"Munich," Steven Spielberg's latest film on DVD.

Home | Forum | Credits | Articles | Media | Archived News

---

June 12, 2006
'Munich' now available in UK
Just a quick reminder to our readers in the UK that Steven Spielberg's "Munich" is now available on DVD.

"Munich" is available in a single-disc release that includes the film in a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation with 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound. The disc also includes an introduction to the film by director Steven Spielberg, plus the documentary "Munich: The Team, The Mission."

"Munich" can be purchased on DVD at retail today, or online through your favorite DVD shop including amazon.co.uk.

BEIRUT: A few years ago Cola Turka, the Turkish answer to Coke and Pepsi, ran a series of ads featuring American comedian Chevy Chase. Chase looks up from his mundane life one morning to find his wife and kids, radio DJs, cab drivers and passengers are not only drinking Cola Turka, but speaking Turkish as well.

The best of the ads are well-executed comedy - easy money for Chase, who simply practices his repertoire of puzzled expressions as harmless incongruities act themselves out around him.

The relationship between Turkey and the United States has undergone some less-benign modifications since then, thanks to Serdar Akar's "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq." There are many comic moments in the film that echo the Cola Turka aesthetic but, sadly, they seem inadvertent and are probably less visible to Turkish audiences.

There's a memorable moment early on, for instance, in which an honorable Turkish army officer named Suleyman remarks, "Everyone who's ruled over [Iraq] has oppressed its inhabitants, except our forebears."

This unexpected (and historically suspect) invocation of the good old days of the Ottoman Empire will make you smile. Suleyman - who's feeling a tad suicidal since troops from the US special forces in Iraq disgraced their Turkish counterparts - proceeds to blow his brains out, at which point you will struggle to contain a completely inappropriate cackle.

"Wolves" is a significant film because (with a budget of around $10 million) it's the most expensive movie the country has ever produced and because it's vehemently anti-American - an unusual combination. It's interesting because it utilizes exactly the same cliches found in Hollywood representations of the Middle East, but recoded to suit Turkey's popular sensibilities.

As such, it suggests a lot about how many Turks like to see Iraq and American imperialism, as well as themselves. Basically, "Wolves" glorifies Turkish manhood at the expense of the American "other."

Like Steven Spielberg's "Munich," the plot of "Wolves" is based on an actual incident. On July 4, 2003, US soldiers arrested 11 Turkish special forces men in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniya, pulling bags over their heads before leading them away at gunpoint.

Before checking out, Suleyman writes a letter about the affair to Turkish special agent Polat Alemdar (Necati Sasmaz). Sasmaz plays the same character in the television series from which this film is spun, though the small screen version of "Valley of the Wolves" usually finds him decimating the ranks of the Turkish mafia.

Suleyman's letter prompts Alemdar and his three sidekicks - Memati (Gurkan Uygun), Abdulhey (Kenan Coban) and Erhan (Erhan Ufak) - to infiltrate Iraqi Kurdistan and avenge America's sullying of Turkish honor.

"America" is embodied by Sam Marshall (Billy "Titanic" Zane), a dodgy special operations commander whose character mixes self-righteousness fundamentalist Christian with murderous sociopath.

Early on, Marshall and his boys - who are predisposed to hair-care products - linger on the outskirts of a wedding party until mid-festivity Kalashnikov-fire gives them an excuse to raid it. In the ensuing mayhem a child and the groom are killed.

Alemdar's men try to push Marshall's to apologize by rigging an American hotel in Erbil with C4 explosives. Marshall responds by bringing a busload of Iraqi kids into the hotel - he knows Alemdar is far too principled to kill children. Victorious, Marshall diabolically entertains the kiddies on piano while a sapper defuses a bomb under his chair.

