Mostapha Akkad and family murdered

Every so often, I come across some Hollywood jackass who is all upset about how the human rights of terrorists aren't being respected by the US and other governments.

Where was the concern for Rima Akkad's human rights when the sick fuck blew himself up at the center of the ballroom where the wedding party was taking place?

From the AP...

'Halloween' Producer Akkad Dies in Jordan
By SHAFIKA MATTAR (Associated Press Writer)


From Associated Press
November 11, 2005 10:36 AM EST

AMMAN, Jordan - Moustapha Akkad, the Syrian-born filmmaker and producer of the "Halloween" horror movie franchise, died Friday from wounds sustained in the triple hotel bombings in Jordan. He was 75. His daughter, Rima Akkad Monla, 34, also was killed.

Akkad, who lived in Los Angeles, was in Jordan with his daughter to attend a wedding. He died in the Jordanian hospital where he was being treated.

The two were at the wedding celebration at the Radisson SAS Wednesday night when suicide bombers struck it, the Grand Hyatt and the Days Inn in downtown Amman, killing at least 59 people including the three attackers. Rima Akkad Monla, who lives in Beirut, Lebanon, was killed immediately.

Born in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo in July 1930, the eldest of eight siblings, Akkad gained fame as a director and producer in the Arab world and West. After finishing his secondary studies in Syria, he left for America in 1950 to study film making, according to his sister.

He was best known for producing all eight "Halloween" films, starting with the 1979 "Halloween" directed by John Carpenter and starring then-unknown Jamie Lee Curtis. That movie - and the ones that followed - sparked the teen-slasher-horror genre that led to franchises including "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm Street."

Akkad also produced and directed "The Message" (1976), a film about Islam's prophet, Mohammed, and "Lion of the Desert" (1981), which tells the story of a Muslim rebel who fought against the Italy's World War II conquest of Libya. Both starred Anthony Quinn.

"The Message" was declared sacrilegious by a group of black American Muslims, who took hostages in three Washington, D.C. locations when the movie opened in the United States in March 1977, demanding it not be shown in America.

Akkad said he was baffled by the reaction to the movie, which he said cost $17 million to make. It also was nominated for an Academy Award for best original score.

"I did the film because it is a personal thing for me. ... Being a Muslim myself who lived in the West, I felt that it was my obligation, my duty to tell the truth about Islam.

"It (Islam) is a religion that has a 700 million following, yet it's so little known about, which surprised me. I thought I should tell the story that will bring this (history) to the West," he added.

Akkad said he turned to the horror genre because it was hard to raise money for religious-themed movies, according to a 1998 New York Times report.

A woman who answered the telephone at Akkad's Los Angeles home early Friday said she was too upset to talk. A telephone message left at the Los Angeles-area home of Akkad's ex-wife, Patricia, was not immediately returned. She left for Lebanon late Thursday.

The couple's daughter, Rima, grew up in Los Angeles an avid polo player who graduated from the University of Southern California in 1995 with a degree in international relations.

She pursued a master's degree in Middle East studies at the American University in Beirut, where she met her husband Ziad Monla, 35. Her husband's family owns the Monla Hospital in Tripoli, Lebanon. The couple, married for six years, has two sons, ages 2 and 4.

"Rima is a totally American girl," Patricia Akkad, 64, said Thursday in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "Here's an American who was over there and innocently killed for no reason."

She said her daughter loved living in Beirut.

"We all know the problems in the Middle East, and you never think it's going to touch you," she said.

Akkad's sister called for an end to terrorist attacks on civilians.

"I feel sad and the world feels sorrow with us. This kind of incident rarely happens, but it has happened with Moustapha Akkad," Leila Akkad told AP in a telephone interview. "These attacks are chaotic and do not differentiate an enemy from a friend. A solution must be found to this problem."

With the death of his daughter, Rima, Akkad is survived by three sons, Tarek, Malek and Zeido.

Funeral services for Rima Akkad Monla were scheduled for Friday in Tripoli. Services for Akkad were scheduled Sunday in his hometown of Aleppo, his sister.

