Saturday, November 12, 2005

Wasted

"Akkad faced similar obstacles in getting Arab financial backing for his Salahuddin project. He had already gotten the iconic Sean Connery on board to star as the legendary Kurdish hero born in Iraq who would reclaim Jerusalem from the Crusaders in the 12th century...

...
He believed he was unable to gain Arab financial backing because the period leading up to the rise of Salahuddin too closely mirrored current events in the Arab world."

- Al Jazeera.Net



I had always wanted to watch the thus-far only movie about Prophet Mohammed, The Message. My curiosity was stroked 2 years ago when I heard that they made an entire movie about the Prophet and his efforts to spread Islam without a single shot of the man himself, due to Islamic conditions that no image of the Prophet should be published or attempted to be published or reproduced. The film is a masterpiece in much of the Muslim world; it's an artifact of the most amazing story ever told to the rest of the world, possibly a window for non-Muslims to see this story.

So it was with some solemness that I read that Moustapha Akkad, the man who made such a movie possible, was killed by terrorists in the recent Jordan bomb blasts. Indeed a wicked irony for a man who apparently abhorred Arab-rooted terrorism.

Read more about his ambitious plans that have come to naught, here. Wasted.

3 comments:

singapotter said...

Salam, bro.

How sad is this news!

About the movie, I hope somebody will consummate his vision. It is, after all, another mode of dakwah, and even better is that it appeals to the masses.

May there be a silver lining to the cloud.

Nunbun said...

Salam Potter,

yeah, I hope someone has enough gusto to take this up and do it accurately. (I also would like someone to re-make The Message and release it as a multi-million dollar blockbuster, one that shows Islam in its true light, depicting it as a message that includes and over-archs the previous messages sent to Man. But I haven't watched the original yet, so I better watch it soon).

And then again is the danger of pandering to Hollywoodian presures of conforming to scripting formulae that has a (raspy voice) "One Man... One Dream... Against All Odds..." trailer and the all-too-pervasive exoticism. Sigh... see what happens lah...

singapotter said...

I don't think I've watched The Message either...right, it's on my list of Movies To Catch now.

I suppose there is no way of escaping those Hollywood gloss. In a way, the glamourising is, and I know you know, to compel people to watch a movie about some hero. A lesser evil? Perhaps so.

Good one on the trailer! I can imagine it now, with some flashbacks of Connery in costume. =)