Author Archives: eliefares

Beirut Bel Aswad Wel Abiad (Beirut in Black & White) – A Lebanese Short Movie

This Woody Allen-inspired short movie is one of the best ones I’ve seen lately. It’s directed by Alba student Marie-Louise Elia and produced by Marie-Noel Bou Haila (A lot of Maries in one sentence). You can find the former on Twitter here.

It’s a candid, honest, funny, sarcastic and extremely witty portrayal of Beirut – characteristics you rarely find this authentically in Lebanese productions. Many aspire to incorporate such elements in their movies but end up coming off as over-pretentious instead. Not this one.

The director, Marie-Louise Elia, is currently searching for actors for her upcoming movie. So if you’re interested, talk to her on Twitter. If her upcoming work is anything as good as this, it’ll look good on your resumé.

See You Again (Single Review) – Carrie Underwood

See You Again - Carrie Underwood

Originally written for Narnia’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, See You Again is the 4th single off Carrie Underwood’s platinum-selling album “Blown Away.”

After the dark tale of a wife and a mistress killing off the man who betrayed them both in “Two Black Cadillacs,” which followed the story of a girl letting her father die as a tornado blows through her town in “Blown Away,” “See You Again,” cowritten with Hillary Lindsey and David Hodges, comes as a nice change of theme for Carrie Underwood. Although the body count is still rising.

Long gone are the stories of death, although this song is still somehow about death, “See You Again” isn’t as specific as its predecessors. It doesn’t tell a story with a set point and finish – it’s ambiguous, serving to express a sentiment. For some, its ambiguity can be held negatively but one of See You Again‘s strong point is its ability to feel relatable regardless of what it was truly intended for.

A song about faith, “See You Again” is about reuniting with a loved one long after death has taken them to a place where “the water meets the sky.” But it doesn’t necessarily have to be about reuniting post-death. It can simply be about seeing someone again after a long period of travels or a period of being apart from each other.

It is probably one of Underwood’s best recorded vocal performances, ranging from belting out choruses to head voices on the bridge where she whispers: “sometimes I feel my heart is breaking but I stay strong and I hold on cause I know I will see you again, this is not where it ends. I will carry you with me till I see you again.”

What “See You Again” does not possess, however, is a distinctive country sound and instrumentation. See You Again has the sound of 90’s pop: from the Coldplay-esque productions which is apparent the most in the set of sing-along “oh oh oh’s” in male voices that the song opens up with, to the backdrop of a piano-driven melody, to the tempo and rhythm.

See You Again will be another hit for Underwood who keeps releasing crossover-ready songs when she doesn’t want airplay that extends beyond country radio. Seeing as that’s the case, more country and possibly better offerings would have served as better follow-ups to her previous moderately-country sounding singles. Underwood may have reached a point in her career where she is courageous enough to release whatever she likes and it’s obvious she relates to this song well. However, while that is commendable, it’s a shame that the release of See You Again means better songs off Blown Away will never see the light of day.

B-

Listen to See You Again:

 

Lebanese Lina Makhoul Wins The Voice Israel

Lina Makhoul The Voice Israel

The myth goes that Lina Makhoul is a 19 year old Israeli-Palestinian Christian from Acre.

She participated in the second season of Israel’s version of The Voice. I had blogged about her before (here) when she performed one of Fairuz’s songs and gained the judges’ approval.

The reality, at least according to several readers who messaged me privately regarding the matter, some of whom are are related to her, is that Lina Makhoul is not Palestinian. She is Lebanese from one of South Lebanon’s many Christian towns.

Well, Lina Makhoul – a Lebanese (or at least of Lebanese origins) – has won the Israeli version of The Voice after beating out two other contestants in the finale.

As her last performance of the night, Makhoul sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

She said that she was the victim of racism on the show. I’m not sure where that racism came from – be it from other Lebanese or Arab Israelis who may not have wanted her to participate in such things or from Israelis who are not too keen on her heritage or from the show’s producers and staff. But at least she managed to win.

Either way, now we know at least one person who isn’t included in the current debate in Lebanon, which has obviously taken a backseat now, about the possibility of return of the Lebanese who flew to Israel around the time of the South’s liberation.

Lebanon is not allowed to access The Voice Israel’s Youtube page so I have yet to find a version of her performance of “Hallelujah” but I have found this dating back to 2011:

You can watch Makhoul’s initial audition here in which she also sings a Fairuz song. The Israeli judges refer to Fairuz as the queen and one of them had apparently worked with her before many years earlier:

Update: I’m getting reports that she may be Palestinian as her mother is apparently as such from the town of Al Bokay’a.

Update: check out her winning performance of Hallelujah:

The General Situation in Lebanon

The people of Bab el Tebbane and Jabal Mohsen live off less than $4 per day. They cannot afford bread. They cannot afford food. They cannot afford basic accommodations. But they can fire missiles at each other and use weaponry that cost thousands of dollars.

Weapons > food.

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Security forces, including our lovely army, can serve as the best moviegoers ever. We should enlist them to break some form of Guiness record. After all, wasn’t movie watching what they were doing yesterday as Tripoli witnessed its heaviest clashes in months?
The Malek el Tawou2 branch in Gemmayzeit was especially busy I heard.

