Labyrinth, the Turkish Movie (‘Labirent’)

When I was in Turkey I saw and exhibit in the museum for the decades of Turkish film.  I was impressed by the exhibit. Later I told East European friends how I’d seen all these films on display and what I’d seen was very talented.  They told me they loved Turkish films and that this is what they grew up on. Istanbul was the Hollywood of the East.

Well, Labirent (Labyrinth) was spectacular.  Tom Clancy, Tom Cruise, Angeline Jolie, and 007 all rolled up in one.  Made in Europe, mostly Germany and Turkey the back ground was incredible. Lots of those wonderful scenes of ancient cities.  The real find was the actors and actress.  Atimucin Esen played Fikret, the central character, the police spy operative in search of a terrorist cell.  What a great actor!  Melted Cumbul played Reyhan the partner who was not only deeply beautiful but also very intelligent and when she shot and fought there was a truth about it that’s not always present in the lipstick feminist Hollywood girls. Everything about the acting was real and human and meaningful. 

Tolga Ornek  was the director and did the screen play as well. It was so moving but in unpredictable ways. None of the stereotypical car chase sequences we’ve come to love from the west but fast paced foot chases and counter intuitive switches,with short rapid scene changes to maintain momentum. The car chases were there but different. Indeed everything was refreshing in the photography and angles.  The characterization was rich. .  I couldn’t help but think of the French Connection. It really was right up there with he best of thrillers and action movies. 

The subtitles were great but breaking up the film was the English dialogues when Fikret met with the English Intelligence head, Hugh Spencer played most believably by Martin Turner.  Yurdaer Okur was a really believable intelligent bad guy as was Altman Gordon playing Yousuf Zawas, the elder..

The plot was simple. Internet chatter, a leak here and a counter leak there, and a clue here and a clue there, all the while the hunt progressed with bombers going off and the action crescendoing to the big event.

The synagogue scene was so touching.  The children and family scenes all so moving.  It was heart rending at times but overall just a great French Connection type race against time.

Well done. I’m so impressed with Turkish film and look forward to seeing a whole lot more. The whole cast was great and deserving of comment but I’d  just say.  see the film.  Enjoy a great thriller. It was released in Germany in 2011 but is out on NetFlix 2015.  Great movie Two thumbs up!

Thomasina's Cafe, Bistro and Bakery, Princeton, BC

I love Thomasina's Cafe in Princeton.  Laura and I found it first last year and looked forward to returning.  Great coffee ,great meals, great service, and great atmosphere.  We sat outside on the street with Gilbert watching the world of Princeton pass by.  The picturesque bridge leading to Tulameen a lovely view.

The coffee shop idea was made famous by Starbucks and Blenz but I remember the first one I encountered was in Marin County California. No doubt they developed in a lot of places in the late 70’s and 80’s. They were a distinct creation akin to the development of the English pub.

The Turkish coffee shop went back to the 1700’s but was really a place for men to smoke and drink. I loved the ones I visited in Istanbul.This western coffee shop idea was distinctive in it’s feminine elegance.  Thomasina’s decor is light and thoughtful.

The unique western coffeeshop often family owned, certainly has none of the factory efficiency of marvellous McDonald’s with it’s excellent McCafe coffee. Thomasina's had a much more refined ambience.

The trucker diner coffee was more about the meals and cowboys.   The coffee was at times questionable. The English tea house was all about the fine Wedgewood china and exotic teas. Living in London I did enjoy these.  In Victoria the Empress Hotel still has a fine high tea service. The western coffeehouse seemed to take off from this with an emphasis on coffee. In Amsterdam the coffeeshop was all about marijuana. It was hard to write at my laptop with all the second hand smoke.

Thomasina's Cafe not only serves a variety of coffees including the cappucino’s we enjoyed daily but also has fresh baked baquettes and muffins.  Locals came and went each day we were there clutching to their hearts loaves of fresh baked bread and pastries.  It was like a little sliver of Paris. The bread we had was utterly delicious.  They have a gelato and ice cream bar too.

They also sold local hand poured soy candles. We bought a sage grass one and burned it all week in our Riverside Cabin enjoying the rich fragrance it gave our room each night.  But candles and hand made pottery mugs are consistent with the western feminine coffeehouse theme.   I don’t believe these coffeehouses could had developed before the 60’s. They’re faintly reminiscent of times when girls wore flowers in their hair.  Then they really took off with computers and iPhones.

