The Stoning of Soraya M.

Score: 6 (10 is max.)

Summary: Astonishing real story of a woman falsely accused of adultery in the sharia Iran of 1986 after the Islamic revolution dictatorship. Based on best seller by Iranian French journalist Freidoune Sahebjam.

Review: Soraya (Mozhan Marnò) lives in a dead end small shah Iranian village with his four children and separated from her husband, Sahebjam. His husband, an ex prison officer, wanted to marry a 14 year old girl but he didn’t wanted to pay for both wives.
For this reason, Soraya finds refuge at her aunt’s, Zarha (Shohreh Aghdashloo) who treats her like her own daughter and veils for her interest and safety.

Under beatings and verbal violence, he ostracizes his wife and places his two sons against her and everybody he knew at the village. Two other key players in the village, the mayor and the spiritual leader, will help the husband to create a plan so this one can gets rid of the woman abiding the sharia laws. The spiritual leader himself was an ex convict, never making it to the religious school and always threaten by Sahebjam if the mullah doesn’t fulfills his will.

The stoning set is ready

After a neighbor’s wife sudden death, Soraya is impelled by the mullah to go and serve the left alone widower. In this perfect set, Sahebjam will accuse Soraya of sleeping with the neighbor, what all she did was faithfully serve the neighbor as indicated.
According to Islamic law, the husband will need another witness in order to go forward with his plan of killing his wife, and this will be the poor neighbor, after he was threaten by the mullah of sending his differently able child to a mental institution.
The set is set, the mullah calls the regional revolutionary guards to retain Soraya, while the whole village prepares with joy to the fun event for all the family of a dilapidation or stoning, God forbid, all according to what G’d (Allah) “wants”.

Husband providing stones for all attendees

Meticulously they would gather and testify, falsely against Soraya, so the process can begin. And so it does, among the excited villagers: kids gather with diligence stones of the proper size, the mayor will measure the distance from the ditch dig and where the killers are to stand when throwing the stones.

One by one, they are given stones by the mullah beginning with Soraya’s father, her husband, her two sons, the mullah, and the rest of the village. All filled with hatred and “Allah hu Akhbar!”, all celebrate this carnival of blood and cruelty claiming to follow G’ds will.

The villagers gathering for the festival of blood

In the midst of this, the following day, a journalist will step into the village in order to fix his car flat tire. Zarha will contact him and record in a cassette a narration of the murder of her niece. The mullah and the mayor wanted to retain the young journalist for they knew Zarha told him the whole story, so they frisk him and only then let him go. Zarha would wait for him at the exit of the town with the audio cassette with the recording in her hand so when her confident passed by, she gave it to him, to the astonishing eyes of the whole village. Thanks to this, French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam’s will publish in 1990 “La Femme Lapidée”. The book was banned in Iran, but the whole story of the murder of Soraya M. is no longer a local Iranian one.

Aunt and niece

Critic: I remember Shohreh Aghdashloo in 2003 “House of Sand and Fog” as the wife of the ex Iranian shah colonel, and then I knew I was in front a a character actress. Though, as many foreign personal working in Hollywood, many of the parts played fit the American stigmatization, and thus in these two movies, Shohreh plays as well an Iranian woman, of a strong character and will, intelligent, independent after her husband passed away, and smart enough to play with the only tools left to a woman after the Islamic revolution. She put down the mayor’s offer of remarrying her and preferred to keep her autonomy. She will fight against the wrong doings of her primitive and otherwise barbarians co-religionists. She will stand against the mullah, when he comes to Soraya asking her to marry him after she divorces Sahebjam.
If I were the director, I would have taken as topic of this movie, a real woman cheating on his husband and still the movie will be cruel. I wonder whether we are justifying the cruelties of the sharia laws appealing to the fact that she was innocent, otherwise, “it would be fair to stone her”

Other pictures related to the topic:

From upper left on: real iranian stoning, somali stoning. Bottom left: Somali stoning, sizes of stones in manual, middle eastern stoning. Center: real Soraya Manutchehri at age 9.