Then there's the man known as Doctor, played with asthmatic distraction by Gary Busey ("The Buddy Holly Story"). Attached to Abu Ghraib, Doctor mines his Iraqi patients' organs for cold-shipment to the US, UK and Israel.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb

The anti-Israeli motif in "Wolves" is at odds with the reality of Turkey's close military and economic ties to Israel. But it echoes Egyptian cinema, where despite the state's cold peace with Israel people like to be seen disliking Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

There are other "others" in northern Iraq, and one of the most entertaining things about "Wolves" is to see how they fit into the writers' chauvinistic cosmology.

Iraq's Kurdish peshmerghas are represented as badly-dressed American lackeys, though - in a gesture to show Turkey's relationship with its own Kurdish minority as (newly) more benevolent - Alemdar's pal Abdulhey is identified as Kurdish.

Iraq's Turkmen are sympathetically portrayed. Not only are they being systematically dispossessed by the peshmerghas, the lone Turkmen character is Alemdar's contact - whom Marshall murders.

The major cultural "others" in "Wolves" are the Iraqi Arabs, as depicted by Abdurrahman Halis Karkuki (Ghassan Massoud) and his adopted daughter Layla (Berguzar Korel).

Massoud's Karkuki is a reprise of his noble turn as Salah al-Din in Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven." Again, he's an honorable, reasonable Sunni authority figure but rather than portraying a Kurdish sultan, he's the sheikh of a Sufi lodge.

The role is significant, since Sufism is generally represented at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Islamic political militancy of Al-Qaeda - whom Turkey's Muslims and Islamists have no interests in emulating.

In one particularly dashing scene, Karkuki confronts some kaffiyeh-shrouded militants about to videotape the beheading of an American journalist. He shames them into stopping.

Korel's Layla is the film's lone female character. It's her new husband who's killed by US troops near the start of the film. She would become a suicide bomber but Karkuki dissuades her, denouncing it as a grave misrepresentation of Islamic values.

The actors do their best to animate these "characters." Not much acting is required of Sasmaz but, despite her too-stunning beauty and comic book lines, Korel does a creditable job making her caricature believable. Massoud acts with characteristic gravitas. Of the Americans, Zane is clearly having the most fun, channeling a character who crosses Hunter Thompson with a camp Ernest Hemingway.

Plot conventions demand that Layla and Alemdar's team link up in revenge. The Turks make several attempts to assassinate Marshall. Endless materiel is expended, deciliters of blood are spilt and by the time you arrive at the film's apocalyptic final set piece, the casualty figures are downright Shakespearean.

"Valley of the Wolves" can't be dismissed as art-house indulgence. The four-man writing team (Omer Lutfi Mete, Bahadir Ozdener, Raci Sasmaz and Soner Yalcin) attempted to mobilize popular cliches to appeal to mass audiences. Based on the film's spectacular box office returns in Turkey and Germany (thanks to a sizeable German-Turkish community), they succeeded.

It would be interesting to see what Iraqis think of it. "Wolves," though, is unlikely to get a commercial release in the Kurdish enclave or Baghdad's Green Zone and Iraqis elsewhere may be too preoccupied with other business to seek it out.

In Beirut, itself once a beneficiary of Ottoman Turkish kindness, the reception has been more tepid than in Istanbul and Berlin. Only 850 people watched the film in its first week of release. Tastes, it seems, have diverged.

Serdar Akar's "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" is playing now in theaters throughout greater Beirut

Home | Forum | Credits | Articles | Media | Archived News June 12, 2006 AFI '100 Years...100 Movie Cheers' coming this Wednesday The American Film Institute's annual program honoring the top 100 films within a given category is upon us again, with this year's "100 Years...100 Cheers" list. This Wednesday, June 14, AFI will count down the top 100 inspiring movies in film history, and six of Steven Spielberg's most optimistic works have been nominated to make the list. Spielberg (along with director Frank Capra) was nominated for more films than any other director in film history, including seminal works such as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial," "The Color Purple," "Schindler's List," "Amistad," and "Saving Private Ryan." To find out which Spielberg films make the list, and to see Spielberg comment on various films within the entire list of 100, be sure to tune into CBS this Wednesday, June 14 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. For more information on AFI's "100 Years...100 Cheers" list and special, check out the official website. And if you're the betting type, join us on our forum to give your picks of which of the six Spielberg films will make the final AFI list. If you post the films that happen to win, you'll be entered into a drawing to win a copy of "Munich," Steven Spielberg's latest film on DVD.

