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Youssef Chahine died a few weeks ago. I used to live in his building. At the time I'd never heard of him, but after hearing so many wow, you live in Youssef Chahine's building?'s I started paying attention.

His movies aren't as hard to find as a lot of other Arab films are, but they're not easily accessible, either. The Alexandria series is on Netflix. I watched it, and I think I can say I liked it, but because it's meant to be a biography that mirrors Egypt's modern history you have to know a lot of modern Egyptian history to understand it as anything but a biography. I understood just enough of that to understand how much I must be missing. (I'm guessing it'd be like trying to watch a highbrow Wayne's World if you're not American. You'd think the story was the point, not the 9560949032845 inside references.) I'm hoping some of his other stuff eventually becomes available in the U.S. Or maybe it is and I'm not looking hard enough.

Here's a guide to his work, going back to 1950, just before the revolution.

And a biography.

Friday I went to see a movie. I've seen American movies in Egyptian theaters and Egyptian movies in my American house, as well as here of course, but this was my first time watching an Egyptian movie in an Egyptian theater. Suddenly I understand the parts that feel cheesy or over-the-top when you're sitting alone in your living room — it's a completely different experience watching it in a theater, where 200 people are laughing with you. (It's like how I don't get people who own Rocky Horror and watch at home, by themselves.) I wonder it's the same with Bollywood movies?

The movie was Hassan and Markus, with Omar Sharif and Adel Imam. Omar Sharif played a Muslim cleric who denounced Islamism, had his house firebomed, and was put into some kind of witness protection program where he was given a Christian identity. Adel Imam played a Christian who denounced pro-Christian violence, had his car blown up, and was put into the same program, posing as a Muslim. They unwittingly move into apartments across the hall from each other and their families become friends, each thinking they are "secretly" the same religion as the other. Wacky hijinks ensue.

Best line: After a building is blown up in a terrorist attack, some government PR guy trying to do damage control has a meeting with the press and says, "We are happy to report 75 were killed, all of them Egyptians! Not a single foreigner was harmed in this event!" The audience was rolling.

I really liked it and thought it was funny, but it was definitely a "message" film, with the Muslim (but really Christian) saving the lives of the wife and daughter of the Christian (but really Muslim) at the end, after their house is set on fire, and ending with both families bravely walking arm-in-arm through a riot scene between Muslims and Christians who are all screaming "Allahu akbar!" and "We will die for the cross!" and beating each other with sticks.

Not that I'm intolerant of "message" films. I was raised on afterschool specials, after all. But this one had a too-tight equation of the Muslim and Christian experience in Egypt, which I think is apples and oranges in a lot of ways. Coptic Christians are facing persecution for their religion, i.e. as minorities. Muslims' complaints against the government are broader, and more political than religious, though they take an Islamist form and use Islamist rhetoric. To go from one scene of the Muslim trying to muddle through a Christian prayer to another of the Christian trying to muddle through a Muslim prayer, and so on over and over, ignores the different social and economic position of both groups, in Egypt and internationally, reducing everything to a matter of faith and fanaticism, full stop. Maybe there was more I was missing because my Arabic is so bad and it wasn't subtitled, but I don't think so.

Although, as I said, I did like it. Especially because I like Adel Imam.

Lila Abu-Lughod has some good articles on the way Egypt, through its government-controlled media (which includes the censorship of film), has controlled the portrayal of Islam and Islamists. She's worth looking up if you have access to a university library.

What if you threw a big Islam-bashing hatefest and nobody came?

This is old, but it was new to me. A trailer-esque montage of Hollywood Arabs and Muslims — http://www.jsalloum.org/films.html

They missed my favorite one, though — St. Elmo's Fire, remember that scene?

I just finished watching NICE BOMBS, Usama Alshaibi's documentary about returning to Iraq in 2004 after fleeing it in 1980. Two thumbs up. This film is so much more interesting and informative than mainstream news, obviously, but also better than other documentaries that attempt to take the viewer "inside Iraq" by interrogating Iraqis with an endless and exclusive focus over what they think of America. That question comes up here, too, but without the obsessional it's-all-about-us character of most American reporting. The people he talks to are neighbors and family members, all with their own histories, which he portrays and discusses (I can't stress enough how important this is to making them seem like humans instead of soundbites). There's a wide diversity of opinion, so much so that I think even a supporter of the occupation could watch it and see their views reflected, but regardless of your politics, by the time you get to the end, where he interviews two American soldiers — quote: "Freedom's new to them. They don't know how to deal with it" — it's clear how offensively simplistic, xenophobic, and frankly racist even the most optimistic justifications for this war are. Even the word "them" leaves a bad taste in your mouth. "Them"? You mean Usama's aunt, his uncle, his cousin? The ones who spend hours in coffeeshops and at the kitchen table talking politics and dodging rockets? "They" don't get democracy, "don't know how to deal with freedom"? That's it? That's their problem?

It's really powerful. Hopefully coming to a theater near you.

I finally saw Munich.

What I anticipated: Disguised as a film that critically examines the ethics of violence and revenge between two peoples with separate histories of oppression, Israel's supremacy over the Palestinians would be subtly affirmed via the presentation of it as a nation capable of and willing to engage in such internal dialogue in the first place, in contrast to the Palestinians, who have no understanding of the nuances of justice.

What it actually was: 10% that thing I just said; 90% chase scenes and stuff getting blown up.

Reminder #5642194 that you can never expect too little out of Spielberg.