Videos:

1.- Trailer

2.- Interview with Shohreh Aghdashloo (Zarha):

3.- TV interview with director Cyrus Nowrasteh:

4.- Another interview with movie’s main character, Zarha:

Machete - a pissed off Mexican

I saw “MACHETE” last evening ….

From this starting point I must revert to my standard movie review …..

If you want to be edified … Read a book …..
If you want to be uplifted ….. Go to church …..
If you want two hours under industrial air conditioning, with an ice-cold soda and fresh hot popcorn …… Go to a movie …….

The only way this movie will receive any serious critical praise is as an “homage” ……

“MACHETE” is truly an “homage” in the same way “NATURAL BORN KILLERS”, “ZOMBIELAND”, “GRINDHOUSE”, “RESIDENT EVIL” and “FROM DUSK ‘TIL DAWN”
are all and have each become an homage to their genres …

Lindsay Lohan - sister?

Danny Trejo as a lead and a hero is just a magic moment and a vision of hope for old guys ……
Don’t tell me NO acting ….
Don’t tell me NO delivery ….
This is Danny Trejo … This is the guy that makes Albert Molina look like an cherubic altar boy …..
This is the ultimate Hispanic bad boy …..

Jessica Alba and Michelle Rodriquez are here for window dressing and some kick-butt beauty …. They both serve these purposes very well …..

Lindsay Lohan is here for ….. who really cares ? I know it eluded me …. Any blond bimbo would have done the same if not a better job…..

Machete getting ready to put a bullet in your guts

I think Robert DeNiro, Jeff Fahey, Steven Segal and Don Johnson showed up for a hoot, or maybe they signed on because of Robert Rodriguez or the inevitable
cult status awaiting “MACHETE” ….

“Cheech” Marin as a shotgun toting priest and not a comic relief or sidekick ….

Maybe everyone showed up for Robert Rodriguez ….
Only Quentin Tarantino can bring this much grittiness and violence to the screen, and allow you to enjoy it …..
( I often times think Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino are just the same souls locked in alternate universes … )

I truly enjoyed this cult-destined flick ….. I may see it again this weekend ….

So …..

If you want to be edified … Read a book …..
If you want to be uplifted ….. Go to church …..
If you want two hours under industrial air conditioning, with an ice-cold soda and fresh hot popcorn …… Go to a movie ……. See “MACHETE” …..

Machete (2010)

Green Zone

Nice action movie directed by Paul Greengrass and starred by Matt Damon. This time Matt is the “chief” at a US marines unit deployed in Irak. Matt is discontent with the fact that the intel he is getting in order to search and find for non conventional weapons, turns out to be of no value. Irak is at the verse of caos and civil war and Matt is to find out why there are internal forces in the US government that dont want to see the reality on the ground. The US authorities want to place in control an exiled iraki without the approval of the different ethnic groups while Saddam’s military is to be dismanteled. Some CIA agents believe that only using former iraki military members will bring calm and control to the streets. Matt will ultimately work to try to contact a influencial ex- Saddam general in order to use him to rebuild the country.

Expect plenty of action, but nothing to be compared to an “Apocalypse Now”.

Angelina Jolie as Mariane Perl

Daniel Pearl was a happy American journalist, from a New Jersey Jewish family, serving as South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal in Mumbai. He traveled to Karachi, with his french wife and also journalist, Mariane (Van Neyenhoff), to cover the alleged connection between Richard Reid (the “shoe bomber”) and Al-Qaeda.

The movie based on the book of Mariane Pearl, Daniel Pearl’s widow, on the tragic and brutal capture of Daniel in Karachi, the huge port city of Pakistan, in 2002.

Daniel requested an interview with one of the well know and connected islamist militant named Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, on its way to the restaurant were they were to meet, on February the 1st 2002, Daniel never returned and was captured by the The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty (NMRPS).