---

Associated Press writers Shafika Mattar in Amman, Jordan, and Ian Gregor in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Inferior remake of an excellent animated series

All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku: Dash! - Vol. 1 (1998)
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Fourteen-year-old Ryonoske has a problem: His raging hormones have him lusting for the orphaned amnesiac girl--nicknamed Nuku-Nuku--that his father has brought in as a house-keeper. Unfortunately, she is completely oblivious to his desire for her... and in fact any of the designs that men and others have on her. Because Nuku-Nuku is secretly a hi-tech battledroid that Ryonoske's father has stoken from the arms-manufacturer that his wife works for! To make matters more complicated, his wife is put in charge of finding and recovering the missing battledroid.

I loved the original six-episode "All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku-Nuku" series--I thought it was hilarious, with characters that were sweet and likable... even the bad guys! It's a great series for both adults and kids. "Dash!" is a sad, distorted shadow of that original series.

"All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku: Dash!" is a remake of the original series that features the same characters, but their posiitons in the story have changed, some of their motivations have changed, and Nuku-Nuku has been completely reinvented. Yeah, she's still a robot with a partial cat-brain, but she's also a superhero, complete with transformation and the ability to fire ill-defined explosive beams from her hands.

Everything about "Dash" is either inferior or tacky when compared to the original series. All sweetness has been removed from the series, with the transformation of Ryunoske from a boy from a broken home who wants to see his parents reunite, to a horny 14-year-old who is lusting after Nuku-Nuku. Nuku-Nuku herself is little more than an empty-headed, "perfect woman" whose role barely extends beyond providing jiggling boobs and fight scenes. (Worse, much of the boob jiggling is provided through footage that is recycled at least once every episode.) To add insult to injury, the animation quality is inferior to the original series as well.

As much as I loved the original "Nuku-Nuku," I dislike this remake. Like the "Tenchi" series degraded from the original to be worse with each successive remake, so it seems is the "Nuku-Nuku" property. While the "Tenchi" remakes at least managed to keep their heart--remaining tales of family and friendship--"Nuku-Nuku" was stripped of everything that made it good right out of the remake's starting gate. The creators giving Nuku-Nuku a boob job and a dye-job were just surface reflections of the way the remake abandoned everything that made the initial series worth watching.

Lloyd Bochner dead at 81

Television actor Lloyd Bochner has died at the age of 81. The Canadian actor, who played Cecil Colby in the epic US soap saga "Dynasty", lost his battle with cancer and passed away at his home in Santa Monica on Saturday, October 30, 2005.

Bochner was also known for his roles in the "Mission: Impossible" television series, "Columbo" and the original "Battlestar Galactica."

Michael Jackson to go where he can fondle whatever he wants (so long as he's behind the palace wall)

I feel sorry for the kids who will be sating Michael Jackson's need for young boys, but I'm glad to see that there won't be anymore mockeries made of the American legal system that involves him and his twisted ways.

(Yeah, he was found "Not Guilty," but he was found Not Guilty on all counts, including ones that he was undoubtely guilty of, such as administering alcohol to a minor. That Not Guilty verdict was laughable.)

From the AP... the tale of Jackson going to a place where he can perverted without fear of ever having to answer for his activities.

Jackson To Make Bahrain His Permanent Home

Superstar Michael Jackson has fallen in love with Bahrain after spending the summer in the Middle Eastern nation and now plans to make it his permanent home.

The King of Pop flew to Bahrain shortly after being acquitted of child molestation in a Santa Maria, California court and spent time there as a guest of the crown prince Sheik Salman Ibn Hamed Khalifa. And, after months of speculation suggesting Jackson is planning to sell his Neverland home in California, and make Bahrain his official headquarters, attorney Thomas Mesereau confirms his client is making a life-changing move.

He says, "He's moving on in life. He's living permanently in Bahrain. He has friends there who have been very loyal and helpful to him in a difficult period of his life."

Mesereau, who represented Jackson in his child molestation trial, insists the Middle East has been a tonic for the King of Pop. He adds, "He looks really well."

"Non-flipped" manga are BAD translations

Over the past few years, I've been saving a great deal of money on English-language reprints of Japanese comics (or "manga" as marketing departments and geeky fans tell us they should be called).

