Lost Transmissions [2019)

This is the worst movie I’ve ever seen.

QAnon.

Katharine O’Brien should have failed film school.

Or she should enroll in film school, submit this film for her final project, and then flunk out.

This is the most unartistic hunk of shit I have ever sat through.

For fuck’s sake.

It takes a special lack of talent to make a Simon Pegg movie suck.

But this bitch did it.

And she had some help.

Juno Temple is a horrible, talentless fucking actress.

Jesus God.

So bad.

Especially next to the amazing talents of Simon Pegg.

Pegg is decent here.

Juno Temple is all-world bad.

Born of a communist family.

Makes sense.

Nina Temple.

U.K. commies.

Nina.

Sister of Julien Temple.

Nepotism.

No-talent Juno gets this gig.

Julien Temple has talent.

A lot of it.

Juno Temple has no talent.

At all.

Whatsoever.

But just when you think this film can’t get any worse, Harley fucking Quinn pops up courtesy of vapid null Alexandra Daddario.

Lots of nepotism.

Emilio Q. Daddario.

Connecticut.

Democratic Party.

OSS.

Fort Meade.

You are watching a movie.

One in which Nakasone kisses Michael Hayden’s ass.

And Colin Powell’s ass.

Who else inflicted this film upon the world?

Filip Jan Rymsza.

Shame!!!

The music isn’t horrible.

Hugo Nicolson does alright.

Gravitas Ventures should have chucked this film directly in the nearest trash bin.

Straight-to-video would have been too good a fate for this moronic feature.

Tribeca Film Festival should have categorically denied this film a venue.

Because it is utter shite.

De Niro loves the Chinese commies.

Li Shaohong.

Liu Fendou.

Li Yang.

Keep the money flowing to De Niro and Tribeca.

Then we have to suffer through the maudlin coda with Tao Okamoto.

Nepotism everywhere.

Richard Harris’s son Jamie.

No talent anywhere except for Simon Pegg.

And Hugo Nicolson.

But mainly Pegg.

This is a fucking movie.

Q: What makes for a good movie?

A: The exact opposite of all the rubbish crammed into this godawful flick

Nepotism.

Robert Schwartzman in his cousin Sofia Coppola’s films.

Sofia has talent.

Quite a bit of talent.

Unlike the director of Lost Transmissions.

What ever happened to Q?

Almost one year since the stolen election.

Our military cucked out.

A bunch of fucking pussies.

Commies.

Mark Milley.

Michael Gilday.

Lloyd Austin.

Commies all.

Fuck ’em!

Talia Shire’s son.

Talia had talent.

A lot of it.

Unlike Juno Temple.

Who has none.

Then you get Schwartzman’s nepotism brother Jason.

Jason Schwartzman.

Band Rooney for Robert.

Geffen.

Must be nice.

Phantom Planet for Jason.

Epic MCA Geffen (2) Interscope.

Must be nice.

Polish Jews.

You don’t say…

Italian Catholic.

Ok.

Uncle Francis Ford.

Cousin Nicolas Cage.

Nepotism.

Jewish Catholic.

Uh huh.

Weezer.

Lame.

The Strokes.

Must be nice.

But the main offender is the screenplay.

By director Katharine O’Brien.

For fuck’s sake.

Ten minutes worth of material spun out into a 105-minute wank fest.

Yeah.

O’Brien does not have control of her craft.

No one (not even herself) should have funded this folly.

This film has no plot.

…and not in a cool way!

It is just the Jew bitch with the big nose chasing Simon Pegg around screaming “Theo” for 105 minutes.

Lame, nepotistic tripe.

The Prague International Film Festival should be ashamed for enabling this shit.

Best actor?

Ok.

Best actress?!?

You gotta be fucking kidding me!!!

And the GRAND PRIX???????

God damn.

ANYTHING would be better than this film.

Give me 105 minutes of Czech TV commercials.

It would be better than this.

Trump loves Pfizer, Israel, and America [maybe].

In that order.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-i-got-the-pfizer-125703879.html?guccounter=1

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/trump-says-israel-literally-owned-congress-in-interview-683759

Trump lost me when he started shilling for Pfizer.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html

CDC lowballs it.

https://openvaers.com/index.php

For a person who supposedly reads several newspapers a day, Donald Trump sure is one dumb motherfucker.

He owes at least 9,367 apologies to the families of those who perished due to the vaccines he rushed to market through Operation Warp Speed.

But he’s not fighting for you, Mr. and Mrs. America.

As you are losing your jobs because of the Biden vaccine mandate.

Trump wants us to fight the rigged election.

But he is not fighting for us.

He is ENCOURAGING people to get these deadly shots.

How many newspapers does one have to read in order to pretty quickly conclude that the COVID vaccines are neither safe nor effective?

And in case you wanna pretend Pfizer (the most deadly vaccine in America according to VAERS data) didn’t get any OWS funding, you must admit that the MASSIVE U.S. government preorder allowed them to scale up production.

It was an advance.

Hell…Trump even funded the AstraZeneca clot shot.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201219231756/https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/explaining-operation-warp-speed/index.html

N.B. Janssen = Johnson & Johnson [vaccines developed in the Netherlands by Belgian JnJ subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals]

Recapping:

Johnson & Johnson [Janssen] $456 mil. + $1 bil. = $1.456 bil.

