designed by: M. Aladdin & H. Fathy

Monday, February 26, 2007

YES!



YES!
YES!
YES!
GODDAMN IT! AT LAST SCORSESE!
AT LAST!

it wasn't your best shot, but stills, my old man, you deserve it about 26 years before, am so so so very happy. Am really so very happy.....

Friday, February 23, 2007

Those were years......



I know I was kinda harsh on Amr Diab, and I still think that he really deserves what I’ve posted before. Anyway, as a gestures of good intentions, I show you here one of the most lovely songs in my past, We Yeloumouny, you remember the rhythm? The costume? That “fresh” video clip method back then (whatever it looks pretty Amish today) for the talented director—then a dear work colleague—Tariq Al ‘Eriyan. Please hit the button, and I hope you’d enjoy :)

Thursday, February 22, 2007

That Scene!


"A movie that I was in, called On the Waterfront (1954): there was a scene in a taxicab, where I turn to my brother, who's come to turn me over to the gangsters, and I lament to him that he never looked after me, he never gave me a chance, that I could have been a contender, I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum ... "You should of looked out after me, Charley." It was very moving. And people often spoke about that, "Oh, my God, what a wonderful scene, Marlon, blah blah blah blah blah." It wasn't wonderful at all. The situation was wonderful. Everybody feels like he could have been a contender, he could have been somebody, everybody feels as though he's partly bum, some part of him. He is not fulfilled and he could have done better, he could have been better. Everybody feels a sense of loss about something. So that was what touched people. It wasn't the scene itself. There are other scenes where you'll find actors being expert, but since the audience can't clearly identify with them, they just pass unnoticed. Wonderful scenes never get mentioned, only those scenes that affect people."
Marlon Brando

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

A falied Try to Socialize with The Faced Walls


Like two faced walls with a very dry skin, We are silent, lifting old pictures, balls of light, and two clocks are implanted in our skin. Sure it looked bizarre, two clocks are hanging, floating with gazes. I look at yours while I can't look at mine. You look at mine while you can't see yours. We are holding pictures, balls of light, mischievous clocks , some old holes, and some old scratches are hiding, under a color we haven't chose. For seasons we forgot to count we stand, as two faced walls will never touch, merely like two trains in one track in wait for a crush would never happen. We can stand, and stand we will still, in a room crowded with people, like two faced walls with a very dry skin.

....................................................................

Pianting: Menians by Pablo Picasso

Monday, February 19, 2007

The Convention


I wasn't the only one in the house who knows about my father.

I wasn't the only one in our street who knows about my father.

I wasn't the only one in our family, in our dynasty, in our city, in our nation, in our world, even in the good heavens, who knows about my father.

That lovely polite man who has a very soft, quite voice, tender eye looks and simple chic way of clothing., slow careful habits, his gentle attitude with his wife--aka my mom, that overwhelming spectrum of respect which was hovering around them just because my father's sweet manners. He was famous by all of that, and another thing more.

He's his wife's killer.

Yes. A mid thirties woman who've got her head hammered.

Her corps seems to me, after many years when they let me see the pictures of the crime scene, like a surreal painting. There were blood, parts of the slashed skull mixed with waves of hair, dead shining of her eyes penetrating the bloody hair. Uncompleted human face form, it was just meaningless.

That picture, as these other pictures, hasn't change my mother's face into my mind, her simple beauty and everlasting calm smile. Just I didn't react with those pictures as it was my mom's, like I still hearing my aunt's voice when she was telling me that she's traveling abroad, every time I ask about her, or about my father.

Now am sitting in front of him. He looks quit the same as I remember, unless his hair turned to be gray, wrinkles laying in ease around his eyes and aside his firm lips. He was the same but that, and that he was calling me sir. They told me that he can't recognize me. For a reason or another, he did what he has did, and forget all about his unholy previous life.

They were telling me that I can't hear the thing I lust the most, why he did killed his wife, my mom?

They told me. Right, but something was pulling me to see that man. That man who was the precious creature ever— just when I was 7 year old— then turned to a spooky ghost after words.

His eyes weren't reflecting any sort of bewilderment. His smile was just sweet and confident as I always remember. That man who've made me "the mature women complex", as my girlfriends saying.

Am oriented to mature women, I must say, in a way I couldn't hide, and such orientation isn't such serious one, but when I remember the many problems I once had with an old girlfriend, when she discovered that I was lusting after her mom.

