Sinanation

There, behind the impressive, massive and festive Imax screen, we sat with our space-like 3D glasses sucking in every second of the final Potter chapter. Painfully wishing the 130 min. never ends. Undeniably thinking of the fortune made through this franchise. We become fans of wizards yet again. Such imagination, such talent and creativity. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is nothing but pure owe and appreciation of the years spent on the creation of our generation’s ultimate imaginary world. There is nothing to make us believe otherwise until the 121st minute of the movie when we leave the three kids we came to love so much, behind and are swooped to “19 years later…”

For a mere second between the black screen and the first glimpse to the final scene, we hold on tight to the hope that we will become witnesses to an even cooler and impressive Hogwarts. We are slapped in the face. The camera zooms into Ron Weasley’s beer belly and uneven embryonic beard, jumps to Harmonie’s desperate “everyday mum” look, and freezes the years of magic on Harry’s unsatisfying, too-real-to-fit into the Potter saga adult look.

Pages of Aveda Kedavras, Aguamentis and Descendis. Years of snakes, giants and creatures. Is this how you send us off?

I wish I never saw 19 years later. I wish I never waited until this perplexing soap opera end to an epic journey. I wish I left the Potter team before they unexpectedly became detached from the magic and waved us goodbye as dull everyday adults.

I decided to avoid the sizzling Istanbul midday during the weekend and found myself in line at the movie theatre. With nobody else accompanying me, I was completely free to choose the French movie and catch up on my currently numb French. La Chance de Ma Vie is a romantic comedy based on a couple’s therapist who has been a bad luck to all the women he dated since childhood. We enter into Julien’s life right when he meets the love of his live and is completely discouraged at giving dating another try. Destiny finds a way to bring the two together and makes it impossible for them to resist the attraction. It is the series of unfortunate events that unfolds throughout Julien and Johanna’s fast-paced relationship that leaves a constant smirk on the viewer’s face.

I always have a thing for French movies and have never gotten tired of putting them on given the opportunity. Cap ou pas cap, Amelie, La Doublure, La Reine Margot, Le Placard, Mon Meilleur Ami are a few of the ones that are considered a must in my book. So, I might be a little biased when I reccomend La Chance de Ma Vie, but then again…Go see it.

That is what the Farelly brothers brought onto the screen with their most recent movie Hall Pass. We decided to give it a try last night in search for a refreshing flick after a heavy meal. The movie is basically based on two married guys constantly obsessed with sex and their “charm” before tying the knot, getting a no strings attached one week break from their wives. Owen Wilson plays Rick and Jason Sudeikis is Fred.

Unexpectedly Hall Pass turned out to be one of the most entertaining movies for me since Wedding Crashers. True that there are multiple corny moments and scenes that could be easily shortened, this comedy is still packed with a few minutes of uninterrupted, genuine and unlimited awkwardness that pushes the audience into a laughing frenzy. For the Crashers, that break point was the dinner scene where Gloria jerks off Jeremy from under the table and for the Pass it is the scene where Fred takes a potential hook up back to his hotel room. I am not going to say any more and just share a teaser for the scene with you. Trust me when I say that it should be more than enough for you to watch the whole movie.

I feel like we are at a certain point in the movie industry where the audience can almost always predict the ending of a story. There must be only a few movies out there that break the precedent and make the viewers bite their nails, scratch their heads until the last scenes. So what makes us watch the rest lies in how well they depict a predictable story. In that aspect Rio is one of the best animation movies I saw so far this year.

Rio is the story of an exotic Brazilian bird called Blu smuggled to America at young age. We are introduced to the amazing Brazilian vibe as he tries to make his way back home and mate with the last female survivor of his kind. This movie is a 3D burst of color and fun. It made me want to pack my bags, fly to Rio, go crazy at the carnival and squeeze the heck out of the fluffy birds getting jiggy all around the streets. It simply switched on the “happy” mode I have been yearning for all day.

I am still humming the intro song. Don’t hesitate and go see it.

Turkish readers, check out Sinanation’s take on the 83rd Academy Awards in the latest issue of Fin Digital Magazine, the first professional online magazine in Turkey dedicated to movies.

