Honoring September 11th: They Want Us to Forget

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner

“We will write our own future, and the future will be what we want it to be.” – Barack Obama

In a quiet and seemingly innocuous gesture, President Obama has designated 9/11 as “The National Day of Service and Remembrance.” Personally, I liked the ring of “Patriot Day,” and what does “service and remembrance” mean, precisely ? The idea is to get Americans to “engage in meaningful service to create change…in four key areas”: education, health, energy/environment and community renewal. None of these seems to have anything to do with honoring 9/11, but that seems to be the point: in the Huffington Post, Muslim-American playwright Wajahat Ali wrote, “In the US, we are trying to move away from focusing on 9/11 as a day of horror, and instead make it a day to recommit ourselves to national service.” An excellent Spectator article provides a blunter translation: “Nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.” Why? ”They think it needs to be taken back from the right.”

In other words, they resent the surge of patriotism and righteous outrage stirred up by the attacks, sentiments that empower the political Right. In order to advance the leftist agenda of dismantling American exceptionalism and recasting ourselves as the villain in our history books, they need Americans to put 9/11 behind us, forget the victims, forget that our enemy danced in the streets in celebration, forget that Islamic terror plots on our very shores continue to be disrupted, and forget that our rights and freedoms are under assault by a subversive civilizational jihad. (more…)

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Tags: 9/11, 9/11 hijackers, American Exceptionalism, Blocking the Path to 9/11, cosmic war
Posted Sep 11th 2009 at 7:30 am in Featured Story, Military, Politics | 218202127 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mtapson/2009/09/11/honoring-september-11th-they-wants-us-to-forget/Honoring+September+11th%3A+They+Want+Us+to+Forget2009-09-11+14%3A30%3A28Mark+Tapson

Part 2: Interview — ‘The Stoning of Soraya M.’s’ Cyrus Nowrasteh

Note: Part 1 of this 2 part interview can be found here.

The execution scene at the heart of “The Stoning of Soraya M.“ is all force and little subtlety. Some audiences might flinch at the visuals, while others may draw parallels to the violence at the core of “The Passion of the Christ.”

But director/co-screenwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh says a version of the film featuring a shortened stoning sequence didn’t test as well as the full-length movie.

“This movie is a ticking clock to an execution. That execution is a primitive rite we’re witnessing, and we need to go through each stage of it,” he says. ”It’s almost a catharsis.”

Not all audiences are ready to take the journey.

He says about five or so people typically leave the theater during test screenings once the execution starts – but roughly half return to watch the film’s finale.

Nowrasteh, who is of Iranian heritage, has been watching the news reports coming out of Iran in recent days as intensely as any viewer.

(more…)

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Tags: Bill Clinton, Bob Iger, cyrus nowrasteh, iran, Iranian protests
Posted Jun 26th 2009 at 1:13 pm in Entertainment, News, Religion | 1688462 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cftoto/2009/06/26/part-2-interview-%e2%80%94-%e2%80%98the-stoning-of-soraya-m%e2%80%99s%e2%80%99-cyrus-nowrasteh/Part+2%3A+Interview+%E2%80%94+%E2%80%98The+Stoning+of+Soraya+M.%E2%80%99s%E2%80%99+Cyrus+Nowrasteh2009-06-26+20%3A13%3A22Christian+Toto

‘The Stoning of Soraya M.’ – A Powerful, Must-See Film

As the world watches and waits for the political uprising in Iran to either succeed in toppling the brutal Khomeinist regime or be crushed by it, a movie by the name of The Stoning of Soraya M.  opens in limited release today. Far from being your typical summer fun film fare, Soraya depicts the ugliest, most brutal side of human nature and one woman’s crusade to keep it from being swept under the rug.

Directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh (The Path to 9/11) and written by Nowrasteh and his wife Besy Giffen-Nowrasteh, Soraya is based on the 1995 non-fiction book of the same name by Freidoune Sahebjam. Soraya takes place after the Islamic revolution in Iran and centers around Soraya (played by Mozhan Marnò), a woman whose husband, Ali (played by Navid Negahban), has tired of her after 20 years of marriage and wishes to discard her for a younger woman. Actually, “younger” is an understatement, as Ali lusts after a 14-year-old girl. Soraya knows about Ali’s plans, but won’t agree to a divorce because she knows she will be unable to provide for her two young daughters (the two sons will stay with Ali, of course). Ali must then come up with another scheme for getting rid of his uncooperative wife, and he uses guile, cunning and good old-fashioned blackmail to get the key players in place for what is passed off as a religious cleansing rite. (more…)