Daniel Pearl

Mariane Pearl

Mariane worries about her husband, were later confirmed by a mail she got from the kidnappers stating Daniel was held by Islamic militant who requested the liberation of some Guantanamo Pakistani prisoners and to stop the F-16 military aid from US government to Pakistan, in order to see Daniel back alive.

The original message:

“We give you one more day if America will not meet our demands we will kill Daniel. Then this cycle will continue and no American journalist could enter Pakistan.”

This hotmail message was accompanied by some pictures showing Daniel captured by the terrorists:

Daniel Pearl Captive	Daniel Pearl captive
Daniel Pearl captive	Daniel Pearl captive

Local authorities were alerted and with the time also American personnel from the FBI and the local embassy in order to run a full scale operation aiming for Daniel search and release. Pakistani interior intelligence, (detective Mir Zubair Mahmood) run a city wide search for anyone involved by tracking both the IP (helped by CIA computer experts) of the mail received and the source of the different mobile phone calls that were made from suspects’ devices.

Later on Colin Powell and Musharraf requested the release of Daniel though we all know all efforts led to nothing.

9 days latter Daniel was assassinated.

A video recording was made and released on February 29th 2002, which his captures named it: “The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl”. In it the terrorist made Daniel said antizionist propaganda while showing images of dead Muslims, together with violent video excerpts from the middle east. At the end of the video, the terrorist behead Daniel.
This barbaric document was sent to the house were Marine resided and latter on got into the internet and the rest of the media.

Daniel Pearl video

He sentenced to death for his participation, likewise, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly 3rd in command in Al-qaeda, acknowledge that he had personally beheaded Daniel.(“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl, in the City of Karachi, Pakistan”)

British Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the mastermind of the kidnapping and killing, surrendered to an ISI agent, that concealed him a week, keeping him away from the Pakistani police. Saeed took part in the 1994 kidnapping of westerners in India, later incarcerated and release while doing time in the Indian jail in exchange for the hijacked Indian plane of 1999.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Daniel body was later found on May 16 2002, not far from the place he was held captured, in a grave 30 miles from the city, cut in ten decomposed pieces. The body was found after one of the militants who took actual part in the dismemberment by knife of Daniel, was caught by Pakistani police and confessed his part in the crime.

Daniel Pearl body found

Daniel family created the Daniel Pearl Foundation with the purpose of cross-cultural understanding through journalism, music, and innovative communications.

On may 17 2010, president Obama signed “Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act”, Mariane and his son Adam were present as well.

Angelina Jolie plays Mariane in this almost solo play searching for her husband, while being pregnant of Adam, their child. She will show in the film a desperate woman, worrying for the whereabouts of Daniel, handling the tens of people at her resident handling the investigation. After the drastic outcome of Daniel’s kidnapping and assassination, she would travel to France where she resides till today with her only son.

May Daniel rest in piece.

Lebanon

As usual, any Israeli film to be successful in any foreign country has to follow the formula of “try showing Israel as a real villain” and Lebanon is no exception.

Following the steps of Vals im Bashir (2008), a tank squad enters the Lebanon war of 82, as part of a paratroopers platoon. They will enter civil urban nucleus and will treat innocent civils as shit, for we all know israeli soldiers have a secret pact with Satan and they would commit all crimes against human kind (and animal kinds as well)…

Inside the tank

…in order to fulfill this treaty and destroy anything good in planet earth (and possible other milky way planets). Under this state of things, the tank soldiers are depicted as childish, lacking confidence, doubtful and cruel.

The movie has only 3 scenarios: 1 shot of a sunflower field with and without a tank, another inside the tank where most of the movie occurs, and the village through the view of the tank gunner.