They—my girlfriends—saying that orientation came over the absence of my mom, in the age I needed her badly.

I never believed it so much, but I haven't found any reason for that lust against that sort of women. Dad made me lots of things, I must remember.

Those picnics to museums, cinema, libraries were a real fun. I still remember those comics magazines he used to brought me. I still remember his lovable laugh, his tender hands when he's checking my bed at night, his leashed anger when I torn his books over. I still remember all of those things.

He doesn't.

His eyes’ looks weren't absent, they were sharp and clever, like his denial of my existence is a concrete real. He's a wise old man, and simply he is receiving a wacko stranger who's like a stupid dog.

All what you can find in his eyes is a flash wondering when he's asking me; what I can do for you, mister? And the inquiring flash has gone seconds after answering him that it's Okie. He can't do me a thing by now. His eye looks enveloped with sweet irony looking at me. Am the wacko creature who's lost. He’s living up here what you can call complete paradise. No one had came and disturb his inner peace. It was just once when my grandpa and grandma visited him just to bang his head. They were persuaded upon that visit he's a madman. And, of course, he doesn't remember a thing about that visit.

They call him here with a deferent name he chose himself, they repeat in front of him a history he created himself. He's no longer my father. I’ve turned to a stranger long time ago, quite long time ago, after throwing the hammer away, or even when he had caught it in his hands, going with his calm confident steps to his bedroom.

I thought many times why he did kill my mom. I couldn't understand a thing. Many small talks, million of hints from my relatives, and I could have a hazy image, she was a dominate and maybe, maybe, unfaithful.

I wanted to make sure by his words. It's the puzzle of my own life.

But I realized it's a dead end. He's gone. He's history.

The door opened, they came to escort me. I still remember his sorry eyes and calm voice, making up is tie, straighten his expensive suit standing, and saying

"Yes. It was the jealousy"

I've been slashed by his sharp sentence, and while I was begging the men to let me stay longer with him, his face gestures were sort of dramatic, leaving the room, to disappear into the institute's corridors.

..............................................................................

Painting: Self portrait by Egon Schiele

The Kiss

By
Gustav Klimt

Starry Night

By
Van Gaugh

Friday, February 16, 2007

Dancing with Walking


I always saw him as a perfect face of evil, I can always rememeber that scene in Batman Returns when he pushed Michelle Pfeiffer from a tower-building, yet Walken have amazed me with rules like what he played in movies like Click, and by that video, Weapon of Choice, which have gained whole five MTV awards, selected on of the best 100 clips in history.

The weirdest thing I’ve knew that there’s a website named walken2008 for a presidential campaign. I don’t know if it is a joke or something serious, just click here

Anyway, just go and dance with Walken!



A Death...


They said that she said "I wanna be a Marilyn Monroe". Was that happened in the most unfortunate ever??
Farewell, Anna.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

HAPPY FALANTAINN BASTERDS!--AGAIN!!!



I think it's a wise saying indeed! *Sigh :p
(AGAIN AS WELL)

Monday, February 12, 2007

Keira..Keira...







The Treachery of Being A Writer.

I’d be some kind of a liar if I ignored talking of how am feeling so little, so devastated in front of painting and painters, but certainly I’d be a real liar if I told you I don’t know why.

As a beginning, am not talking out of that repentant and fable bourgeoisie phobia according painting (never use with this the word drawing, huh!), or writing, or sculpturing, or civilized activities in short, as you should make small shrines for the little Buddhas then worship it with every single cell you have to prove how civilized you are. Nope, I do not having that phobia, but I admit being a small bourgeois myself.

Anyway, away of my own bourgeois roots, I feel so helpless when I recognize this miraculous simplicity of relaying feelings and concepts through paintings. The viewer eyes would be caught by the lines, the colors, and the shadows, the structure and how it appears through the perspective the artist chose in general. Those miraculous revelations hammer me every now and then with the truth of how our words, we writers, could be that empty, how our littered could be that monotonic coldness.

Some would argue, some would simply take out a book for Camus or Kafka or Marquez or Prost or Joyce. Yes, I do believe in what you’d say or read, but I’d ask you, how we can really be touched by only one glance. How we can just been astonished in one second and that’s it.

I can recall the masterpiece The Scream—or The Cry according to some people—where Edvard munch knew how to make this outstanding thing: to make us hear a painting.

