17th, and 18th July, 2008:
How I Came To Hate Christians, Love 'Farida's And Worship Gods Or: Just Another Day Out.
NOTICE: The following text contains many spoilers about very recent Movies. Do NOT read if you don't wish to ruin the Movies for yourself. You have been warned.
Yesterday, the 16th, I went out with Michael, my best friend, to City Stars seeing a couple of Movies, passing through our church and finally finishing the day with a Rock concert. Most of the Art of that day automatically made a bit of a dramatic impression on my life, but let's take it from the start...
ÍÓä æ ãÑÞÕ
ÍÓä æ ãÑÞÕ (Hassan And
Morcos) is a secular comedy about how a Coptic goes undercover with his
family as Muslims after a terrorist attack on their car at the exact same
time a Muslim family goes undercover as Christians after another terrorist
attack on their shop. As expected, the six lives come to cross each others'
paths when they live across each other. Several issues are discussed
focusing on religion, politics, and even romantic love between a couple of
different religions.
The Movie sheds comedy on the scenes with some infections of Egyptian TV series' drama instead of being fully drama to better itself commercially. The direction was good and so were the performances. Omar Sharif, as expected, was a complete genius while Adel Emam was merely at his best. The other actors seemed devoted to the cause bringing out all they have, young and old, ladies and gentlemen, Muslims and Christians. Most religious and political information was correct with some flaws here and there.
But what I am concerned with are the Christians in the Movie, starting from the two priests at the very start passing past the Youssef Dawood character finishing at the priest who requests a war between the two religions at the end. Technically, I'm expected to go crazy and just deny everything and shout out "NO! Christians aren't like this..." But the thing is, I won't. Many like those two pathetic comedians at the very start exist between us, many Christians are very much like the Youssef Dawood character and I won't deny that priest at the very end calling for war. But instead of writing long sentences on all three, let's take them one by one.
Two Fuckers:
You ignorant fucks, yes, we do go into loads of trouble when we want to fix a toilet in a church, but look at the bigger picture you close minded, short sighted, freaks. You look at a toilet, and I look at how the government is protecting us (or at least, trying it's best!) from extremists (whom are pretty much quite known!!) who are planning all the time to kill us all. [I'm not against genocides by the way, just as long as the surviving genes are worth ruling, e.g. Germans!] You talk about Christians not getting high level jobs in the country? Are you stupid? We are in an ISLAMIC COUNTRY if you haven't noticed... What do you expect? The Presidency?
And since we are talking about those guys, let's switch to the similar Muslim characters... I don't know much about how Christians own a large percentage of the money in the country, but I know this. You say that whenever, wherever, a mosque is built, a church is built across it? Get your facts straight gentlemen, our country's law forbids a church to be built in front of a mosque... The opposite could happen, and happens all the time but if the mosque is there first, then a church can not be built there. To the writers, please, do your research fully.
Youssef Dawood Character:
The Christian Youssef Dawood plays a Christian jeweler who is always going around saying "I'm a Christian like you!" or "I'm baptized just like you!" and whatever else. And you know what, many Christians are like this and they are some little fucks. Seriously, you are assholes. Just because you are a Christian, doesn't mean you are a saint or better than people of other religions... Most of the world's greatest geniuses are atheists. Does that mean we won't carry on what they did just because they deny God?
Probably the most controversial character of the whole Movie... The war priest. He talks of how Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek when hit but he interprets His words as the following "You show the one that hit you how strong you are first, then you turn the other cheek." I won't say there are no priests like this, because if I deny, it's because either I don't know or I choose not to see. But I do know this, as great as He is, Jesus showed with weakness what is more powerful than strength. Thus just to explain it like this is to delete all basics of Christianity. My only response is, if Christians like him exist, I want nothing to do with them, and I do NOT acknowledge them as my brothers and sisters in religion, priests or otherwise.
Bottom line, these are very much about all the Christians in the Movie, and I'm going to say it loud and proud "I hate Christians." Yes, I HATE CHRISTIANS. I haven't came across many people throughout my 17 years old life, but if we turn out to be similar to the above examples, then I hate the fact that we pray in the same churches.
ÇÓÝ Úáì ÇáÇÒÚÇÌ
In
ÚãÇÑÉ íÚÞæÈíÇä
(Yacoubian Building),
Khaled El Sawy
played the greatest performance of an homosexual character I have ever seen
both in Egyptian and foreign Movies. In ÇÓÝ Úáì ÇáÇÒÚÇÌ (Sorry For
The Inconvenience!), no other than our amazing
Ahmed Helmy played the
greatest performance of a chemically imbalanced character I have ever seen
both in Egyptian and foreign Movies.
ÇÓÝ Úáì ÇáÇÒÚÇÌ is a comedy telling the story of a guy who sees everyone treating him awfully starting from his own friends to the waiter of a restaurant reaching to random beggars in the street and a parking lot guy. He tries to start a conversation with a girl he likes only to be sent away in disgrace. He later asks his father for advice about how to pursue that relationship and after several incidents, a relationship between him and Farida kicks off reaching El Ain El Sokhna and sending him to a random Egyptian cafe. Meanwhile, he gets fired from work and his mother tries to get him to see a psychiatrist. The plot unravels showing that his father is dead while Farida is merely an imaginary girl friend. After taking videos and pictures of the people who treat him awfully, he discovers that it's all in his head and he decided to go to the hospital. He gets well, stops seeing imaginary people, and at the end pursues a relationship with Mariam (the real Farida!).