Looking for the light

BTW, most of the actors, you guessed it, have not  served in any war or were or are part of any army.

http://www.mininova.org/tor/2970781

Many critics’ reviews would compare Sasha Baron Cohen’s latest movie with the previous one, Borat. Of course there are similarities between both pieces, they were both obviously created by the same man, and there are similar structure forms of many hilarious sketches – that many said would be more appropriate for youtube and that this is not a real movie. In art, there is no “real movie” concept. Either you belong to one type of films or you don’t, and this the real issue -  critics may not have enough categories to classify some films. Bruno is an amazingly hilarious piece of the 7th art. It is always surprising, striking and creative. Sometimes this comes in the form of textual jokes such as when Bruno is asking two stone-heads from a PR company what topics are up today in order to attract camera time, the girls mention Darfur and Bruno asks what’s next Darfur, what’s Darfive?

Sasha got a real pair to get into an ultimate fight championship ring and face a redneck public while french kissing his partner in the film; or when Bruno gets into an ultra-orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood and has to escape so as not to be beaten up by an angry mob. In another occasion he met what seemed to be a Al-Akhsa Brigade Martyrs member and asked him who could kidnap him. Later on Sasha got sued by this person he interviewed, who is some kind of non-profit organization worker, and got real-life threats by the real terrorist organization that this worker was supposed to belong to.

As I see it, Sasha targets in his film – first and foremost – the gay community, not leaving any stereotype in place. All of us know most gays are not that provocative, wearing huge platforms and being so effeminate. The second target would be the homophobic people, or anyone feeling that way, be it left or right wingers, westerns and easterners, Catholics and Jews alike.
I couldn’t help myself from thinking of Zoolander and of Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends. The first one also focuses on a comedy around the figure of a well known gay hair stylist and the second one, around a weird voyage into the real far left behind America, similar to the one to which the two gay “curators” belong to.

When contemplating how to rate this movie, again we face the same dilemma of rating a movie filled with violence, unethical behavior, materialism, the types of behavior that can serve as a highway to hell for persons, if hell exists. And in another part we have 2 sequences of a guy’s penis rotating and dancing, I don’t think that anyone’s libido could be aroused from these two sequences, maybe not even homosexuals. Well we know well the hypocrisy involved in these ratings.

It is ok if my kid is filled with hatred and violence from a Schwarzenegger movie, but it is not ok for him to see a male or female genitalia, which all humans have. I will let a psychiatrist deal with this enigma while he/she cries out “clear” after giving a well-earned dose of electricity to the people responsible for these ratings.

http://www.mininova.org/tor/2714054

Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell bring up a magnificent documentary around the first single-handed, non-stop, round-the-world yacht race held in 1968, the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. Two prizes were giving, a golden globe to the man who finishes first in the race, and a 5000 pounds prize for the fastest man, but that was nothing compared to have your name written in the history books. There were no participation requirements, for this race wanted also to award those sailors who were already  at sea on their private round the globe seas sailing adventure, the sailors were to start the race anytime between the 1  till the 31 of October, in order to avoid the winter weather of cape Horn.

According to the written records we have, the first to solo circumnavigate the globe seas was the american Joshua Scolum in 1895 and took him more than 3 years to accomplish with only the help of dead reckoning at his Spray. The difference this time was that it was non stop. For the inspiration of the participants, in 1967, Francis Chichester was knighted by the Queen for his personal adventures and achievements representing the UK and one of the participants, Frenchman Bernard Moitessier will be inspired by Slocum, calling his barque, Joshua. The adventure was filled with dangers and incognitos, for no one knew whether a boat or a human could take it.

Nine were the sailors who started the race, one was the sole navigator seeing back UK coast. The protagonists of the quest were 6 Englishmen (John Ridgway, Chay Blyth, Robin Knox-Johnston, Bill King, Nigel Tetley and Donald Crowhurst), 2 french nationals (Loïck Fougeron and Bernard Moitessier) and Italian Alex Carozzo. All of them were experienced sailors, but Crowhurst; six of them retired in the course of the race, 1 sank and rescued and one committed suicide. The wild South Atlantic Sea,with its five-story waves, each of them so different from the previous one, and foresees nothing about the next one was in great part responsable of this.

