"Catholics Excluded" by Laurie Goodstein of the the "NY TIMES"

Sony Pictures faced a predicament with its coming film "The Da Vinci Code." Should the studio try to mollify the critics who say the "Code" is blasphemy, with its plot describing a Church conspiracy to cover up the truth that Jesus married and never rose from the dead? Or should it ignore the complainers, sit back and watch the controversy boost ticket sales? (So),Sony has decided to hand a big [phony] bullhorn to the detractors of "The Da Vinci Code."
The company is putting up a Web site today well ahead of the movie's release on May 19 that will give a platform to some of the fiercest critics of "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown, the book that is the movie's source.

The site, thedavincichallenge.com, will post essays by about 45 Christian [pre-picked] writers, scholars and leaders of evangelical organizations who will pick apart the book's theological and historical claims about Christianity.
Richard J. Mouw, [the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, a leading evangelical school in Pasadena, Calif.] who contributed an essay on, "Why Christians Ought to See the Movie," said: "It's going to be water cooler conversation, so Christians need to take a deep breath, buy the book and shell out the money for the movie. Then we need to educate Christians about what all this means. We need to help them answer someone who says, 'So how do you know Jesus didn't get married?' "

Although Roman Catholics in particular have objected to the "Code" book, which refers repeatedly to "the Vatican" as the source of the conspiracy, no real Catholic writers are on the Web site's invited lineup.... Grace Hill Media talked with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and Opus Dei, the "conservative" Catholic group depicted in the book as a murderous force, about their participation, but as the list stands now, they are not included. Charles Colson, the convicted Watergate figure and now a leading evangelical voice, is expected to write about Catholicism.
"In some sense it gives evangelicals and other religious people a forum and a degree of legitimacy because they've been asked to give a critique," he said. "On the other hand, you could see this as a modest amount of co-optation, like Sony is saying, 'You guys are getting your say, so leave our movie alone.' "

Sharon Waxman contributed reporting for this article from Los Angeles.
see Carl Olsen's Coded Craziness

Germany | 20.02.2006
German Calls to Ban Controversial Turkish Movie on Iraq
At least 200,000 people in Germany have already seen the film:

German political leaders and Jewish community representatives have demanded the boycott of a hit Turkish action movie that casts US soldiers in Iraq as villains.
Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber and the Central Council of Jews blasted "Valley of the Wolves -- Iraq" (Kurtlar Vadisi -- Irak) as anti-American and anti-Semitic and called on German cinemas to stop showing the picture.
"This irresponsible film does not encourage integration but sows hate and mistrust against the West," Stoiber told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper in a reference to the film's popularity among Germany's large Turkish immigrant community.
"I urge the cinema owners in Germany to pull this racist and anti-Western hate film immediately," he said, adding that "EU candidate Turkey should take a clear stand."
Charlotte Knobloch, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the movie stoked anti-Semitic sentiment.
The film has so far sold 200,000 tickets and is ranked fifth in the German box office charts.
Film based on actual event
It is based on an actual event -- the arrest of 11 Turkish soldiers by a US military unit in northern Iraq in July 2003 on grounds of "suspicious activity." The men were held for two days, their heads bagged, before being released without explanation.
The incident dealt a severe and lasting blow to relations between Turkey and the United States, long-time NATO allies.
"The Turks want to see this film to a certain extent because it's a kind of repayment on the screen for the ignominy that all Muslims -- whether they are believers or not -- perceive in Iraq," said acclaimed Turkish-German writer Feridun Zaimoglu.
Necati Sasmaz plays the Turkish secret agent at the center of the movie:

The film features a "Rambo"-like Turkish intelligence officer who exacts revenge for the episode, and depicts sadistic violence against innocent Iraqi civilians at the hands of the US troops.
The GIs are also seen running a trade in organs extracted from prisoners at Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison under the guidance of a Jewish US military doctor for rich buyers in New York, London and Tel Aviv.
"Valley of the Wolves" is an adaptation of a popular Turkish television series and the most expensive Turkish feature film to date with a $ 10 million (8.4 million euro) budget. It has become a blockbuster in Turkey since its release this month.
"It is an extraordinary film that will go down in history," exulted Blent Arinc, president of the Turkish National Assembly, speaking to the Anatolia news agency after attending the movie's gala along with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's wife, Emine, who was equally impressed by the film.
Facts vs. fiction
Many Turkish movie goers told AFP news that the film is not an accumulation of anti-American cliches.
In the movie, a minaret explodes after a US attack