How you can bring sound through lines and colors. Our eyes can hear a scream. Yes, no doubt.

I can admit that if I made you eyes hear pigeons’ wings battering the air then I am officially a god and you can offer sacrifices of naked hot women on my own alter. For my bad, I can’t.

Maybe the only single thing would forerun painting is music. That’s how we can be happy, sad, anxious, panicked, etc. by only hearing melodies going one after another in its unique harmony. That’s why music would be the language of God; it makes us like what it wants without verbalize a single word, nor drawing a line. It’s like making love with a partner have no corporal structure. (ugh! Please! Not jerking off you bastard!)

I was into painting years ago, back when I was too young and less foolish. Writing was there as well, but in certain moment I really can’t recall how or when now, writing has quit heading its really sweet manners and insists on being the only lawful wife.

I still glanced to paintings, hearing music, and feel so miserable and so betrayed. And as a mocking greek doom; nothing would send those arrogant nightmares away but to review more paintings, hearing more music, then drink or smoke whatever and try helplessly to float those beauties into such depressed cold letters and words. Yes, it's a sin to be pretendrous, yet it's a real treachery, real real treachery, to be a writer.

The Marlon






A rare screentest, and what's funny it is for the stage broadcasting of A Rebel Without A Cause. enjoy.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

The Unlimited Conjugations of the Sole Guy.


I smiled at a lady walking infront of me and continued marching towards the end of the street. I felt little cold while I keep my jacket unbuttoned. I can’t stand temperature. Only if it was really cold I can drop my strange will and envelope my body with the buttoned jackets. I march while my cigarette hanging from the tip of my lips. My hands down my pocket, my eyes were passing by the crowds striding off the street. Some of them stopped in front of some shops’ facades, gazing at the merchandise. Some have this hungry gaze. Some have that lost one, while some would just check women out, that sort of thing which have no specific plays, or timing.

I didn’t know what made me leave home, pack my laptop into my innocent misery bag, and leave my home to wherever. I thought like I may walk to zamalek, maybe I’d have a nice cup of cappuccino; Irish flavored, and think about the mystery of the universe.

Some taxi approached, the driver throws a wondrous look. I avert my eyes.

Now am walking in the downtown street of sheiref Basha. I could have walked in my usual way to zamalek, under your own steam passing Muhd Mahmoud Basha Street—where you can always find Aucians and plainclothes policemen, to Al-Tahrir square—where you can always find hookers, gays, and plainclothes policemen, to Abdulmoniem Riyad Square—where you always find microbuses along with plainclothes policemen, then walking aside the Nile Cornish—where you find all what I’ve mentioned plus the plainclothes policemen, crossing 15th of May bridge to 26th July street—sure I don’t have to mention about alternative 6th of October bridge, so you reach the promised lands through some of the most victorious dates in the galaxy.

My plan is to engage with 15th of May bridge but with talking the street of 26th of July right away, as Shieref Basha street spells out his limited destiny on the body of the monstrous date of whatever street.

It seems lovely, beautifully matching, that I don’t know why I left home, an either why I’d choose the way am walking now. No bad contrast, there’s no black and white. There’s Just whiteness or darkness. One lovely ocean lay down before my tired eyes. They are really tired. Looking into the self you have, all the time, is not that joyful gregarious thing as we all might know. I kept walking.

While am automatically passing through in my way, I can’t help thinking in so many things, imagining so many fantasies. Walking is a way maybe to really have this physical actual thing, instead of keeping thinking in your tiny room. I didn’t felt like writing—that miraculous passage to kick off some of your own demons—so I tricked myself with that good bone: you walk to zamalek, drink up your cappuccino, open your laptop up and you may find a way to kick those demons in a decent profitable way.

In my pocket lays my quiet cell phone. Sometimes it would speak up, conveying voices from far away, so far away even if they were only meters ahead. I like telling myself that I quit worrying and I quit waiting and I quit pushing the buttons. I like telling myself that streets are really nothing but a surface to march in, and messages are nothing but electronic figures—or aimless handwriting, or soundless typing—delivering data, cold data endlessly marching through cells which are us.

Departing. I always found this word as magical as Moses’ stick. Departing and departed, are two conjugations for the infinitive departure. That value means some kind of graciousness, like you are that privileged to walk away. You have this right amount of dignity to leave, not to die yourself crowding on something lost that unique intimacy created by privacy, by uniqueness; to choose what people would hesitate, to stop crowd on the cheap things people would count as treasures, including the very self you have.