The solitude, you, the boat and the sea; The need for outer communication with other humans; Under these conditions you start to better knowing yourself, how do you come out and cope with situations and challenges you were never tested before? You start analyzing your creeds, your family, your country, yourself,…

The nine participants would follow the already abandoned clipper route (after the opening of the Suez and Panama canals): from the UK, south into the Atlantic ocean, to pass the cape of Good Hope, towards Australia, New Zealand, the rest of the Pacific, cape of Horn to enter back into the South Atlantic back Northwards to the UK.
This is the kind of quest not for adventure, fame, prestige or money, is a voyage into isolation and the delicate mechanisms of the mind, a battle which many thought you would finish mentally handicapped, like happened with Slocum, who suffered of metal lapses after his prolonged periods of time in completely loneliness with the waves as sole companions.

Some others thought that if it wasn’t your demons dwelling inside you, it would be the sea who´d finish you, as it happened with Joshua Scolum himself, lost in the seas eventually.

Before getting into the real protagonist of this documentary I think it deserves to mention the most intriguing figure of them all: Frenchman Moitessier. He was so mingled, so united with its maritime environment, so in peace with himself, the boat, the elements,… that right before he had almost accomplished the target and finished the race, at the point where he had already surpassed the cape of Horn and being located at the coast of Brazil pointing towards the Northern UK, he reported to his wife at Paris: “We shall meet again later”. At the time when he was already 7 months at sea and 6 weeks from home, Moistessier abandoned the race and turned his  bow again towards the cape of Good Hope, he was sailing on around the world, … for a second time (another 21.000 nautical miles).

The main character in this piece is an unknown to sea sports fans, Donald Crowhurst, an ambitious, creative and charming individual married with 4 kids, who never really made it in any of the careers he started. This was for him his chance to make it big time, to come back home as a hero, to start a new with 5000 quids, to be recognized. He signed a contract with a local promoter, for which if the race is lost, Donald will have to buy back the boat built from scratch from the promoter, meaning, he will be bankrupted, so for Donald, loosing was not an option.

In order to get some more buzz and sponsors for his voyage, he was convinced to set sail 140 miles into the opposite direction of the race, to the North, and reached the coastal village in a 2 week time for what it was supposed to take him only 3 days, instant deception involved him together with the fact that he sailed without having completed any of his security devices, he expected to have them finished aboard at least before encountering the dangers of the South Atlantic. This never happened and made him realize this was probably his last endeavor. He was expected to communicate with new paper editors any time possible to report about his position, status, etc, in order to publish articles on the Sunday Times…and this is what he did…at the beginning.

Once he reached the South Atlantic ocean, the place that made Blyth and Ridgway retired, made him realized that he would never make it, so he started sending fictitious reports of his whereabouts so, while not moving from the Brazilian coast, could wait to the other two remaining sailors to make it back northward to the UK, and choose when to join them back, without actually ever sailing the whole race. The whole plan though will require to fake a sailing journey of hundreds of days inventing all the info in the logs, something quite challenging and even impossible, for after the race, these notebooks would be thoroughly revised by judges.

To come up with all that fake info and be accurate of every single day, and make it fit.
Right after rejoining the two remaining boats in the race, Tetley and Knox, Donald made up his mind and came to the conclusion that the farse would be discovered and total humiliation was not something he was prepared to cope with. The he wrote is his notebook these words:

“when I was 5 years old, I knew all about G’d, he was an old man who would punish me if I was naughty. By the time I was twenty, I decided there was no reason to expect any assistance from G’d, if he existed at all.”

“Man was avoiding his responsibility by constantly looking to G’d for assistance. The cosmic integral, the sum of man adds up to nothing (Sum?=[0]+[0]).”

“Do we go on clinging to the idea that G’d made us or realize that it lies withing us to make G’d. By learning to manipulate the space time continuum, man will become G’d and disappear from the physical universe as we know it.”

