Five Minarets in New York

In a coincidental echo of the debate over the Ground Zero Mosque (or as Keith Olbermann might put it, the Nowhere Near Ground Zero Community Center), Turkey has just released New York Ta Bes Minare, or Five Minarets in New York, a big-budget (for Turkey – an estimated $12 million) terrorism drama which features a few familiar Hollywood faces: Showgirls’ Gina Gershon, Terminator’s Robert Patrick, and Hugo Chavez’s BFF Danny Glover.

I’m always curious about how international cinema tries to shape audience perception about the ill-named War on Terror, and how Hollywood undermines us in that conflict. I haven’t yet seen the movie, so my preliminary assessment here is based solely on my impression of the trailer (below), but based on that, it’s not difficult to see that this will be yet another morally inverted tale of bullying American bigotry and noble Muslim victimization (and if my assessment’s off the mark, I will certainly post a follow-up).

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The movie’s website hints at the message we can expect. It announces that the story “underlines America’s paranoia with the Islamic world after 9/11.” Perhaps the word “paranoia” means something different in Turkish; if it means “perfectly rational concern about the clear and present danger of Islamist attacks on American soil and interests abroad,” then that would correctly describe our stance toward the Islamic world (or it would if our administration wasn’t so cozily wrapped in a Snuggie of denial and appeasement). If by “paranoia” they mean, well, paranoia, then to suggest that America has nothing to fear from Muslim extremism but fear itself, that we have blown the threat all out of proportion, is laughable.

It’s also ironic, considering the off-the-charts paranoia pervading the Islamic world, such as their recent suspicion that the Mossad have trained sharks to destabilize the Egyptian tourist industry. Apparently Arab paranoia has now jumped those sharks.

But let’s look at the trailer and decode its messages. It begins with Gina Gershon, who plays the wife of a Turkish scholar wrongfully arrested as a terrorist suspect. After that setup, the overrated Glover, apparently portraying a Muslim, rasps, “Our faith, our way of life is under attack.” (more…)

I bet that headline got your attention!  But, as you’ll see a little later in this post, the scene in question is not really a “rape” at all.  But that didn’t keep the NY Daily News from running this headline yesterday:

‘Bye Bye Birdie’ revival on Broadway drops scene for ‘gang rape’ concern

“Just a copy editor trying to get attention by over-exaggerating a story,” you think?  That’s what I thought, too.  But here is the story with Gina Gershon’s quote: (more…)

Summer is the slow time on Broadway as theatre pros recover from their Tony Award hang-overs and try to rush out to the Island for a few days of R & R before the new season begins.  This year it seems there are a few plays aiming for early fall openings hoping to ride a crest of popularity into the always-lucrative holiday season.

Just as last season brought a record number of plays as well as stellar gross sales (despite doom-sayers in the industry) this season already looks locked and loaded with a huge number of shows scheduled to open between October 1st and the first week of May (the traditional Tony nomination cut-off).  So to help the readers of Big Hollywood plan their trip to the Great White Way (we can still say that, can’t we?), I submit the top 10 things to look for from the center/right perspective:

10.  ”Superior Donuts” – A transfer from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre (one of my personal favorite regional houses in America), the play stars “Spinal Tap”’s Michael McKean as an aging hippie who owns a donut shop in a largely black neighborhood and Jon Michael Hill (do all young Broadway actors HAVE to go by three names now?) as a 21-year-old from the neighborhood who talks his way into a job at the shop.  From the New York Times review:  ”In one of the play’s most amusing exchanges Franco challenges Arthur to name 10 black poets. Arthur names a few, then stands dumb, a look of deep concentration on his face. “It’s like watching George Bush on ‘Jeopardy!’ ” Franco cracks.” (more…)