Am, by going a step after another, departing the person I know. Like in every single step with a different idea I am some conjunction of the same infinitive, me walking this step isn’t the same man I believe I know in the next step. Walking, according to this kind of thinking, is nothing but a process of departing. A departure off the souls we all struggle to lift off. It seems we all fooled ourselves when we put that fiddly concept of souls which are so very lighter than bodies, souls with noble and upright metaphysic significance, glancing toward the heavens with prophet’s eyes, versus the evil evil body worshipping Satan and lavishing the mortal existence. Souls actually are truly heavy as sleeping doesn’t make it fresher. When you try to depart you own soul you’d do nothing but to pack some. Packing is not always when you travel kilometers here or there on a road or on air or even riding a careless straight forwarded train, and your luggage are not always some clothes and a toothbrush.

You, sometimes, had to pack your some of your soul, few of greetings, handful of dreams and little of dooms, a box of solitude, some smiles and some tears, lots of joy and some of all fears.

And, as a gentleman would, you have to stretch your lips in a smile, lean your head politely, give them your back and march steadily. You go and march steadily. Never turn around, and never inquire about the destination.

I found myself, the departed writer who have no clue to kick the nice demons, walking down the bridge. Zamalek is standing tall with its usual superciliousness. I moved my bag to another shoulder, lit up a new cigarette, gazed at the old bakery closed in front of my eyes and felt sorry. I used to buy its yummy cheap pizza when I stopover in Zamalek. A sexy woman was strolling off the street in playful confident ease, two miserable police soldiers walking carelessly naming each other, an old man standing on the sidewalk with frustrated gestures on contrary with his nice clothes, a delivery boy flying on a bike with a wide smile, people are coming out from their prayer in the tiny so-called mosque under the bridge structure, a luxurious lavish car firing away its noise leaving the gas station on my left, where two men were speaking with stupid laughing. I felt little bewildered trying to determine which café I’d knock, and then I remembered being a steady gentleman so I slightly stretched my lips.

And longing shall have an end...

Old men understand that everything fades. Old men understand that everything has an end. Old men understand because they reached the karma of reviewing life more than interacting with it. Old men don’t cry because they have all the old tissues in their old closets. Old tissues for old men which would never gave its secrets to a bold stud. Old men, also, do not let their soul goes after a laugh, nor their eyes hurrahing the longing ray of the moon.

They are The Real Old Men, boy, the real old men.

Young men must be fool, must be cry, and must be like raped closets with ripped-out tissues.

That’s life pal.

Don’t ask to have elders’ dynasty while you have that unleashed laugh. Don’t search for the elders’ doom while you have the privilege of being fool, of being devastated, of being defeated. Just know that knowledge is nothing like understanding, and that seeing is nothing like reviewing.

Don’t be dread like this. Everything has an end. That’s true my friend, but you remember; you’d never predict what would start.

As they would say, God is so as having neither no start nor end. We are, after our small miracles here and there, just mere humans.

Dylan Thomas once said; and death shall have no dominion, yet I tell you; and longing shall have an end.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

As I walk in The Valley of The Shadow of Death


As I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I feel no fear because you, O dear Lord, is my will and my strength. "The prophet of faith faced that, thus no fear nor awe", Just as my late grandma used to murmur always.

I feel no fear because Ibn Arabi told us “We are nothing but mirrors to God”

I keep dig up this sentence, this outstanding concept, while I still marching in the valley of death, seeing my grandma's calm face, trying to figure out the face of the prophet of faith, then I find myself wondering “then who’s our mirrors?”

Pygmalion...


Sitting in Dido’s of Zamalek, I ordered spaghetti then I had to accept a coke without a cup full of ice cubes. I put down my mobile and Marlboros, looked at girls, at couples around. The waiter came and wondered if I could accept sharing a table with another guest. “For Sure!” I said.

You are eating in silence, wandering your eyes around in silence, smiling to the polite guest in silence.

Silence.

When you spoke, it was like nonsense. When the polite polite guest came to an end, leaving the restaurant, he asked for your name.

You are smiling again mentioning it. That’s real nonsense, you thought. He spelled out his name, shoke hands, walked away.

It was funny, because you remembered a paragraph from your own novel. It talks about a pianist talking to a foreign guy. Ali—that polite polite guy never lived in Egypt with an Egyptian parents—could be counted as a foreigner too.