"No, no, it is not an exaggeration at all," said a 29-year-old computer engineer who identified himself only by his first name, Salih. "The news is full of hundreds of Iraqis being killed every day -- there's none of that in the movie. It presents the situation as it is, with the Americans who want to seize all power in the region."
"There is a bit of fiction," conceded 28-year-old soldier Alperen, who also withheld his surname, "but it's very close to reality."
A US diplomat meanwhile brushed aside the film's significance, arguing relations between Turkey and the US were returning to normal.
"It is entertainment," he told Reuters news service. "It does not purport to be a factual version of events."
DW staff (win)
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Americans and Jews villains in blockbuster
By Tony Paterson
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPHMarch 1, 2006BERLIN -- A virulently anti-Semitic film about the Iraq war has provoked a storm of protest in Germany after it sold out to cheering audiences from the country's 2.5-million-strong Turkish community within days of being released.
"Valley of the Wolves," by the Turkish director Serdan Akar, shows crazed American GIs massacring innocent guests at a wedding party and scenes in which a Jewish surgeon removes organs from Iraqi prisoners in a style reminiscent of the Nazi death-camp doctor Josef Mengele.
Bavaria's interior minister conceded last week that he had dispatched intelligence service agents to cinemas showing the film to "gauge" audience reaction and identify potential radicals.
Edmund Stoiber, the state's conservative governor, has appealed to cinema operators to remove what he described as "this racist and anti-Western hate film" from their programs.
The $10.5 million film, the most expensive Turkish production ever made, had already proved a box-office hit in Turkey, where it first opened last month at a gala attended by the wife of the country's prime minister.
The production went into general release in Germany two weeks ago and has had full houses ever since. More than 130,000 people, most of them young Muslims, saw the film in the first five days of its opening.
At a packed cinema in a largely Turkish immigrant district of Berlin last week, "Valley of the Wolves" was being watched almost exclusively by young Turkish men. They clapped furiously when the Turkish hero of the film was shown blowing up a building occupied by the U.S. military commander in northern Iraq.
In the closing sequence, the hero is shown plunging a dagger into the heart of a U.S. commander called Sam. The audience responded by standing up and chanting "Allah is great!"
Afterward, an 18-year-old member of the audience said: "The Americans always behave like this. They slaughtered the red Indians and killed thousands in Vietnam.
"I was not shocked by the film, I see this on the news every day."
The nature of the film and the enthusiastic reception given to it by young Muslims, has both shocked and polarized politicians and community leaders.
Bernd Neumann, the state secretary for culture in Chancellor Angela Merkel's government complained last week that the reaction to the film "raises serious questions about the values of our society and our ability to instill them."
Kenan Kolat, the head of Germany's Turkish community insisted that a ban on the film would make matters worse. "If it is withdrawn, it will raise levels of identification with the film," he said. "A democracy must be able to endure films that it doesn't approve of." Alin Sahin, the film's distributor in Germany argued: "When a cartoonist insults two billion Muslims, it is considered freedom of opinion, but when an action film takes on the Americans, it is considered demagoguery. Something is wrong."
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In the valley of the wolves
Serdar Akar's Turkish thriller "Valley of the Wolves" is driven less by fear of a megalomaniac enemy than by desire for a fictional revenge. By Alexandra Stheli

It's a strange feeling when, as a film critic, going to a film suddenly becomes an experiment which with each additional newspaper report feels increasingly like an exercise in self-preservation. In the last few weeks, journalists by the dozen have gone to see Serdar Akar's Turkish secret agent film "Valley of the Wolves" in cinemas in immigrant-dominated neighbourhoods of German cities to get a sense of how minorities are feeling and to expose themselves to these allegedly fear-inspiring, incomprehensible, rioting mobs. We read of Christian-haters, of peer pressure and youth who, at the end of the film, stand up and chant "Allah Akbar."

