two). This film is yawn.

But the soundtrack was not bad.

The other bad film was called

Çılgın Dersane (Crazy Supplement School)
The Supplement School is to better prepare you for the "exam" - the nightmare of high school students.
Returning to this film, it is an American Pie wanna be only it is PG13 and there is only one female nipple on show. The story revolves around high school seniors(played by mid twenty actors and Shall We Dance reality show winners)who enroll to a supplement school whose promotion is giving lessons at a holiday resort. So we see girls in bikinis, guys in trunks and there are meaningless skit like events (which causes the film's trailer to be better than the film) and a lame-o romantic plot. Do yourselves a favor and stay out of this one. Rent American Pie, at least you'll laugh.





Here are the links to websites of each film if you want to watch trailers "fragman" is the word we use for them.

new films

I know I'm being tardy in my updates and this causes some long entries - which I really don't like much to read at other people's blogs. But I'll try to remedy that and also will try to add more on the "...and" part of the title which I thought could include anything Turkish related.





Now on to the films I saw





Son Osmanlı Yandım Ali (Last Ottoman Knockout Ali) This is an adaptation from an illustrated novel (which I haven't read) and it tells the story of a kind hearted, strong armed ex-marine trying to survive and fight back against the occupying forces when Istanbul was occupied (around 1918-1919) All this guy wants is to free his girlfriend from an arranged marriage and take her to Europe to be together free from the war and everything that it brings with. But while he is looking at the opportunity, he hooks up with an underground society that helps the soldiers who want to fight back against the enemy (in this case French, English, Greek and Italian).


Ali is a guy who had a good education, army experience and he is freakishly strong.



Here I will take time to explain a Turkish fighting technique to you. It can be translated as "Ottoman Slap" it relies on physical power and can knock a person out if applied correctly. Ali is very good at Ottoman Slapping.



Now returning back to the film, Ali meets Mustafa Kemal, a Turkish officer who is planning to get rid of the enemy by sneaking into Anatolia and fighting there. This man will lead the Indepence War and not only will chase the enemy out of our country but also will end the Ottoman Sultanate and make us a Republic. Yeah we are talking about Atatürk, the man every Turk admires and loves.



So this brief encounter has a great impact on Ali whose patriotic views are about to change.

This film was certainly not a good one but I had a ball with it. First of I like action films and there were plenty in this one. Also even though it was overacted and unnecessarily melodramatic the tempo was always high.



Ali is acted by one time best model, now a suprisingly decent Tv and film actor Kenan İmirzalıoğlu who is the reason this film is not unintentionally hillarious but kind of fun.

I took the picture from http://www.film.gen.tr .

The rest of the cast were overacting apart from Anna Babkova who plays Nadya a white Russian Ali got involved with during his adventures. Yep, he is both a lover and a fighter.

It is not a bad film per se but I doubt it will appeal to a non Turk. But it was well received here.

International

This is the title of the last Turkish film I have seen in theaters and I'm very very glad that I did.

Beynelmilel (lit.translation International)
This is one of those warm comedies that turn into melodrama towards the end but you can't help but be manipulated anyway becasue you have already invested lots of emotion in it.

We are at an East Anatolian town in the early 80's. The last military coup shook the country and everyone is trying to be on the good side of the army. In this town there are musicians earn money by playing at the weddings and arranging secret nightly entertainment of music and belly dancing - it is secret since there is a curfew and this type of activites are forbidden.

Unfortunately they are caught and the army thought of using them as an orchestra to play at the funerals and more importantly at the welcoming party of the top Military Council who are visiting in a couple of months.

The daughter of the chief musician is a girl just out of high school, dreams of winning the university exam, she is also head over heels in love with the younger brother of the owner of the photography shop. This guy is communist who is against the junta and since he is young and his blood is boiling, he wants to take action by protesting the Council's visit by playing "Entarnationale" the communist march at the welcome ceremony. Of course the girl is willing to help him.

This is a painful time for us Turks, I was a child then but I still remember many of the little things and how we were all affected. This films jogs a lot of memories and pulls us into this time period. All in all it has its faults but none in acting - a suprisingly solid cast without a weak link among them- with a cameo from one of the best liked folk singer/composers of the town, this film is recommended if you want to warm your heart.

Looks like it has been more than ten days since I last posted here. To return here makes me feel as if I have accomplished something, since I didn't abandon this blog like the other two.

There is nothing new in my life which makes me feel nice and warm. I guess change is not always good, especially when you are content with what you have.

New year is here but I find myself not getting excited over it, at all. This seems to be the new thing with me. Usually I'm the sort who jumps up and down with anticipation over even the smallest thing. But I know it will pass since thanks to internet I know that people go through this sort of mood from time to time.

