A.R.O.G.

Thanks to the Sinevidyon team (Özgür and Eren) today I had the opportunity to be among the first to watch the new comedy from Cem Yilmaz at the premiere for the Press.
A.R.O.G. is the second "episode" after the first movie : G.O.R.A.
In Gora Cam Yilmaz played the hero : Arif, a young Turk was captured by extraterrestrials from the planet GORA, fell in love with one of them and defeated the evil commander-in-chief Logar (aslo played by Cem Yilmaz). In A.R.OG. Commander Logar comes back and sends Arif 1 million years ago at the time of dinosaurs where he meets people from the A.R.O.G. tribe this time. Cem Yilmaz plays three different characters in this movie, Arif, Commander Logar and Kaaya leader of the A.R.O.G tribe.

I was afraid that he wouldn't be that funny since they overwhelmed us with commercials, advertising of all sorts. But I wasn't disappointed at all. It was a pretty good and funny movie. They apparently spend 8 million (or maybe 9) dollars to do this film but I'm pretty sure they spent most of it in commercials and in post production. The special effects are in fact pretty good for a Turkish production. The costumes and the decors were really nice too. As for the picture itself, it had a very good quality, the colors, the lighting were very good. A movie to watch absolutely, especially if you're a fan of Cem Yilmaz; if you don't like him you won't like like him here either.

The casting is actually pretty good with almost the same actors from G.O.R.A. : Ozan Güven (played the Robot in G.O.R.A.), Özkan Uğur (comedian and musician - from the MFÖ music band), Özge Özberk and the beautiful singer Nil Karaibrahimgil in her first appearance on the big screen.

Just for your information : The movie is coming out on December the 5th in Turkey as well as in 8 other European countries (Germany, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, U.K. and France). It has been distributed with 400 copies here and 160 copies in Europe.

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.

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.

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.