AstraZeneca at least $1.2 bil.

Pfizer $1.95 bil.

Moderna $4.1 bil.

Again, Trump RUSHED these vaccines to market.

And left us at the mercy of Joe Biden and the globalists who are now killing us with them.

Either we can take the #NeitherSafeNorEffective vaccines, or we can lose our jobs.

We can be refused organ transplant surgery.

We can be kicked out of the U.S. armed forces.

We can be fired from NYPD and FDNY.

Where’s Trump?

Sure would be nice if he called the vaccines bullshit (which they most certainly are).

He is so at ease in calling bullshit on ANYTHING in this world, but not when it comes to these vaccines.

Ask yourself Y.

Let’s go, Brandon!

-PD

Hudutların Kanunu [1966)

I could have sworn the titles said Hududların Kanunu, but there’s never any mistakes on Wikipedia, right?

So we are going with Hudutların Kanunu.

The Law of the Border.

And it is such an honor to review another Turkish film.

I must say, this one really “spoke” to me.

Not only does Yılmaz Güney play the lead role of Hidir, but this same actor also wrote the screenplay.

As I watched Yılmaz Güney’s wonderful portrayal of the smuggler Hidir, I was reminded of Antonin Artaud’s acting in La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc.

Güney’s penetrating eyes and stoic face are very similar to Artaud’s physical features.

But not only that.

It occurs to me that Güney bears a striking resemblance to a more contemporary figure: Vladimir Putin.

This is all the more interesting when one considers that Güney was born Yılmaz Pütün.

Hmmm…

Güney was a Zaza Kurd who apparently got in trouble often with the Turkish government.

He died an early death at age 47 (in 1984).

Whether Hudutların Kanunu is propaganda is beside the point.

It certainly has traits of propaganda films, but it’s such a damn good movie that it doesn’t really matter.

Yes, there is a social justice angle to Güney’s story, but much credit should go to the wonderful directing job of Ömer Lütfi Akad.

Though Güney himself was a director as well, he did not direct this film.

Güney, by the way, had a fascinating life (including an escape from prison in 1981 and a subsequent Palme d’Or at Cannes for the film Yol).

[Sounds a bit like Timothy Leary’s prison-break and rendezvous in Switzerland with Ash Ra Tempel.]

If my numbers are correct, Güney acted in 14 films released in 1966 (!) [including this one] and also directed one as well.

Only one copy of Hudutların Kanunu survived Ahmet Kenan Evren’s 1980 coup in Turkey.

I would describe this wonderful film as being like a 1960s Turkish version of Sicario.

Though The Law of the Border is not a big-budget movie (a military officer comically says “let’s surround them” when he only has three soldiers [himself included]), the film is overall convincing. It conveys a very powerful story.

As stated earlier, the principal activity at issue is smuggling.

What could be more timely to this day and age?

In the US it is drugs (from Mexico), and in Turkey it is perhaps other things (coming in and out of Syria).

And if the main character looks like Putin?!?

Well, it certainly confuses the meaning, but it still makes it like a Salvador Dalí dream.

It’s like a perfect storm of symbolism.

Furthermore, besides being a film set on a border, a main issue is education in Turkey.

This is, once again, a very timely issue.

As you might have heard last year, there were many protests by high school students in Turkey about the trend of religious schools replacing secular (or science) schools.

Incidentally, our director Ömer Lütfi Akad went to the oldest high school in Turkey: Galatasaray Lisesi in Istanbul. The school was started in 1481.

But let me tell you something important…

This film is very entertaining!!!

The gunfights!

Whizz! Bing! Pow!

It reminds me a bit of Howard Hawks’ Scarface from 1932.

Also at issue in this film is the concept of change.

Can a person change their beliefs?

Like me…

Can I change my beliefs?

I am 39.

Yılmaz Güney was 29 at the time of this film.

Can we change our beliefs?

And should we?

For Güney’s character Hidir, changing his beliefs is a Herculean effort.

And the moral of the somewhat-propagandistic story is that he’s a hero…JUST FOR TRYING.

He tried to change.

He makes a valiant effort.

A bit like Samuel L. Jackson’s character Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction.

This is the challenge for the world.

To look ourselves in our mirrors and make an effort.

Not physically (necessarily), but philosophically.

I’m not here to offer you propaganda.

But I am very concerned with the situation the real Vladimir Putin has been put in in Syria.

Why do we fight? [to echo the old series of American propaganda films from WWII]

We fight for the same reason anyone else does.

Or rather, Putin fights because he has drawn a line.

No more American aggression.

Syria is his line.

It’s not a game.

It’s real blood and real tears.

Proxy wars are not like AGMs (annual general meetings).

They are more like air-to-ground missiles (AGMs).

War is not a strictly academic affair.

It’s messy. It’s sad. It’s unnecessary (most of the time).

And the US and Russia have painted themselves into a corner.

That corner is Syria.

Perhaps Hudutların Kanunu is the Sholay of Turkey.

Perhaps it is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Anatolia.

One thing is sure: Yılmaz Güney, “the Ugly King” (Çirkin Kral), was a brilliant man.

-PD

2 Comments

paulydeathwish

musician and film critic

Tag Archives: screenplay

Lost Transmissions [2019)

Hudutların Kanunu [1966)