"We didn't invent rape. I've been raped and one of my actresses has been raped. Rapists, when they are raping you, are not nice people. It's horrific, so I don't see why I shouldn't treat it that way." - Ex-porn actress Virginie Despentes talks about directing the controversy Baise-moi (Fuck Me!).
Hannibal Lectar and Lisa Rowe are a couple of examples of thousands of similarly chemically imbalanced people, a.k.a. psychos! But that's the exception rather than the normality. 100% of the human population are chemically imbalanced whether you look at it from a psychological scientific point of view or a philosophical relative point of view. Therefore, normally, everyday people we meet and interact with, including ourselves, have some sort of psychological problems. What's so horrific about it? Why should we present chemically imbalanced people as blood thirsty, flesh eating freaks? Ahmed Helmy's character is merely missing his dead father. He's also too traumatized to form everyday social relationships even with his dearest friends. Why is that not normal? I, for one, am in love with my own Farida. Yes, I have a Farida. I don't see her yet... But that doesn't mean she's not there. I even prefer my love to Farida over my love to Mariam. What's so weird about this? I don't understand. But I do know for a fact that all humans are hypocrites.
Talking about the Movie itself, the direction was very good and so were the camera angles, close ups, etc... Ahmed Helmy did genius work, even better than Russell Crowe's. Menna Shalabi was nice too and so were the parents. All in all, if ÓåÑ ÇááíÇáì (Sahar El layaly) and Ííä ãíÓÑÉ (Till Better Times...) are the two greatest modern Egyptian Movies I came across, then ÇÓÝ Úáì ÇáÇÒÚÇÌ (Sorry For The Inconvenience!) is definitely without a doubt, the third. However, I personally expect the commercial failure of the Movie, but who knows? Egyptians are full of surprises.
To end the day, I went to
El Sawy Culturewheel
to attend a concert of a band called El Door El Awwal playing oriental Jazz... I was kind of reluctant at first since I'm a huge
Eftekasat fan
(Biggest fan out there actually!) and this band seemed just a copy. But to
be fair, I never heard anything by them. Anyway, when I was wondering in the
Culturewheel, I came across a poster of a band called
Phoenix Flame
(Never heard of them before that moment actually!) covering for
Aerosmith,
Black
Sabbath,
Judas
Priest and
Megadeth with some originals that same day. I got curious and I
decided to go to the Rock concert instead. So I go to the River Hall and the
security asks me which concert I wanted to attend only to be answered with "Phoenix
Flame" and he just stared. Then he said "ÇäÊ ÚÇíÒ
ÍÝáÉ ÇáÌÇÒ æáÇ ÇáÑæß¿" (Do you want the GAS concert or the
rock one?)
Anyway, I go inside the River Hall and Michael and I started chatting till the concert began. The projector showed the Black Sabbath logo, and indeed, they started with an Iron Man cover. It was quite amazing and exceeded my expectations greatly. Originals like their theme song, Phoenix Flame and Rock N Roll Ain't Noise Pollution and covers like Sweet Emotion, School's Out, War Pigs, some Judas Priest and a Megadeth followed only to be interrupted with a 10 minute break and some trivial solos by each of them which proved nothing except that they are Egyptian Gods.
The guitarist, Mohamed Safwat, appears to be a young passionate artist whose dominance over the guitar (and bass guitar!) is complete without a single flaw. His solos were over the top and quite enough to mesmerize even the guys who know nothing of Rock And Roll, a.k.a. Michael. He just needs a bit of insanity... He jumped around, head banged a little, etc... But maybe a little more? The same applies to the other members as well.
Next, comes the drummer, Mostafa Safwat. Being the older brother of Mohamed, he proved to be just as artistic (and their whole family is probably is by the way!!). He ruled the drums powerfully (and loudly!) just enough to make us head bang in public. Of course, if this was a better concert with better audience than us, we would have stood up like he kept requesting, give him the corna and head bang like there's no tomorrow. Oh, well! His solo was also quite good making me head bang (and fly!) more than any other track in the whole concert.
Finally, on the bass guitar, played Zeyad Salloum, a guy of great talent but without enough chances. I've chatted with him in the intermission telling him that he should be given more space, maybe play The Creater Has A Mastertape or .3 and wreck the hell out of the bass (and our ears!). My opinion was later supported when, after the intermission, he switched with Mohamed, and played the guitar. He showed very good talent there and again with his later lone bass guitar solo. But even so, I still stand by what I said. Zeyad, you have to play more.
The concert ended when Mostafa asked if we wanted an encore, and indeed, two of the audience (including me!) requested Iron Man. I wanted to ask for a Black Sabbath or an Heaven And Hell but he said an encore. Indeed, they played Iron Man, just as good as the first time proving that my other opinion of them was quite flawed... They have practiced enough; they are devoted enough.
All in all, the concert just needed more organizing, better audience and maybe a Led Zeppelin touch. Of course, needless to say, I was wearing my Black Sabbath t-shirt!
Since we are talking about Music, Michael bought Raghab Alama's latest album from Virgin Megastores that day... It's quite worthless just like 99% of Egyptian/Arabic Muzak, but relatively, it's much better than most. If you are into this stuff, you are going to love that album. You have been adviced.