Arab Cinema and Other Musings..

Today is Taba Liberation Day! God bless the Egyptian Army, no classes! -I had a professor say that. Taba is a small, town on the border with Israel. It was the last town to be given back to Egypt following the 6-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. The university did not announce that classes would be canceled until a week ago, so I would guess this is not a big holiday.

My friend Oliver is landing in Cairo today, as well. The plan is to go Alexandria for the weekend and then he will be here for the following week and weekend- he is spending his spring break here! I may finally go to the pyramids while he is here, too! More on Alexandria when we return..

Last Thursday, I went with a bunch of friends to see the movie 'The Watchmen'. It is based off a graphic novel, but I know nothing about it. I was just excited to go to a movie theater and see a film! It was an interesting experience: The tickets at this theater were 15 pounds, which is a little less than $3. When you buy your tickets, you are shown a seating chart and you have to select where you would like to sit (I do not know if this only happens in this theater or not). The popcorn was cheap, although it did not come in the size that I prefer, two-gallon bucket. An usher showed us to our assigned-seats and we waited for the movie to start. I think there was one movie preview, but I cannot remember for what..

'The Watchmen' was one of few non-Arab films showing in the city. It was in English with Arabic subtitles- no dubbing. The movie was going smooth until the INTERMISSION. For whatever reason, there was an intermission- I do not know how global intermissions are, but I disapprove of them. It was a very short intermission, too, which made it seem even more pointless. I was already upset that there had to be a break in the film, but if I had gotten up to use the restroom, err Wash Closet, I would have been even more upset to find out that the intermission was 45-seconds long.

My friend Darren tells me that the film had been edited from the original. The one thing I remember him saying was that the full body shot of the character Dr. Manhattan (imagine a blue, radioactive Mr. Clean that is nude) is cut out. I do not remember if there was anything else that was edited in the Egyptian version- Darren, perhaps if you read this, you can tell us.

It was comforting to see a movie. Hopefully some more decent films get shown here (not to knock the Arab films, I just will not understand everything).

Last weekend the field trip was supposed to go to an area called Bayn al-Qasrayn (literally, 'between the two palaces'). It is filled with many architecturally-significant mosques and complexes that I could tell you all about due to the massive amount of studying I have done for the midterm in that class (I think it went well). However, we did not go there. The school has not approved of the trip, yet, and we will not be going to it this weekend, either. My theory is that the school will not let us go there because it is very close to Khan al-Khalili, where a bombing and stabbing of an American have occurred in the last month or six-weeks (I have lost track). Of course, it could simply be some sort of bureaucratic-issue within the school.

Instead of Bayn al-Qasrayn we went to- well, I don't actually know. I want to say it was the mosque of Sultan Hassan and some other stuff nearby, but we have not studied it, yet, so I know nothing about it. I have a lot of cool pictures, though. I will post those once I know what they are of- hopefully next week.