Cuneyt Arkin vs. Chuck Norris (6 of 6)_ The Hero and the Terror

We conclude our six-part series which examines who actually won Best Actor Oscars in the years that Turkish cinema icon Cuneyt Arkin and American action movie star Chuck Norris made films which stand out in their filmography.

Of course, the joke here is that Arkin and Norris are not exactly method actors.

Today, we conclude with the Norris vehicle "The Hero and the Terror" (1988); and which actor won that year?

A) Dustin Hoffman

B) Robert Redford

C) Peter Sellers

D) Paul Newman

E) Gene Hackman


The answer to yesterday's question was B) Jon Voight

UPDATE: The answer to this question is A) Dustin Hoffman

Chuck Norris vs. Cuneyt Arkin (5 of 6)_ The Wild Bride

We continue our series of looking at films by American action movie star of yesteryear Chuck Norris, 72, and his Turkish counterpart Cuneyt Arkin, 75, with a look at one of Arkin's 'romantic films.' "Vahsi Gelin/The Wild Bride" (1978) teamed Arkin with Turkish actress Gulsen Bubikoglu, who was just 24 years old at the time. The image above is a still from the movie which we saw on the TRT (Turkish Radio Television) while in Istanbul several years ago.

So, today, we are asking which of the following actors actually won the Best Actor Oscar for 1978. Is the answer?


A) Dustin Hoffman

B) Jon Voight

C) James Earl Jones

D) Jack Nicholson

E) Christopher Reeve


The answer to last week's quiz is A) Robert DeNiro.

http://www.cuneytarkin.com.tr

http://www.chucknorris.com

Chuck vs. Cuneyt (4 of 6)_ The Octagon

Today, we continue our quiz series with trivia questions regarding American action movie star of yesteryear Chuck Norris, 72 and his Turkish counterpart matinee idol Cuneyt Arkin, 75. For obvious reasons, neither men are kicking butt on screen these days.

For this week's question, we ask which actor won the Best Oscar in 1980 when the Norris vehicle "The Octagon," which I remember was being shown at the Towers Theatre in my hometown of Roanoke, Va., which is alas a shoe store today.

Was the winner?"

A) Robert Deniro

B) Dustin Hoffman

C) John Hurt

D) Jack Nicholson

E) Donald Sutherland


The answer to last week's question was C) George C. Scott

And, good morning to those of you in Dubai where we believe it's now 10:00 a.m., Monday morning.

SIDEBAR: Here are the correct answers to our "Dexter" series:

1) D

2) A

3) C

4) B

http://www.chucknorris.com

http://www.cuneytarkin.com.tr

Chuck Norris vs. Cuneyt Arkin (3 of 6)_ The Romatik Cuneyt

It is midnight here in New York (not really where I am at), 8:00 a.m. in Dubai, high noon in Hong Kong and 2:00 p.m. in Sydney, where ever you are you are with the Daily Vampire.

Today, we continue our series with a look at the careers of two vintage action film actors, Cuneyt Arkin of Turkey and his lesser-know counterpart (yeah, we are being sarcastic) Chuck Norris.

Arkin, now age 75, who is three years older than Norris, was also known as Cuneyt Baba (Father Cuneyt) in Tukey. He also made a lot of romantic films with Turkish screen goddess Turkan Soray, now age 67. In 1970 alone, they made many films together. One of my personal favorites is "Hayatim Sana Feda/My Life Belongs to You, Feda."

The film is patterned after Douglas Sirk melodramas from the 1950s, such as "Magnificent Obsession" and "Written in the Wind," which usually starred the late Rock Hudson.

In "Feda," Arkin plays Harun whose reckless driving causes him to hit the car driven by Soray's Zeynep, a character who is a lounge singer. She goes blind from the accident, and a guilty Harun tries to make it up to her. They fall in love. Interestingly enough, this film, came out the year I was born, which was also when "Love Story" became a huge box-office hits and one of the most questionable Best Picture nominees.

So, as we always do with these entries, we are asking which actor won the Best Oscar in 1970, the year of the 'romatik Cuneyt' (in Turkish, romantic is spelled with a 'k'). Is the answer:

A) Ryan O'Neal

B) John Wayne

C) George C. Scott

D) Jack Nicholson

E) Robert Redford

Incidentally, it is now 7:00 a.m. in Istanbul, Turkey.