Shot in 1987, The Last Emperor is an epic documentary on China’s last emperor, Pu Yi who was crowned at the age of 3. I ran into this movie while I was skimming through historic academy award winners. I can never say no to a good biographic documentary and The Last Emperor made to the top of my “to watch list” with 9 oscars. Exhausted from a dinner engagement the night before, I covered every inch of my couch, fighting the urge to sleep and forced all my attention to this 163 min. movie.

The Last Emperor is a visual documentary of 1900s China and an incredible walk through the life inside the Forbidden City. It will show you what it took to be a Chinese Emperor in the ancient times. It will also brilliantly reveal how such privilege and wealth can lead to captivity, misinformation, anxiety and isolation, forcing the free mind to yearn for answers that can’t be given.

The Emperor has been a prisoner in his own palace since the day that he was crowned, and has remained a prisoner since he abdicated. But now he’s growing up, he may wonder why he’s the only person in China who may not walk out of his own front door. I think the Emperor is the loneliest boy on Earth.

Bertolucci’s camera will play brilliantly with color and scenery while depicting the shift from a time of extreme wealth and insouciance to a time of despair and turmoil. At times it will choke you in amplitude and other times it will shiver in vacancy, always leaving Pu Yi at the heart of it all.

The Last Emperor certainly satisfied my appetite for good history, but failed to impress me with its script. I expected a constant flow of speech to accompany the incredible cinematography, but there was an unavoidable lack of communication between the characters. I can tie this flaw to two reasons. First, Bertolucci might have used the power of silence to reveal the alienation and unearthliness of Pu Yi, which (if it is the case here) is a successful approach. He might also have been blocked by the biographic novel he based The Last Emperor on. It would be almost impossible to seek the help of fiction when the film relied on hard evidence: and Bertolucci needed this hard evidence to win the approval of the Chinese Government for the shots inside the Forbidden City.

Given the 10-hour time difference between Los Angeles and Istanbul, I had to watch a recording of the 83rd Academy Awards the day after (obviously I was not dedicated enough to watch it live until 6 a.m.). After a few years of on-time, spot-on home parties celebrating the glamorous night of Hollywood with numerous nibblers and lots of good friends, last night was the first time I was behind schedule.

Despite the fact that I haven’t watched most of the nominations, it was impossible for me not to take a look at the results and reviews prior to “my night of the Oscars”. So I sat behind the screen knowing that James Franco and Anne Hathaway were not at all impressive as hosts. I was prepped up to hear Natalie Portman give one of the longest and most generic thank you speeches of all time. I was even ready to watch the music performances, somber enough to force the audience to suicide. In between all the articles I skimmed through on the Oscars, I came face to face with the disappointment of knowing that the one night Hollywood hosted for its employees with millions of dollars, hundreds of creative minds and unlimited resources failed to be good enough.

The reviews were all of the proper consistency. There was no exaggeration. The one night of unmatchable talent, glamour, beauty and wealth couldn’t sweep us off our feet. Maybe we have gotten so used to the best with the likes of Hugh Jackman, Robin Williams, Alec Baldwin as hosts that the fresh, a little clumsy and shy attitude of James and Anne towards the audience looked raw to us.

Perhaps we have been fans of such excitement flawing out of the likes of Adrien Brody and Penelope Cruz when they received their own awards that Natalie’s never-ending thanks to all of her team members seemed too standard for our taste (especially after her amazing performance as Nina Sayers in Black Swan).

It is also possible that we have gotten a little too tired of being able to guess the winner among all the other nominees, still yearning for that unmatchable taste of being surprised with the likes of Slumdog Millionaire.

No matter how we look at the equation, the 83rd Academy Awards failed to cast a shadow over the previous ceremonies. Yet, it still had its entertaining moments:

• It brought a younger, fresher Scarlett Johansson into my life. I wanted to reach into the screen and pull out Jennifer Lawrence.