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Those wage increases have been approved. Rejoice. The syndicates are victorious. ALL of those poor people will not have more money in their pockets. ALL of the injustice in the country is now behind us… Celebrate small victories, rejoice for the struggles of the weak, the proletariat are here to take their natural place in the circle of governance.**

** disclaimer: this comes with an increase to 15% in VAT on phones, car parts, caviar, increase in stamp prices for bills, increase in stamp prices for phone-related transactions, real-estate related taxes, marine property taxes, enforcing taxes on water wells, decreasing tax returns to tourists, increasing taxes on alcohol, increasing travel taxes and will soon follow with an overall increase in the price of goods.

But hurray for the beautiful selsle.

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Elections are, theoretically, in slightly more than 3 months. June 9th is how the myth goes. The reality is that elections are, in fact, postponed but no one wants to admit this. In fact, you can obtain your healthy dose of comedy from politician holding press conferences to announce their resolve to “hold election on time.” – I’ve probably never used this in a post before but here it goes: LMAO.

The reality is that with almost 3 months to go, we don’t have a functional law on which the elections will happen and no prospects for an agreement on a law in the first place.
In other news, did you hear about the law championed by those who want to bring back “Christian rights” that involves turning Lebanon into one proportional circumscription? K.

Meanwhile, some people are already searching for airplane tickets in exchange for their votes in the 2013 elections – at least that’s what my blog’s stats tell me.

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Imagine the following scenario: Israel rallies troops near our border. They charge up their tanks, ready their missiles and shoot. Lebanese towns are bombed, people die, our sovereignty – or whatever remains of it – is breached. Lebanon, however, decides to take the “high road.” Our minister of foreign affairs does not complain to the UN. Our army and government decide that not addressing the issue is the way to go. After all, why the melodrama?
Pretty far-fetched right? Except that such a scenario is happening almost verbatim… If you substitute Israel for Syria. But Syria doesn’t count. Because na2i bl nafes that’s why.

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Over the past few days, I realized that the amount of people who live bl khassé as the saying goes is way too high. From people who think most people in the country are not extremist towards people from other sects and that addressing the issue is unnecessary to those who think there’s basically nothing wrong whatsoever in the general situation to those who don’t allow us to address the issue of the Syrian refugees because – gasp – racism… And the list goes on.

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If all of the above depresses you, albeit slightly, I recommend you take 20mg of paroxetine or fluoxetine daily. Side effects include nausea and possible ejaculatory delay but you’ll feel so elated in 3 weeks and your spouse will be so happy, you’d think Lebanon became some form of utopia. K?

The Greatest Woman I Know

I didn’t want to write for Mother’s Day this year. But then it dawned on me that the only tangible thing that I can give my mother – at least on her day – is my words, however silly they may be.

I am a university student who can’t save up money if his life depended on it. There’s nothing else I could give. There’s nothing she would want other than me being there as much as I can, despite me being a nuisance quite often. And I could go on and on about how I’m glad my dad chose her but I think I’d say that if my dad had chosen any other woman to be my mother. What I’m sure of, though, is that I wouldn’t have turned out the way I did hadn’t my mother been named Jinane and hadn’t she loved me and protected me and been there for me as much as she did.

I was watching a documentary the other day that aired on MTV about Lebanese women. As I stood in front of the TV borderline gasping at all that our women have to go through, I started wondering: why was all of this in the realms of theory for me?

As she walked through the door, her wool post-chemotherapy hat on, the answer dawned on me: it’s because my mother was never a victim. She was never weak. She was always strong – even through her illness.

This past year had been especially tough on her. I remember when her hair started falling and I knew that with every follicle leaving her head, she was feeling less and less like a woman. There was nothing I could do. I’m not the type to show pity or even much emotion. I couldn’t do anything.

Once the hair grew slightly back on and she decided to dye it, the process went horribly wrong. It was then that I saw her cry, for the first time since she started the horrible path of chemotherapy. There was this one thing making her hopeful and she was sad she botched it. I wouldn’t take it so I managed to get her to dye her hair again.

This time, though, the dye worked. As she struggled to put earrings on for the first time in four months and then applied some form of makeup on her beautiful face, her eyes were radiant. I asked her what’s the point of all of this? She said she hadn’t felt this way since they removed her tumor and with it most of her breast… a woman.

The feminists might be outraged. They will say you don’t need make up to feel like a woman and you sure as hell don’t need your son inquiring about it. But my mom is not a feminist, she’s a humanist. She gives whenever she can give and whenever she cannot. She works whenever she can work and whenever she cannot. She loves the people whose love only bring her woes and she can’t help it.

She may infuriate me sometimes and I may snap at her more than I would like. I can’t help it. But my mom, this 40-something woman who comes from this little town in the North, who had to stop her nursing studies when she got married and who is an ordinary woman by the accounts of all those over-achievers around, is to me not just extraordinary, she is fantastic and brave and gorgeous and humble and brilliant and beautiful.

This 40-something woman got the best Mother’s Day present by finishing the last session of the cytotoxic chemotherapy drugs yesterday. She’ll probably be on cloud nine in a few days when the nausea wears off. She will be even happier when her eyelashes grow back and her eyebrows grow thicker.

But that woman, with all her weaknesses and her imperfections, is the most perfect and greatest woman I know.

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