I haven't been saving the money because of cheaper prices, I've been saving that money because of badly done translations. In other words, there are plently of manga I'd be buying if the English-language publishers could be bothered to do decent translations. As it is, I'm not parting with my cash.

English is meant to be read left to right. I really, truly don't care that Japanese is read right to left, and the cheap-ass, non-flipped translations don't impress me. These shoddy efforts tick me off even more that the laziness reflected in the way many publishers aren't even bothering to translate (and in some cases not even bothering to footnote) the sound effects, which sometimes are sometimes necessary to fully get what is happening in a sceneIt might give hardcore geeks a warm and fuzzy feeling as they delude themselves into thinking that they are reading the comics as "they were intended" while all they're doing is helping the bottom line of the importers. If they really wanted to read the comics as they were intended, they would learn to read Japanese. (To her credit, the daughter of a co-worker is actually doing just that.)

I swallowed my disgust and annoyance to buy "Kindiachi Mysteries" (and I'm sure there will be others) but I would have enjoyed them alot more if Tokyo Pop could have been bothered to do a decent translation of them.

Dark Horse and Studio Proteus used to do top-notch translations. They would mirror ('flip" the artwork, except in cases where the panel needed to say in its original format, and then they would translate the sound effects and retouch the art. Now, Dark Horse has jumped on the cost-cutting, bad translation bandwagon. The "Oh, My Goddess!" series will now longer be presented in accordance with how English-language books are supposed to be read.

I think this is a tremendous shame. I think it's an even bigger shame that comic book readers are willing to let themselves get ripped off because they've bought into the myth that "manga" is more than Japanese for "comics."

Famous people deserve to get beat up because they're famous?

This past weekend, a pro-football player from Seattle's team, the Seahawks, was beaten and then kicked when he was down to the point that he ended up in the hospital in a coma. He was attacked outside a bar in Seattle's Party Central, Pioneer Square.

Driving around today, I heard an jackass radio talk-host say what essentially boiled down to the opinion that Hamlin deserved to get beat nearly to death, because a multi-millionaire celebrity like him shouldn't be out partying on a Sunday night.

Where the HELL was that host coming from?! Hamlin has just as much a right to go out with his girlfriend as I have to go out with mine, and as much right as you have to go out with your friends and loved ones. Just because someone is well-known or rich doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to lead their lives unmolested by human vermin.

Now, if Hamlin instigated the fight, maybe it's a slightly different issue. But there is security camera video tape of the assholes he was fighting stomping on him after he was down. That removes it from any realm of "it was his fault." And the attackers shouldn't get ANY sort of break just because Hamlin's famous.

(BTW, I never watch football, and I have no idea who Hamlin is other than what I've heard in the news.[And when I first heard it, I thought it was Colorado talkshow host Ken Hamblin who had been beat up in Pioneer Square! I was just appalled by that host's attitude.)

Flying the unfriendly skies...

Red Eye (2005)
Starring: Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy
Director: Wes Craven
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Early in 2005, I raved about Wes Craven's "Cursed." Now, he's provided another great flick, but one where he's abandoned what has become his signature toungue-in-cheek horror efforts. With "Red Eye", Craven instead provides us with a thriller that stands up to comparison with some of Alfred Hitchcock's best efforts.


The majority of the film tales place in the cramped confines of a red-eye flight from Texas to Florida, as hotel manager Lisa (McAdams) is heading back home. She ends up seated to a charming young named Jackson (Murphy). It turns out that the meeting was anything but chance--Jackson has been watching Lisa for weeks, and he is about to force her to make a cell-call to make her assistant switch the room of a US government official staying at her hotel so assassins can kill him. Lisa is given a choice: Cooperate or have her own father be the murder victim.

"Red Eye" doesn't break any new ground, but it does what it does extremely well. The tension never lets up from the moment Jackson's true nature is first revealed, and the excellent performances by McAdams and Murphy are so engaging that the viewer's attention is never allowed to wander for a second.

If you love thrillers of the Hitchcockian variety, "Red Eye" is a must-see. It also proves that Wes Craven can still direct films aside from goofy, self-referential horror flicks.