Necati Sasmaz as Polat Alemdar.
Photos MaXXimum Films
We're standing in front of the Kino Kchlin in Basel's Steinen suburb where the film unlike in other Swiss cities is playing in the city's largest (960 seat) cinema. It's just begun to snow lightly, the people are rushing into the warmth of the cinema and the streets, notorious for multicultural clashes, are unusually empty for a Saturday evening. As is the cinema, which five minutes before the movie begins is still only half full, mainly with men of all ages. Armed with popcorn and cola, they silently watch the slide-projected ads, which are indeed aimed at precisely this audience - for local Turkish snack stops ("Every day is Doner Kebab-day").
Even when finally the agent Polat Alemar hits the screen on the heels of the oily American capitalist referred to as Uncle Sam, who is castigating the people in Iraq in his autocratic, horrible, random way, there is an unusual quiet in the cinema, a quiet one rarely experiences on a weekend in popcorn cinema. Exactly three times, the viewers rouse themselves to polite applause of course in the places where Sam or his men are being brought to justice. The peak of excitement comes with the dramatic and somewhat archaic showdown, when the lovely Leyla finally seeks revenge. She, the bride with fluttering eyes, dies in the arms of Polat, who has just completed her revenge by ramming her 1,000 year old dagger into Sam's inflated breast.

Bergzar Korel (Leyla) and Necati Sasmaz
A young woman wearing a short shirt exposing her belly button says she found it "extreme but funny and entertaining" while her friend grins and shyly fixes her headscarf. Both of them are holding brochures and concert flyers from an "Information Centre - Turkey" that claims to be confessionally, nationally and politically independent. These were given out by a man during the intermission and seem to contain information on Switzerland's individual cantons and democratic system. The film's relatively flat statement about corruption in the Western world is thus met in an almost comic way by gestures of Enlightenment and integration.
Certainly, the film has undeniably nationalistic, anti-American, anti-Western and anti-Semitic traits, as has already been well-documented. It works with cliches, stereotypes and projections. The characters are so overdrawn that the story threatens to tip into the realm of fairy tale or allegory towards the end. But this reduction to a simple scheme of good and evil - which is also complicated by a humane American soldier and even more by a Sufi Sheik who calls for an end to the violence is part of the inventory of every Western action film, as is the aesthetic of violence (not especially well handled here), the chase, the apparent destruction of the bad guy and his surprising return for the final showdown.

Bergzar Korel
What distinguishes Polat Alemdar's mission from that of James Bond is the fact that its starting point is not fictitious. In the American action of 2003 - now known as the "Hood Event" - an American unit attacked eleven Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq for no apparent reason and "with no regard for their military honour," as the film distributor MaXXimum puts it on their website, transported them away with sacks on their heads while the local population watched. While the plot of every other Western secret agent thriller is driven by fear of global rule by a megalomaniac Arabic oil magnate or an eye-rolling, deeply evil Russian a mission with which James Bond was still entrusted even years after the Berlin Wall fell, without causing an international crisis this film, the Turkish reverse, is not about power or money.
Polat's task is rather to re-establish a moral value, and to attain fictional revenge for an actually-experienced injury to many people's sense of honour. For that reason it can be viewed from a psychological perspective as part of a compensation mechanism. But does such a film have to be rated as dangerous and banned as Bavaria's premier Edmund Stoiber recommended? No more than any other action film or war flick. While average moviegoers will find Polat's brimful and all things considered rather boring mission more or less entertaining, those who have already been radicalised in one way or another will have no problems finding confirmation for their views.

Billy Zane as Sam William Marshall (Uncle Sam)
But what does Akar's film contribute in terms of the now almost totally meaningless talk of a "clash of civilisations"? First off, perhaps, the insight that "the West", just like "Islam", is not one unified category, and that viewers in Berlin's Neuklln district can be of a very different political stripe than those in other European cities. In addition it could show that in the all out image war between the East and the West, we are sometimes even more appalled by our own images than we are at those of "the others". It could be that the Muslim media is in fact holding up a mirror, and that instead of unreadable Oriental cryptograms, it is reflecting our own, all-too-comprehensible images. This media effect was seen in the "9/11" attack, which seemed to be staged along the lines of a Western catastrophe film. It was seen when Iran called for a Holocaust cartoon competition. And it is seen now when a Turkish film studio produces an ungainly version of a James Bond thriller according to the Western rules of the genre and with Western stereotypes except that the good guys and the bad guys have switched roles.

The article originally appeared in German in the Neue Zrcher Zeitung on February 27, 2006.

Alexandra Stheli is a film critic for the Neue Zrcher Zeitung. She is author of "Materie und Melancholie: Die Postmoderne zwischen Adorno, Lyotard und dem pictorial turn" (Matter and Melancholy: Postmodernity between Adorno, Lyotard and the pictorial turn).
LINKS:
"Valley of the Wolves"
DonerKebap
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