“I have become a second generation of cosmic being. I am conceived in the womb of nature, in my own mind, in the womb of the universe. I was forced to admit that nature forces on cosmic beings the only thing they are capable of: the sin of concealment. It is a small sin for a man to comit, but it is a terrible sin for a cosmic being.”

“I am what I am and I see the nature of my offense. I would only resign this game if you would agree that in the next occasion that this game is played it will be played by the rules devised by my great G’d. It is finished. It is finished. It is the mercy.”

“11:15:00. It is the end of my game. The truth has been revealed and it will be done as my family required it to do it.”

“11:20:14 There is no reason for harmful”

Robin Knox-Johnston took the race after 312 days.

Three videos in Italian, on “The Long Way”, about Bernard Moitessier’s journey around the globe, non stop, 1 full circumnavigation of the earth + 1/3 more till Haiti:

http://www.mininova.org/tor/2917730

http://www.mininova.org/tor/2917734

John Woo, Chinese director responsible for, among others, Face Off, this time focuses on Chinese History to create this saga of two long parts that form 4 hours of an epic historical movie at the times of the Han dynasty. This is the most expensive piece made ever in Asia and you can tell already from minute one. Armies of extras, outstanding effects, well chosen script, and beautiful stars.

At first I could help myself from thinking about the seventies awesome TV series named The Water Margin, while seeing the wardrobe, the weapons, their hairdos, etc,.. This is the story of two warlords, at the sunset of the Han dynasty,that rebelled against the dictator emperor and allied to confrontation the last in the mother of all battles.

I see how the film, through the non stopping meaty action, shows to “westerners” how the Chinese culture preceded ours by hundreds of years in the invention of soccer (= Cuju), gunpowder, the use of astrology in the battle field and others. For those of you who look for a well made medieval war action film, with the right amount of blood flowing from the bodies after a blow, the right measure of martial arts, combined with great photography and all in Chinese subtitled sound, this is it.

http://www.mininova.org/tor/2687405

I tried to recollect any Harvey Keitel’s movie where he didn’t act in a fantastic fashion. This film is no exception. In this movie, Harvey plays a corrupted lieutenant of the NYC Police Department. The character is so destroyed inside that killing himself a little more wont take him lower from where he stands now. Crack, heroine and cocaine, alcohol and pills are in the daily menu  of this cop, for which the boundaries between legal and not, moral and not, law enforcement officers and criminals, these boundaries are almost nonexistent, by osmosis.

His bookmaker pursues him in order to be paid for the cops debt, his co workers don’t seem to really care about him and the ones that really show him respect and caress are the criminal and junkies. He lives in a world of being a cop only for the sub world of simple street criminals, while he behaves exactly like one of them.
He got himself so deep into trouble with black market betting that he knows the bullet with his name on it has already left the smoking barrel.

The punch line arrives when he actually finds out the moment crime perpetrators and handcuff them and takes them to where all of us expects him to, the police station, so he can get a special reward of 50 k that could partially help him to cover his debt, but instead of it, and as a kind of redemption quest, he does the only good deed in the picture, and offers a new life to the crime rapists, and put them into a bus to somewhere where they can start from scratch. The end is foreseeable as it was supposed to end in the real life.

England 1 France 2 Official Match Highlights
Uploaded by fatv. – Check out more sports and extreme sports videos.

http://www.mininova.org/tor/2744934

A comedy with Samuel L. Jackson and Nicholas Cage cannot go wrong. A respectable African american scholar professor (Jackson) has just arrived to his new summer home at a small town, when, unluckily his mid class white neighbors got it wrong when they saw a black man handling a stereo withing the house that they thought still belonged to the last white owner. They call the police and freelance TV reporters also arrived. In the proximity of local elections for town mayor, police chief wants to cause a good impression in the press and prepares his team to storm the house without any further anaysis of the situation: they almost kill the celebrity. In order to cover the mistake, they cut a deal with a small criminal (Cage) to make as if he was the celeb raptor and the chief comes to save the kidnapping. One mistakes gets to another to the amaze of both professor and kidnapper.