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Tags: Ali Pourtash, Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, cyrus nowrasteh, David Diaan, Freidoune Sahebjam
Posted Jun 26th 2009 at 5:03 am in Featured Story, Religion, Reviews | 1681306 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pmeister/2009/06/26/the-stoning-of-soraya-m-a-powerful-must-see-film/%27The+Stoning+of+Soraya+M.%27+-+A+Powerful%2C+Must-See+Film2009-06-26+12%3A03%3A22Pam+Meister

Part 1: Interview — ‘The Stoning of Soraya M.’s’ Cyrus Nowrasteh

Director Cyrus Nowrasteh has news for people who think the public execution scene at the heart of “The Stoning of Soraya M.” is too long, too graphic or too uncompromising in its horror. The real thing is worse. Much worse.

Nowrasteh’s “Stoning,” which debuts in select cities June 26, tells the true story of an Iranian woman accused of adultery by her narcissistic husband and subsequently stoned, per Sharia law, for her crime. The film, based on the book by journalist Freidoune Sahebjam, reveals its critical sequence via the title. But audiences will still recoil at the monstrous behavior on display.

“I want people never to forget what a stoning is,” Nowrasteh says. “I’ve seen it on tape, and it’s much worse.”

Nowrasteh, who wrote the ABC miniseries “The Path to 9/11,” read Sahebjam‘s book back in 1994 but figured no one would green light a film based on the harrowing true story. The story stuck with him all the same, and years later he and his wife, screenwriter Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, decided to try to make such a movie themselves. Wresting the legal rights to the book took time, but they had very little competition, he says. Only two Italian directors flirted with the notion of making the book into a movie, as did, briefly, director Costa-Gavras (“Missing”). (more…)

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Tags: Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, cyrus nowrasteh, Farsi, Freidoune Sahebjam, Shohreh Aghdasloo
Posted Jun 24th 2009 at 11:47 am in Entertainment, News, Religion | 1671344 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cftoto/2009/06/24/bh-interview-the-stoning-of-soraya-ms-cyrus-nowrasteh/Part+1%3A+Interview+--+%27The+Stoning+of+Soraya+M.%27s%27+Cyrus+Nowrasteh2009-06-24+18%3A47%3A16Christian+Toto

Trailer: ‘The Stoning of Soraya M.’

Directed and co-written by Cyrus Nowrasteh, “The Stoning of Soraya M.“ is based on Freidoune Sahebjam’s novel and stars Jim Caviezel and Shohreh Aghdashloo. According to a press release, it opens June 26th “in New York, Los Angeles and other key markets, with a national roll out to follow.”

More information is available at the official website.

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Tags: Blocking the Path to 9/11, cyrus nowrasteh, Freidoune Sahebjam, Jim Caviezel, john ziegler
Posted May 14th 2009 at 6:37 am in Politics, Religion, Video | 102686No Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bighollywood/2009/05/14/trailer-the-stoning-of-soraya-m/Trailer%3A+%27The+Stoning+of+Soraya+M.%272009-05-14+13%3A37%3A51Big+Hollywood

We Must Hang Together, Or We Will All Hang Separately

Big Hollywood will likely contain plenty of stories dealing with and (hopefully) overcoming the hardships associated with being a “conservative” in and around Hollywood. I want to commend those who have been able to hold on to their principles and have had the courage to share their true convictions in the face of obvious and insidious prejudice.

However, coming from an area of the “entertainment” world (talk radio and documentary films) where expressing a strong opinion is not only allowed, it is mandatory; I come at this challenge from a different perspective than many of the writers for this site. I believe that a complementary relationship between those who are just now slowly “coming out” and those of us who are already battle scarred and hardened is absolutely vital to our side having any chance in the message/information war which is currently raging, and in which we have been getting creamed, for far too long.

And make no mistake this is a war we are in. One of the many reasons we are losing so badly is that their side gets this, our side does not.

When you are in a battle like this (even one that usually doesn’t involve real bullets, but rather only the verbal variety) you need generals, infantry and diplomats all working in coordination and in the best interest of the team. In my experience, our forces are largely disorganized, discouraged and in disarray. Consequently, our soldiers, through little fault of their own, are forced to act out of their own survival instincts rather than out of what might be good for the cause.

(more…)

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Tags: cyrus nowrasteh, FOA, hollywood conservatives, How Obama Got Elected, john ziegler
Posted Jan 7th 2009 at 7:15 am in Entertainment, Media Criticism, Politics | 641756 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jziegler/2009/01/07/we-must-hang-together-or-we-will-all-hang-seperately/We+Must+Hang+Together%2C+Or+We+Will+All+Hang+Separately2009-01-07+14%3A15%3A41John+Ziegler