Thomasina's had the added bistro with quiche we loved and other sandwiches and light repastes. 

I remember the very first one of these coffeehouses that migrated to  Bombai.  It took a decade in an era when a decade was what it took for a meme to move around the world. Today given the internet and almost universal television the time is sometimes only days or weeks.   All the other cafe’s and restaurants in  the city now called Mumbai  were distinctly Indian yet here was this one cafe with white walls, flowers, special coffees and a touch of Marin elegance.  There were beautiful educated young ladies in colourful saris chatting safely. It was the mid 80’s. I think they served chai tea but I remember the espresso. With sufficient hot water this powerful brew was called an Americano. 

 It wasn’t long before the Starbuck’s chain became part of the Jetsetter routine.   Sitting in Thomsina I could be anywhere in the world and those sitting there with me might have flown in from any first world destination. Only the middle and upper classes would pay the price of designer coffees knowing they were paying as much for peace and atmosphere. Where the Starbucks has lost much of it’s original panache, the small family based coffee shops catering to local needs and to passing tourists have excelled.

I love these places for connecting to the internet.  The internet cafe’s were dominated by the digital geek while Thomasina retains the centrality of coffee, conversation and a light meal.  It’s omelettes were simple and unsurpassed.

In Winnipeg the first of these elegant third spaces developed in Osborne Village.  I remember leaving a week of medical call, emergency and obstetrics, to enjoy a light lunch in the Village.  It was such a reprieve from the hustle.  Sometimes the cafe’s have had the international papers. They’re 20th and 21st century creations, the best of the best.  

Thomasina’s made Laura and my stay in Princeton all that much better, especially being able to sit outside on the patio with our little dog reminiscing about our patio dining in Rome.  There vespas drove by us whereas in Princeton it was Harley's.

Istanbul Graffitti, Turkey

The government does an admirable job of keeping the city clean. There’s little graffiti of the normal sordid repetitive north american kind. The sad fact about graffiti is that some of the artist are really talented and because there is so much schlock the best of the best getting painted over by the clean freaks.  That said there was some lovely street art in an area of the city which the locals are trying very hard to save from a shopping mall hotel complex.  Right now the area has that Left Bank Paris flavour that spawns real artistic and intellectual creativity.
The struggle that’s going on in Istanbul today was immortalized by Joni Mitchel’s song that said “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”  The struggle over the park with a fight between police and locals at Taksim Square was the same competition of ideology - high rise mentality versus trees. There’s no ’third space’ in Istanbul. The Taksim park which my new Friend, Deborah had been through was also the subject of a very fine art work which we saw at the Istanbul Modern Museum.  One day bulldozers came in and the next students stood before them. This was followed by politicians who couldn’t be arrested taking a stand against the police and bull dozers. Then hundreds of thousands joined in including footballers who were famous.  There was tear gas and the normal cast of suspects and then the police left.  The park remains.  It’s a lovely place.  I love ‘green space’ or ’third spaces’ in these great cities.
Vancouver has its famous Stanley Park, loved and used by all the city. The encroachment there is not by bulldozers since we’ve been fortunate to keep them out. Increasingly addicts and alcoholics who spend their rent cheques on drugs are sleeping rough in the park and threatening to burn the place down with their open fires.  Recently a Downtown Eastside Park was taken over by a tent city, claiming allegiance to Occupy, which in New York was a wholly different phenomena than this tent city.
Urban planning and city dynamics are strained always with the history of riots in Byzantine Constantinople as just evidence of the age old conflicts that arise in cities.  In Montreal the graft and corruption of the city officials these last few years in Canada made the middle east look like choir boys. Millions of dollars were pocketed by city officials to allow all manner of abuse of the French Canadian population and it’s city.  The “enquiry’ , as so many such enquiries are  continues, but is limited and most likely the real kingpins will continue their graft and corruption while their cronies get away to do dirt another day.  In Vancouver the Portland Hotel Society had such a case of gross corruption and abuse of public funding but got off with loss of job and keeping of million dollar homes bought with the noney that was supposed to go to the homeless.
I couldn’t at my age be ‘holier than thou’ with the corruption cases I heard of in Istanbul because we have our own. However our graft isn’t covered up by ‘religious claims’ but just seen as white collar crime.  In Istanbul, probably because so many people among the radical Moslem population are so poorly educated the leadership can claim to be acting for god when indeed they’re just serving their own lust and greed. Apparently some palace is being built with public funds by the outwardly pious.  Istanbul needs a dose of our ‘televangelists’ who were caught literally with their pants down and hands in the cookie jar.  The trouble is the Imans as we seen with the Charlie Hebno killing have convinced the populace that ‘transparency’ isn’t good for Allah, whereas I believe ‘we’re as sick as our secrets’ and can only have good politicians with ‘open society’.  Otherwise psychopaths will continue to masquerade as saints while stealing from the children, the widows, the poor and the old.  Istanbul seems to be having this problem on a larger scale than Vancouver. But Vancouver is young and 2 million whereas Istanbul is 12 million.  The more the merrier when it comes to ‘white collar crime’ .
 