The answer to last week's entry was B) F. Murray Abraham; he won the Best Actor Oscar for "Amadeus" in 1984, when Norris made "Missing in Action."

http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

http://www.cuneytarkin.com.tr

http://www.chucknorris.com

Chuck Norris vs. Cuneyt Arkin- Missing in Action

Today, we continue with our light-hearted series asking which actor won Best Actor in the years that American action movie star Chuck Norris, who has a bridge named after him in Slovenia_ of all places, or his Turkish counterpart Cuneyt Arkin, who has made over 300 films even though he is semi-retired.

Incidentally, in 1974, Art Carney won Best Actor (see last entry in series) when Cuneyt Arkin made "Once Vatan/My Country First."

We also have an entry to match this one on our other blog: http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

Today, we are asking which actor won Best Actor when Norris made "Missing in Action," a mediocre film which actually managed to have three sequels, in 1984; is the answer?

A. Albert Finney

B. F. Murray Abraham

C. Tom Hanks

D. Jeff Bridges

E. Robert Duvall

http://www.chucknorris.com

http://www.cuneytarkin.com/tr

Cuneyt Arkin vs. Chuck Norris_ (1 of 4)

We were going to dedicate a blog entry to Turkish action movie star and matinee idol Cuneyt Arkin on Friday, which was his 75th birthday, but we fell asleep in the Salt Lake City Public Library (yes, that is a joke!; we don't even live in Utah).

Arkin is best-known in the West for his 1982 film "Dunyayi Kurtaran Adami/The Man Who Saved the World," which is more commonly known as "The Turkish Star Wars."

But, we are going to refer back to 1974 when Arkin starred in a film with Turkish starlet Fatma Girkik titled "Once Vatan," it was about a Turkish solider who goes back to Cyprus to fight the Greeks all by himself, and, of course, Cuneyt wins.


So, we are going to simply ask which actor won an Oscar for Best Actor in 1974, the year this film, which I saw circa 1993 on the TRT  (Turkish Radio Television), while I was in Antalya, Turkey.

Is the answer?:

A) Art Carney

B) Jack Nicholson

C) Gene Hackman

D) Dustin Hoffman

E) Al Pacino

We will have the answer in a few short days....

http://www.cuneytarkin.com.tr/

http://www.chucknorris.com

http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com (for an entry on Chuck Norris)

http://www.slcpl.org (The Salt Lake City Public Library; it is quite a nice building, actually)

Top 10 List- Places Around the World I Want to Visit

Today, we debut my weekly Top 10 lists with a Top 10 list of places I want to visit outside the United States. Well, no Canadian cities made the list, actually. So, I suppose I could say outside North America. Of course, those who know me will be less surprised by my off-beat choices.

1. Tashkent, Uzbekistan- I always thought this would be a perfect place to shoot a spaghetti western rip-off with Turkish actor Cuneyt Arkin (pictured here). Of course, Arkin, a '70s matinee idol in Istanbul, is now 72 years old, and he has already been in several such ripoffs, including "Kucuk Kovboy/The Little Cowboy." But, Tashkent also boasts Central Asia's only metro system!

2. Bergen, Noway- We love Norway here, so this is a logical choice though we've never actually been there! It is home to the Norwegian soccer team Brann and the folk singer Magnet (yes, that is his actual stage name!).

3. Thessaloniki, Greece- Yes, we would love to visit the second-largest Greek city and the birthplace of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ('course, we had to throw that in to appease the relatives in Konya, Turkey). The city that is quite hard to spell also boasts an international film festival.

4. Mus, Turkey- This very remote eastern Turkish city is on the list simply because I was going to actually travel there for a friend's wedding but I had to get to Istanbul to catch a flight back to Newark International Airport in New Jersey. Mus sits on the Murat River overlooking the Kurtik Mountains. The Greeks apparently have no territorial interests in this city (hopefully, they will get the joke; not so sure about my fellow Turks- who are not known for having a good sense of humor).

5. Akureyi, Iceland- 24 hours of daylight in the summertime! This city has only 17,000 residents which makes it the size of Carrboro, NC, but it is somehow Iceland's second-largest city! It also boasts an 18-hole golf course.

6. Pontevedra, Spain- This city of 81,576 residents simply makes the list because I have lots of postcards from there. It is known for a Roman bridge which crosses the Lerez River.

7. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil- I think everyone knows about this place which was incidentally the setting of the 1984 Michael Caine film "Blame it on Rio!"

