Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): **½ (up it a star if you're particularly interested in Egyptian culture)

What to make of the sensational (in themes and provenance, if not style and substance) Egyptian movie blockbuster The Yacoubian Building? Several things, actually, but let’s start with provenance and themes. Based on a groundbreaking, hugely popular Egyptian novel by Alaa' Al-Aswany that dealt with unusual subjects (for Egypt, at the time: it was published in 2002) such as homosexuality, adultery, drugs, corruption-in-high-places and the decline of Egyptian society, the novel seemed to have dragged Egyptian literary culture into the 20th Century. Of course, since much of the world is now well into the 21st, this is part of the problem that Westerners may have with the book--and its filmed version, which debuted around much of the world in 2006. (Here in NYC, it played at the '06 Tribeca Film Fest, but otherwise had not seen much U.S. action until its DVD release this year via Strand Releasing.)

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Posted by at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

If you're already a fan of the work of Kurdish Iranian writer/director Bahman Ghobadi (Marooned in Iraq, Turtles Can Fly, A Time for Drunken Horses), you won't need much of a push to place his new film Half Moon in your queue. If Ghobadi is new to you, Half Moon is a good place to begin your appreciation, for it's his most disciplined and productive movie yet. Ghobadi's a filmmaker so marvelously attuned to visuals and music that you'd best prepare to have your eyes and ears quietly ravished.

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Posted by at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)