It seems that Billy Zane and Gary Busey (and what else have you seen either of them in recently?) acted (if you want to call it that), presumably for money, in a newly-released Turkish movie called Valley of the Wolves: Iraq.
In case it didn't appear at your local theatre (what a surprise), here's an in-depth review: "Imagine someone randomly editing together all the discarded scenes left on the cutting room floor from a second-rate Chuck Norris action movie, and then dubbing it into Turkish. Voila! You've got Valley of the Wolves Iraq."
Another telling quote from the review: "But there's another aspect of the film that will ensure it will never be a hit anywhere outside Turkey and certain Turkish neighborhoods in Germany: it is very specifically pro-Turkish, and anti-everyone else. Even other Muslims groups are shown in a bad light. In the Valley of the Wolves universe, the Kurds are second only to the Americans in their villainy. The Arabs are shown as buffoons easily tricked by the Americans. Because of the film's Turkocentric outlook, the audience was notably unenthused about Valley of the Wolves, and gave it very brief polite applause at the end, and nothing more. No one jumped out of their seats. No one cheered the heroes or booed the villains. And if it can't generate any enthusiasm at the Muslim Film Festival, there's no way Valley of the Wolves will ever become a hit in the general population.
"Much of the dialogue revolves around the ethno-politics of northern Iraq and southern Turkey: Turks are always the good guys; next on the scale of heroism are the Turkomans, ethnically Turkish people who live in northern Iraq; below them is a Turkish Kurd who has abandoned his Kurdish identity to become a Turkish nationalist; then there are the foolish Arabs, who strangely play a very peripheral role in the script; lower still are the separatist Kurds, who want to steal part of Turkey for their homeland; then the brutish American soldiers, who act like Neanderthals; then the scheming Jewish doctor, and finally, at the bottom, the born-again Christian devil played by Billy Zane. "
Given the popular sentiment in Hollywood, I guess we should look forward to Academy Award nominations for Busey and Zane this year...
26 August 2006
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