Meanwhile I have seen a new Turkish film that was very good. And this is suprising because Turkish film industry seems to be producing more and more films without taking quality into consideration. Everyone is saying that the industry has come back to life but I agree with a newspaper article I have read today. It resembles this new boost with the Turkish pop boost in the beginning of the nineties. Everybody who can shout made an album those days and in the end nobody gained anything.
So it is suprising to see a horror film tackle an issue which really puts fear into a Turk who has been in the northwestern region of Turkey on 17 August 1999. That's when we had a really nasty earthquake resulting in many deaths and people who suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome. It was really a bad one since we had to get out of the house even though we were many kilometers away from the center of it.

So this brings us to

Small Apocalypse: Directed by Taylan Brothers (Durul and Yağmur Taylan) whose previous film was the decent Okul, strangely enough recommended to me by a cinema lover who is not Turkish.
This time we see a middle class Turkish family (mom dad, small girl and a baby boy) preparing to go on a summer holiday. In addition we have mom's elder sister's two children, a teen boy and girl. Their destination is a summer house they booked on net, which is at a small villiage in south west coast. The night before their trip, they experience a small earthquake (we get them from time to time in Istanbul) and quickly go on the road. The house is decent enough but comes with a view of a cemetery and then inevitably strange things start to happen...

Small apocalyse, we learn in the beginning of the film is what a person feels just before dying.
The film certainly was very effective, especially towards the end. Even though the majority of the viewers will guess what is coming, I don't think anyone else was prepared for the sheer effectiveness of the last scenes. Being a fatalist I was not that scared of the earthquake but even I felt the blood growing cold in my veins.

The cast mostly consists of actors Turks are familiar from a couple of TV shows since they share the same production company. This is a good thing because now they speak with a different accent and are in completely different characters so we can see how truly wonderful they are.
The lead actor who plays mom Bilge is Başak Köklükaya, dad is Cansel Elçin (the reason
my sister came to watch it with me, she follows the TV drama this guy is in) but my favorite was İlker Aksum who is the watchman for the summer house the couple rented. He really nailed the accent of the region and his performance was so nuanced without being overboard.

I really tried to post some pictures but sadly none are available on net here is the web site
if you click on the gallery you get a picture of the brothers and one photo shot during filming.
http://www.kucukkiyamet.com/

So this concludes today's post, and as usual I have had fun!

Current films

With this post I would like to tell you about the films that are currently screening nationwide, with a little info next to the titles, not that I have seen many of them, since I don't get out much nowadays, mostly due to my addiction to Asian films and Korean dramas, which are hard to find in here. You can find the literal translations to English in parantheses)

Çinliler Geliyor (The Chinese are Coming) - this is directed by Zeki Ökten who did some mediocre melodramas and this one is about people in a very small town seeing Chinese people arrive to the municipality building while they are preparing the annual independence day celebrations (here each town and city celebrates their own independance day in addition to the national holiday), and it is such a rare occurence to see a Chinese person in rural Anatolia, that rumours about Chinese people deciding to invest in their town spread very quickly.
Even though the premise looks interesting , the cast is lukewarm at best and it looks like to be a box office failure at its first week.

2 Süper Film Birden (2 Super Films at Once) - this is the first film of director Murat Şeker, and it is an independent film that came on screen mostly via the good will of people who are involved in it. It inevitably tells the story of a man whose dream is to make a film. Of course he going through a lot of difficulties and the only people who believe in him are his wife and his producer. And as if this is not enough, he is entangled with the mob through some unfortunate events.
The film just didn't attract me when I saw the trailer. The release date is 29 September*, so I guess not everyone thinks same as me but still, it was not a box office success.

Araf (Purgatory) Directed by Biray Dalkıran, this film is a horror film received very bad reactions at Turkey's biggest film festival. Everyone hated it since it was "bad acted nonsense". It tells the story of a dance student who had an abortion, then this unlucky woman gets marries, gets pregnant but the previous fetus haunts her. Started showing 06 October*. Bad box office. I didn't see it because one Japanese influenced Turkish horror film was enough to put me out for what seems to be a looong time. This is a story for another post.

Dondurmam Kaymak (Ice Cream I Scream- is the known English title of this film which is this years Oscar race application) Directed by Yüksel Aksu, this film tells the story of an ice cream sales man in a small beach town, who rages some sort of a war against foreign ice creams on a stick. This guy sells Turkish home made ice cream which is yummy. Anyway the whole thing is filmed at director's home town with only one professional actor among the crowded cast.
Never saw it since the trailer turned me off but people like it because apparently it is heart warming. I think this is the comedy version of Not One Less. Released in 24 November.