A DreamWorks Pictures / Paramount Pictures Presentation An Amblin Entertainment Production In Association with Mutal Film Company A Steven Spielberg Film "Saving Private Ryan" Released July 24, 1998 Running Time: 2.49 MPAA Rating: R Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 BUDGET $70 million BOX-OFFICE Domestic: $216.3 million International: $263.7 million Worldwide: $480 million AWARDS Wins: Academy Award, Best Cinematography Academy Award, Best Director Academy Award, Best Effects, Sound   Effects Editing Academy Award, Best Film Editing Academy Award, Best Sound AFI 100 Greatest Thrills List Golden Globe, Best Director - Motion Picture Golden Globe, Best Motion Picture - Drama DGA, Outstanding Directorial Achievement   in Motion Pictures Grammy Award, Best Instrumental   Composition Written for a Motion Picture   or for Television Nominations: Academy Award, Best Actor in a Leading   Role, Tom Hanks Academy Award, Best Art Director -   Set Direction Academy Award, Best Makeup Academy Award, Best Music, Original   Dramatic Score Academy Award, Best Picture Academy Award, Best Writing, Screenplay   Written Directly for the Screen Golden Globe, Best Original Score -   Motion Picture Golden Globe, Best Performance by an   Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama,   Tom Hanks Golden Globe, Best Screenplay -   Motion Picture WGA, Best Screenplay Written Directly   for the Screen Screen Actors Guild Award, Outstanding   Performance by a Cast Screen Actors Guild Award, Outstanding   Performance by a Male Actor in a   Leading Role, Tom Hanks LINKS Official movie site www.dreamworks.com www.paramount.com Saving Private Ryan Online Encyclopedia

Copyright © 2001-Present SpielbergFilms.com
-- All Rights Reserved --

DVD round-up from The TOMB

'Munich' and the 'Pusher' films rub shoulders with a dodgy flick starring the girl from the Whitesnake videos.

Chris Tilly | Jun 12 2006

It's a good week for serious cinema in the DVD vault this week, with 'Munich' proving to be the pick of the bunch.

Steven Spielberg's uncompromising account of the aftermath Palestinian terrorists' massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, it's a film that isn't scared to ask difficult questions without offering any easy answers.

Eric Bana, Geoffrey Rush, Ciaran Hinds and Daniel Craig give colossal performances as the Mossad assassination squad assembled to carry out the campaign of vengeance, and the result is Spielberg's most mature work for nearly a decade.

'Pusher 2' and 'Pusher 3' also hit the streets this week, packaged in a box set with part one, and all three of Nikolas Winding Refn's films are worth a look.

Gritty, grotty little pictures (clearly inspired by 'Mean Streets') each follows the path of a different minor player on the Copenhagen crime scene, and all three are as intense and powerful as any film I've seen in the last few months.

Also worth checking out is the special edition of 'The Last Seduction', a fine film noir that made a star of Linda Fiorentino (though only for about 10 minutes) and proved to be the high point of director John Dahl's career thus far.

This special edition features a myriad of extras, including a fine director's cut and commentary, an alternate ending, and a brand new documentary about the making of the film.

Finally, 'Gwendoline' is out on DVD this week, and is definitely one for fans of the more trashy side of the home entertainment industry. Unfortunately, we don't have an official Time Out review of the film, but the fact that it stars Tawny Kitaen (of Whitesnake video fame) and is billed as a cross between 'Indiana Jones' and 'Emmanuelle' should tell you all you need to know!