Black Swan

Black Swan opened in theaters in Turkey this past Friday and I was at the earliest showing in one of the Istanbul theaters.  Movie going is a big time commitment here.

I arrived at the theater for the 11:45 am showing.  By the time I bought my ticket from a Turkish language machine and found theater number 9, I was a little late and missed the first five minutes of advertisements.  I did catch the next 15 minutes of advertisements for banks, chocolate candy and cell telephone service.  Next on the schedule were 10 minutes of movie previews, and at 12:15 pm, the movie finally started.  Mid-way through the film, we had the standard break.  This allows patrons to have a smoke and get something to eat - 5 minutes of silence and another 7 minutes of advertisements - cars, banks, cell phone service and cookies.  The movie was then shown to its final conclusion.

My husband brought Friday's Hurriyet newspaper home and Natalie Portman's Black Swan was given quite a bit of coverage.  In the movie listing, she had 1/3 of a page with all the theaters and show times in Turkey listed.  More than half of the theaters are in Istanbul.

No doubt, some extra coverage was due to today's Academy Awards.  In response to the Turkish question about which is the best film, The Social Network's actor in print, is just the size of Natalie's left leg, below the knee!

Friday's paper has the "Friday" section, and Natalie took the cover page.

The inside article is titled, "Greed Destroying the White Swan".

That gives you a sense that this is a dark movie, if you haven't seen it.  Natalie's performance was excellent and so were the costumes and the dancing.  With a 10 hour time difference with the live award show, I won't be watching.  Tomorrow morning I'll find out if the Turkish press got it right.