I was bewildered and bewildered I was. I told myself to quit being that creature I’ve known, simply, you must quit being bewildered when you'd realize that God has ripped her off your own books. All those females you'd draw on your blank pages. all those beloved nightmares, all those strange regular souls are here. she's here, with that smile, like an ancient doom won't leave your soul. You must quit being bewildered, and may God help you if the truth is you to remain bewildered, or to be hammered.

It’s funny, because you’d never asked to be that form of Pygmalion.

You resist calling her when you glance at the blanked, cold cell phone’s screen. You ignore a well aimed look from a girl sitting there, she’s with friends anyway. You too came to an end.

You leave tips. You take your jacket off the chair’s back. You throw an empty gaze at the girl’s face. You leave.

.............................................................

Painting: Pygmalion by Sir Edward Brune- Jones.

Friday, February 09, 2007

الحب.. الحب.. الحب


تقيم مؤسسة ورقة وقلم احتفالية شعرية بيوم الفالنتاين في مسرح الصوبة - حديقة الأزهر - يوم الأربعاء 14/2/2007 الساعة 4 مساءً

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

The Film Clinic

محمد علاء الدين--فيلم كلينك بروداكشنز
محمد علاء الدين و المدير الاداري و المالي اشرف المصري
قدس (محمد محمد عبد القدوس) و اللول (محمد علاء الدين) و فيزو (محمد حفظي)، الاتنين هما الملاك يا جماعة و الاتنين طوال بشكل مفزع.. للحق انا قصير بشكل مفزع برضه
:)

محمد علاء الدين و هيثم فاضل مدير الانتاج

الصالة الرئيسية للمقر الجديد

مع الزميل الكاتب و المخرج الموهوب احمد فهمي

مع الاصدقاء الموهوبين جدا، من اليمين السيناريست محمد ناير، و السيناريست و الممثل اشرف حمدي
اشرف المصري و محمد فكري--فريق انتاج فيلم كلينك

ساعات البيوت تتشكل في صورة تانية غير الفرشة لكنها بتفضل غطا. دار الهلال بيتي، و ميريت بيتي، و المجلس العربي للطفولة و التنمية بيتي، و لو كانت دار المبدعون لسه شغالة كانت فضلت بيتي برضه. اقدر اقول، بعد حوالي سنتين عشرة مع محمد حفظي و اشرف المصري، و بعد حبة سيناريوهات و كتير من الضحك و الحكايات و النسكافيه و جيبلي معاك قميصين من لندن يا حفظي(!!) ، أن فيلم كلينك بقت هي كمان بيتي، بيتي و مطرحي كمان
النهاردة رحت للمقر الجديد لفيلم كلينك.. و زي ما اتغير وش فيلم كلينك من وكالة موزعة للأفلام لشركة انتاج ليها--و بكده بقت فيلم كلينك برودكشنز--اتغير المكان من جاردن سيتي للزمالك.. الفرق الكبير بالنسبة ليا هو ان مقر الزمالك هو نفسه المقر القديم، نفس العنوان يعني، للمجلس العربي للطفولة و التنمية.. طلعت نفس السلالم و دخلت من نفس المدخل اللي دخلته اول مرة من 14 سنة كاملة.. بيت قديم جديد و بكرة لسه جاي
ألف مبروك عليك يا فيزو المقر الجديد، و ربنا يديم المحبة و الصداقة
:)
.............................................................

للمهتمين: تتقبل فيلم كلينك برودكشنز السيناريوهات في مقرها الجديد

5 شارع بهاء الدين قراقوش
امام حديقة الاسماك

الزمالك--القاهرة

Sunday, February 04, 2007

معرض الكتاب 2007

اليوم الثاني و العشرون في جناح دار العين
مع صديقي و زميلي الروائي الموهوب جدا نائل الطوخي و الشاعرة التونسية إيناس العباسي
مع طاقم دار العين
مع صديقي العزيز و زميل الايام الحلوة و المخرج الموهوب ابو دم خفيف شريف منصور.. عارف ان الصورة مش واضحة لكن فعلا بحب الراجل ده
مع محمد الشرقاوي

مع شباب دار ليلي
مع اخويا و زميلي و رفيق الكتابة محمد سامي، صاحب و مدير دار ليلي


مع محمد هاشم