• It showed what marriage and kids can do to an extremely fit couple: Javier and Penelope have never been fatter.
• The intro that reveals all the nominated movies through an adaption of Inception promised to be a good start to high expectations (although nothing else matched its quality later on).
• It made me wonder what James Franco uses to be that numb and how many cups of coffee Anne Hathaway drinks to be that buzzed up and whoever brought these two together to host a show.
• It made me try to contemplate again on how Hugh Jackman fell in love with his wife.
• It left me perplexed seeing that Kirk Douglas, 94, had more spirit and connection with the crowd than all the other younger presenters.
• It surely forced me to rethink of alternative thank you speeches that could recognize the co-workers but also entertain the other listeners without putting them in a coma.

On an ordinary rainy Istanbul Sunday, behind a 65″ TV, on top of a too-soft-to-sit-straight couch, beneath a tower of pillows, in a dark room with a tiny somber light, I have received my diploma from the University of Masochism, becoming a proud graduate of class of 2011 along with my other two classmates.

It has been an enduring few months. The exams consisted of eye popping horror movies and mind boggling thrillers. Our grades depended on how well we reacted to all the tortuous visual scenes we willingly accepted to watch. 5 sinners getting stuck in an office elevator controlled by the Satan, ready to capture their lost souls. 3 friends forgotten on top of a chair lift in a ski resort closed because of a snow storm, trying to figure out a way to survive. A college girl fighting off a torturous demon. A single woman becoming the victim to her psychopath landowner. A confused priest surrendering to the spiritual world through his testimony to numerous exorcisms.

We sat through hours of violence, rating the cinematography and the possibility of the movie ever happening in real life: We had it in us to be intelligent masochists. Despite the fact that all the previous exams helped us excel to higher levels of endurance against tension, we were nowhere near ready for the final exam.

The final for Class Plan-B-11 was the screening of a movie called “I Spit on Your Grave”. We were each given a pillow, a blanket, unlimited bottles of water and we were allowed to eat during examination (although it wasn’t recommended). We had the option to watch the trailer prior to the screening and we all opted to do so. 107 minutes of unbearable scenes were in the horizon and we had all the temptation to give up. It took us 2 min. to contemplate whether we should before a classmate hit the “play” button. Desolation, imbecility, abuse, blind confidence, torture, desperation, blood, rape: all splashed out of the screen right into our pupils. The visuals were so strong that there was no need for any sound.

We jumped around like desperate monkeys, chewed on our fingers, crushed our teeth, sunk our head inside the pillows, made the move to leave the screening and confessed that this was too much even for honor roll students at University of Masochism. Still our eyes were glued to the screen. We watched Jennifer, a young writer who moves into an isolated mountain cabin to work on her new novel, get brutalized by 5 guys and seek her revenge on the attackers. Jennifer’s story was chosen to be the one, which would give us our diplomas.

We have been on a trail to seek realist thrillers. We have watched as many as we could and finally became the honor roll students of the University of Masochism. Some say graduation is just the beginning. In that case our hunt for the contained world of fear, confusion, ambiguity, violence and revenge will only get more adventurous.

Editor’s Note: Please be aware that the university and its logo, referred to in this article, are fictional. They are the creations of the author, crafted solely to complement the subject.

I thought it would be nice the start the week with a cool song and its awesome music video. I accidently landed on it this weekend. Happy Camper is a music project realized by Dutch composer Job Roggeveen. The video below is the video for his hit song “Born with a bothered mind” sang by Bouke Zoete. Manfred, of whom I became a big fan, is the fictional “big-foot” character that hilariously carries this song to the screen.

The song’s title and lyrics are a depressing testament to how we all exaggerate every tiny problem and how we become victims of our own paranoia:

I was born with a bothered mind
made me tense, and a little shy
everytime I’d turn around
I hesitated for a while

you might say I am a doubtful guy
yes I doubt ‘bout this and that and why,
…
Why do I treat myself like this?
What if, what if, what if?
I’d choose meat instead of fish?

We are all indeed born with a bothered mind. Happy Camper takes this torturous reality and turns into an entertaining story with Manfred’s day out camping.

This is the Paris version of a series of commercials shot for Education First, promoting the importance of language. The others include scenes from Barcelona (Spanish), Beijing (Chinese) and London (obviously, English). I think they are all brilliant.