Today's Picture

Today's Picture

Happy B-Day Benoit

My 9th 15 mn of Fame

Presenting the D-SLR Sony Alpha 350 on Teknosohbet.tv

Mustafa

As we celebrate today the 85 years anniversary of the creation of the Turkish Republic, a new movie called "Mustafa" came out in the theaters today. This movie is about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of the Republic of Turkey. An actually real good movie/documentary and kind of objective for a Turkish production. The Director is Journalist/Writer Can Dündar. Music is by Goran Bregovic.

Flags

Today is the day of the Republic. 85 years ago the Republic of Turkey was instaured.
For this occasion everybody hangs a flag on its window or building or car or wherever.

Cumhuriyet Meyhanesi

Tonight we went to the Cumhuriyet meyhanesi. "Cumhuriyet" means "Republic" and "Meyhane" is a kind of tavern, from the persian "mey" meaning "wine" and "hane" meaning "house". Usually it is a place where you eat meze and fish and where you drink the national alcool "Raki" (kind of like the Greek "Ouzo" or a stronger French "Pastis"). There was also a live band playing traditionnal Turkish music. There is always a very nice atmosphere, people will get up and dance along with the music.

By the way the Cumhuriyet Meyhanesi is one of the oldest meyhane in Istanbul and has an history of more than 110 years.

Today's Picture

Meet Mr. Ferit. He's a recycler. A lot of homeless person like Ferit go through the garbage cans and collect all the plastic materials for some, paper materials for others, etc. Then they go to the incineration plants and sell them by the weight. It's a "good" but sad way to recycle. Mentalities about recycling are very far from the ones in western Europe or in the USA.
Mr. Ferit is always cleaning the garbage at the corner of Siraserviler Street and Meselik Street in Taksim.

Blogger is Back Baby !

The blocking of Blogger.com has been suspended last night by the same court of Justice favoring its blocking.
Welcome back.

Ulak - the DVD is Out

Usually in Turkey, Dvd's come out pretty quickly, but this is a very different story for Ulak (the Messenger - See previous Post). We shot the movie in June/July 2007. The movie was supposed to come out in November 2007 but the director Çağan Irmak decided to wait so he could present it to film festivals, so we waited until February 2008 to see the film. Then I was waiting for the DVD but again, in order to be able to compete for the festivals the director decided to wait and finally, after a year and a half we can find, in a nice metal box, TWO dvd's. One with the movie and the director's comment, fact rare in Turkey. And the usual "Making Of" on the second DVD, rare too.

Today's Picture

Meet Mr. Ekber. He is a street vendor selling cheap fake perfumes. I see him everyday in Taksim when going to work. He is always clean and charismatic. He has a big boss's chair behind him he usually seats on.
He was kind enough to pose for me.

Stop Motion

Even though today is Sunday I came to work with Emre to work on a basic stop motion animation for a new program we broadcast on Televidyon.com, called Sinevidyon. A show about cinema (in Turkish).

Here is the short animation's result :

Today's Picture

A street shoe shiner's work tools.

Today's Picture

I also like the door at the bottom left and the guy standing next to it.

Blogger blocked in Turkey

After having blocked Wordpress for about a year, they now decided to block the Blogger. As you probably know Youtube has been blocked for a few months here now. Where is the limit ? Whose next ?
I say shut down the Internet, create a huge Intranet and give us access to a dozen authorized website so that we can play and be happy without having any surpises.
I found a way to go around the block so this is how I can update the blog but it's not that easy and I need to change my settings all the time because they keep updating the blocked ip's list. I can actually get into blogger easily but I can't see my homepage all the time.
Here is what we get when we try to get on Blogger (or Youtube, or Youporn or whatever) :

Funny Faces

What Reyhan does with her fingers is the equivalent to the european or american middle finger.












A pillow she got for her Bday.

Canon Ixus 850 IS VS Samsung NV24 HD

Today I got one of the last Samsung point & shoot camera, the NV24 HD from Samsung to try it out for a program. Here are the first photos I took with it. I took the same photos with my canon Ixus 850 IS (aka Canon Elph 800 IS in the USA). The canon is a 28 mm equivalent lens, the Samsung has a 24mm lens.

What do you think ?

Canon









Samsung










Canon









Samsung










Canon









Samsung










Samsung's wide angle (24mm equivalent)

Big Oreo

Three Monkeys

Tonight we went to the Premiere of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's new film : Three Monkeys (Üç Maymun), thanks to Gülper.
It was excellent. I love the way he has to show peoples' emotions, thoughts. I won't say much about it, find it and watch it.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan (I call him NBC) has become very amous in Turkey by winning international awards. People do not really like his movies because they're not easy watching movies.
He has been mostly influenced by Tarkovsky, Bergman, Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson and some others; Three Monkeys is easier to watch though.
I really like one of his previous movie : Uzak (Distant); although they're all very good.
The photography of his films is very good. NBC is actually a photographer, then a filmmaker and a screenwriter.
Check out his photos on his website.

Nazar Boncuk

This Front Loader Caterpillar parked wel liked the other cars but what really caught my attention is the evil eye stone hanging in the front.
In Turkey, the evil eye Stone or known here as the Nazar boncugu, takes an important place in the culture and in the society. You hang it to protect yourself, your faily or your belongings. You can find everywhere, in house entrances, in cars, on clothing (especially on babies). But here to find one hanged like that was really fun.

Cats

Birthday Party

Tonight we celebrated Reyhan's birthday in advance. Her actual birthday is next Tuesday (the 21st). Engin had prepared a surprise party at home. Even though she was awarw that something was going on she still was nicely surprised to see all of us there.

Teknosohbet Under Arrest

Today at the office we gathered all the cellphones we had and did this set up. In Turkey when people get arrested with guns or drugs or stolen good, the police have them posed like that. The actual program is here.