8. Tangiers, Morocco- A city which attracts hippies, vagabonds and famous authors like the late William Burroughs who set his novel "Naked Lunch" there.

9. St. Petersburg, Russia- This makes my list because a Facebook friend of mine recently visited there, and it looks a fabulous place. It is home to the famed Hermitage Museum and it overlooks the Neva River (not the Volga as I once wrongly believed).

10. Kyoto, Japan- This city if the former imperial capital of Japan---enough said!

SIDEBAR: Domestically, Boulder, Colo., has been called "The Best Place to Raise Abducted Children" for a third year in a row by "The Onion."* The cover article had the following quote which we sincerely loved: "The residents here are quick to smile and say hello, but never ask you why you have an Asian baby."

*_For those of you visiting us from Uzbekistan, "The Onion" is a satirical journal.

Dead or Alive- Kemal Sunal (12 of 12)

We close out our long-running and perhaps slightly off-putting series with a profile of Turkish comic actor Kemal Sunal, considered by many to be 'The Turkish Charlie Chaplin.' In fact, one of his films bears a close resemblance in plot to Chaplin's "City Lights."

Sunal was born in the eastern Turkish city of Malatya in 1944. Like many Turkish comic actors including the duo of Zeki Alasya and Metin Akpinar, Sunal transfered from the theatrical stage to cinema. His first play was entitled "The Unwilling Doctor."

He got his first big cinematic break with the smash comedy hit "Hababam Sinifi" (The Outrageous Class), released in 1975 the film has a huge cult following both in Turkey and among the Turkish diaspora living in Europe. It was followed by many sequels. In the orginal film, Sunal pulls several hilarious antics including building a tunnel to escape from the school grounds and secretly smoking in the school's attic.

Sunal usually played poor/working class stiffs and the films he appeared in addressed the social issues of the 1970s and 1980s, a turbulent time in Turkish history in which the country's far-right and far-left took up violence to spread their political aims.

The unique aspect of Sunal's comedy was that it was highly political, yet also mainstream. The films, for the most part, were liberal enough to examine the plight of the working class in Turkey yet centrist enough not to offend authorities who were jailing more radical cinematic figures like the controversial actor/director Yilmaz Guney,best known for his Cannes award-winning film "Yol" (1982) who was frequently in prison during the '70s.

Turkish cinema during this period reflected by right and left sentiments as the action star Cuneyt Arkin, aka "The Turkish Chuck Norris," appeared in over-the-top films like "Once Vatan/My Country First" (1974) in which his character, a Turkish agent, goes to Cyprus to basically kick Greek ass (the film was made while Turkey was in a brief war with Greece over Cyprus and issues from 1974 are still mostly unreolved regarding the matter).

I profiled Sunal's 1980 comedy "Gol Krali/The Golden Boot" for a thesis I wrote on Turkish cinema while a graudate student at Hollins University in Roanoke, Va., in 2005. The film which revolves around an average, everyday man who finds that he has superlative soccer skills and he is thus able to somehow play for Istanbul powerhouse GalataSaray in their game against rival Istanbul team Fenerbahce. SPOILERR ALERT: Well, this is a fairly predictable one as Sunal is able to score several goals and lead the team to victory.

Some of Sunal's other significant films include the cult classic "Tosun Pasha"
(1975), "Kapicilar Krali/King of the Doormen" (1976) and "Devlet Kushu" (The State Bird) (1980).

My friend Bilge Ebiri wrote an excellent article about Turkish cinema which appears in the web site www.cinema-scope.com

Though the article focuses on current Turkish cinema and does not mention Sunal's works, Ebiri does touch upon on how the social upheveal of Turkey during the '70s was reflected in the cinema of the time, and the trend continues though Turkish films have become slightly less political in recent years as has American cinema.

SIDEBAR: We were saddened to learn that '80s teenage star Corey Haim died of an apparent drug overdose in Los Angeles. He will likely be best remembered for his role in "The Lost Boys" (1987).

SIDEBAR TWO: Today is the 70th birthday of our own right-wing action movie star Chuck Norris. I actually watched Norris' mid-80s film "Invasion USA" and Michael Moore's left-wing comedy "Canadian Bacon," which came out a few years later (Moore's only feature film as director to date) on dvd in the same weekend. It was very amusing.

SIDEBAR THREE: We should mention that the subject of our last entry in this series Topol is indeed alive and well though he does not act in films very often these days.