Eve Dönüş (Returning Home) Written and directed by Ömer Uğur, this film touches a painful period in Turkish history (at the time of the last Military Coup, yeah we had more than one). A factory worker is taken to questioning by the police. This turned out to be a mistaken identity situation since they thought he was a leftist militant. And they tortured him to get information.
This turned out to be a waste of a good story since everyone thinks it is a bad film. The tortures scenes are very long but ineffective (I guess they haven't seen The Passion) and the actors really bad, except the police officer who is the torturer. Release date 3 November.
I didn't see it since didn't want to waste my time on it.

Hayatımın Kadınısın (You are the Woman of My Life) Directed by Uğur Yücel who I really think one of the best living Turkish directors. Mr.Yücel is also a brilliant actor. This film also stars Turkan Soray who I love love love. It looks like she will go on acting as long as she can.
I didn't see this one due to my general staying at home situation. 24 November.

Hokkabaz (Illisionist - but in a deragotary way) I had high hopes for this one since it is written, co directed and acted by one genius man. Turkey's first stand up comic. He is also a great actor. But after watching the film (suprise!) I think that he shouldn't write, and most definitely he shouldn't direct. Two close friends, an illisionist and his male assistant, decide to go on an Anatolia tour to earn money for lasic operation (both have milk bottle glasses). They have to take Illisionist's father who is a few bricks short on the head- in a good way- and they meet a nice girl who needs a break from life. It was simply a mediocre, leaning towards bad film. 20 October*

Kader (Fate) Directed by Zeki Demirkubuz, this is the story three friends in a tangled web of love (or a Gordion's knot if you will as it's described in another site) This director is known for making intelligent, realist films and I actually wanted to see this one. 17 November.

Sınav (The Exam) This one is about 4 students trying to steal the questions for the University Exam. This is a torture for any high school student since if you can't pass it, you can wave your year good bye. You have to wait next year to enter the exam again. (Thank God that I passed this one both times I entered it). So Ömer Faruk Sorak, who is a director with considerable box office success by Turkish standarts films Yiğit Güralp's script and a hybrid of a film shows up on screen. This is a bit similar to Korean films with more than a few genres. It is funny at times and melodramatic, gives social messages and contains a few actions scenes. Also Jean Claude Van Damme has a small part in it (the JCVD visited Turkish Big Brother house was the day I lost all sympathy to that guy). Anyway this one is good - although the director visually overindulges a bit, it doesn't hurt the film overall. 20 October*

Takva (this is an arabic word meaning deep/total belief in God) It is one film I really want to watch since not only it has very good word of mouth but also the story is one I'm very interested in. One guy who is a true believer enters into an Islamic sect and this changes his whole life (I tried to avoid the spoilers but I think it is a negative change) Lead actor Erkan Can is the crown jewel on a solid cast and directed by Önder Çakar, this film got a minor award at Toronto Film Festival.
An anecdote from one member of the cast may shed a sliver of light on Turkey's current condition. While filming praying scenes in an apartment (the sect prayers done in addition to obligatory ones vary and this one was a bit noisy) the residents alerted the police that there is illegal religious activity, so the police came to the apartment and they were convinced that the people are actors shooting a film. One of them said after seeing a poster of Che in one of the rooms said "I have never been happier after seeing a Che poster". I will write more about this film after I watch is inşaallah. 1 December.

* These films are long gone from big city cinemas and only shown at the small cities.

The information came from a site I always use to check on which film is in which theatre etc. Unfortunately it is in Turkish but here it is anyway.

http://www.beyazperde.com/default.asp

Information about Turkish cinema

Now that I have decided on continuing with this blog for better or worse (hopefully for the better) I didn't know where to start to introduce readers on Turkish cinema.
The best way will be the beginning, no?

So the link at the end of this post will take to a very good site dedicated to Turkish cinema, sadly most of the contents are in Turkish but here is a page which will give you and idea about how it started
Scroll down just a little bit to read the English text

These nice people also allowed me to borrow anything I want from their site so I want to add a photograph of my favorite actor. Her name is Turkan Soray and she is crowned as the "Sultan of the Turkish Cinema" by us Turks.


http://www.turksinemasi.com/turk_sinema_tarihi/turk_sinema_tarihi.asp

Hello Readers,

The idea for this blog came from a friend. After thinking about it for a while, I asked to myself "Why not?" The strongest answer to this question is that I'm more of a consumer than a producer in life and even though I love to read, I have never managed to finish even half a diary ever since I became very fond of them (which is many years ago).

But Turkish cinema is going very strong nowadays and as far as I know there is not any other site which can provide information in English on this strange and wonderful cinema of many variations.

I would like to apologise in advance for my mistakes in English and for my inadequacy in expressing myself.

So here it is, my first attempt to actually start something with every intention of taking it as far as I can.