Trici Venola - Drawing on Istanbul

It was a delight to meet Trici, first in New Town then next at the Crimea Memorial near the Galata Tower in Istanbul.
“I mostly draw in the winter because I’m so busy guiding in the summer.’  We’d been invited  for lunch with Father Ian and others from the Christ Church.  A continuation of the normal after church coffee and tea.  I loved the area that Trici walked me through. “They often don’t realize that once you destroy something old you can never make it old again.'
It’s been Trici's passion to record the out of the way ancient bits.  “They want to put up a high-rise parking lot complex in this area but it’s full of old ruins.  As well it’s a vibrant community of cafe’s  where artists and locals congregate.  The idea of a flashy modern hotel complex is right out of sync with the community.  Yet shiny, new and big is where the new money is so it may well go ahead.”
I’d heard often of this conflict between developers and community.  Were it not for the whole “heritage” movement cities around the world would be destroyed by modernity no different than they’d been destroyed by alien invaders.   It’s a different twist of Joni Mitchell’s famous song, “ they paved paradise to put up a parking lot’.
I so enjoy England’s Prince Charles insights into urban planning in this regard.  He's been at the forefront of the heritage movement. It’s all a matter of balance.  It’s obvious too that Turkey’s first president Ataturk understood the importance of history. The concern is with the leaderships today who often lack the genius and vision of yesterday's greats.
As tourists we don't need to travel from the new world to the old world to see fancier hotels and parking lots.  Indeed I challenge anyone to show me a more modern and beautiful city than my own Vancouver.  There the ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright are as important to architecture as the preservation of the skyline laws are to old Istanbul.
The very best portrayal of 'developer arrogance and insanity' is in Douglas Adam's "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" where the Vorgon's destroy our planet earth  to put up a faster intergalactic space way!
I loved Trici’s drawings. She showed me a 13th century byzantine church that was now a car wash.  The owner of the car wash loved his location, the natural beauty and history and Trici’s love for this.  As a result famous artists and entertainers, she guided were brought to this shrine. There’s a wonderful irony this former baptismal site is now a thriving car wash.
Along the way we saw  amazing graffiti art. This was truly poetic ‘art’ and not the all too common doggerel graffiti  that really benefits from whitewash. But who decides what is ‘art’ in the street? I don’t think it should be left to ‘ city maintenance’ workers.  Would they recognize a Banksy?
Trici as well as guiding teaches drawing in Istanbul, combining her love of the city and her joy of drawing.

Istanbul - out and about

I spent time just walking about Istanbul.  I took a lot of pictues. There was another Armenian Church I looked in. There was the main street of New Town.  I'd stayed in the Amber Hotel in Old Town but moved to the Riva Hotel by Taksim Square.  Both hotels were excellent but the flavour of old town and new town were very different which each having it's merits.  Old Town and New Town are on the European side but there's also the Asian side which adds another dimension to the diversity that is Istanbul .The New Town is in the district of Beyoglu. I was amused to get a picture of a lingerie store showing that the wold over men like women in kinky nurse uniforms.  I took a taxi a few times and just snapped some shots out the window.  It’s a beautiful city with sights everywhere to be seen.  A real mix of old, new and ancient.

Taksim, New Town.

Riva, the very nice hotel I stayed in by Taksim Square.

Advertising poster.




Two great guys who were selling riverboat tours. When I asked them directions they got out their gps and directed me right to where I needed to be. So many of the Turkish people were so helpful like this. One fellow Mustafa walked me several blocks to my destination one eventing when the taxi let me off short of where I was going.



Star pf David on Synagogue near Galata Tower

Ophthalmology Hospital. Galata Tower.