TURKISH DELIGHT
April 22, 2007 -- OZGU Namal had a dream. As a teenager in Istanbul, she would stand in front of the mirror after taking a bath, wrap a towel around her head and pretend to be a Hollywood star.
She has yet to realize her fantasy, but at the tender age of 28 she is Turkey's hottest young actress - star of screen, stage, TV and commercials. Not to mention magazine cover girl.
Last weekend she received a new honor, the top-actress prize at the 26th Istanbul International Film Festival. It was for the love story "International," one of three fest movies in which she appeared.
"I am so excited, my knees are trembling," the petite, dark-haired woman exclaimed as she accepted her prize at a ceremony broadcast live on Turkish TV.
Said an Istanbul newspaper, "This [trembling legs] came as quite a dangerous situation, as the actress was wearing very high heels." Luckily, she never lost her balance.
Earlier that week, Namal and I, with a translator or two helping, had a pleasant chat at the festival. Dressed casually in jeans, Namal said she still dreams of going Hollywood.
"I stayed in Los Angeles for three months in 2001, and attended UCLA language school. I stayed with an American family. Los Angeles is a beautiful city, and I have dreams of living there as an actress." She even dreams of winning an Oscar.
Her idols include Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Mel Brooks, Pedro Almodovar and French director Gaspar Noe. Surprisingly, she's a fan of Noe's brutal 2002 shocker "Irreversible."
She would love to work for Woody Allen, so I asked if he knew of her wish. "He will learn from your story," she replied. "Life is full of surprises."
More than 200 movies unreeled at the Istanbul festival, which ran for 16 days at six theaters on two continents (Europe and Asia).
Two movies that I saw there are worthy of note: Goran Paskaljevic's "The Optimists," a funny and at times sick film from Serbia, and Danish director Peter Schonau Fog's "The Art of Crying," a sensitive study of father-daughter incest.
New Yorker Tom DiCillo's "Delirious," with Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt, won a special jury prize.
The top honor, the Golden Tulip, was taken by "Reprise," Norwegian helmer Joachim Trier's homage to the French New Wave.
V.A. Musetto is film editor of The Post. Vam@nypost.com
For more on the Turkey Talk series in the NewYork Post:
Part-1 Off to Istanbul
Part-2 Arrived in sunny Istanbul
Part-3 Beating jetlag
Part-4 Defying terrorists
Part-5 Party time in Istanbul
Part-6 Merhaba from Istanbul
Part-7 Ozgu Namal interview
Part-8 Take a lesson from the folks in Istanbul
Part-9 The End
"Why didn't Turks already have an established tradition of horror movies?" This question has been asked over the last few years. The first answer may be that we haven't had an established genre of horror literature up until now. From this perspective, it's difficult to say how much "Hayalet Kitabı" [the Ghost Book] by Doğa Yücel belongs to horror literature or how similar the Taylan brothers' movie is to a pure horror movie. Their film was about the adventures of a group of young students locked up in a school, we cannot say it is pure comedy, with scenes like where one of the students sees an ugly image of himself in the mirror, or another scene where a spider-like creature crawls on his face. Despite its relative lack of success, "Okul" still impresses by being the first in its field.
Expectations should have been kept very low for Orhan Oğuz, a director who makes a point out of saying "I don't watch horror movies" in his statements to the press, however, he must have thought that he could tackle the difficult task of shooting a horror movie. Unfortunately, all one cay say after watching the movie is that he failed miserably. While you are preoccupied with how a horror movie can possibly be shot without having any exposure to the genre, we'll also take a look at the state that actors such as İpek Tuzcuoğlu, Ece Uslu, Özgü Namal, Nihat İleri and Okan Yalabık were in when attending the movie's premiere.
Similar to "Büyü," "Dabbe" used the Holy Quran as a reference also combining elements of horror films of the Fareast. Director Hasan Karacadağ, who we have apparently imported from Japan, created a low-budget flick whose main problem was that the cast were acting as if their audience and co-stars were Japanese. And much to our surprise, when we discovered that the movie had been influenced by a Japanese production "Kairo," the whole thing left a bad taste in our mouths.
Biray Dalkıran, another first time director, comes from a background in the commercial industry. His movie "Araf" was unanimously cited as the worst movie of 2006 by critics. (Maybe first time directors taking on a genre that is as difficult as horror is the reason for all these unfortunate movies). "Araf" tells the story of a young woman who is forced to have an abortion after she finds out she is pregnant as a result of an illicit relationship. The component of horror in the movie begins when the aborted fetus comes back to find its mother. 
Twenty one-year-old Togan Gökbakar's Hollywood-inspired movie "Gene," (Gen) borrowed a little from Kubrick's "The Shining" in terms of its exploitative storyline, which can be applied well as we see in movies like "Identity" (Kimlik). In the storyline, two homicide detectives and a new resident doctor are stranded in a mental institution and try to find their way out of this mystery. "Gen" resembled a bad episode of the "X-Files," and although when compared to its former two counterparts had a "Citizen Kane" feel to it; with its bad acting and unconvincing story line, fell short of expectations.
The Taylan siblings, leaving their first movie attempt "Okul" (School) and the accompanying teenage spirit behind them, presentedus with "Küçük Kıyamet." (Minor Judge-ment Day) The movie that premiered at the end of 2006 deals with a family that lives in Turkey's south who suffers from multiple earthquakes and decides to move to a desolate town's even more desolate home.
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