Hunting Season/ Av Mevsimi

The film Hunting Season/Av Mevsimi was released on December 3^rd, 2010 in Turkey and directed by Ömer Faruk Sorak. The box office is estimated to be around $4 million worldwide, making this a successful movie from a financial standpoint. This film was very popular to the Turkish and worldwide viewers. Hunting Season is a drama/crime/mystery film that keeps views entertained throughout the length of the movie. There have been many mixed reviews on this film, but overall the film was extremely enjoyable and entertaining to watch, for me. The genre of the film was very interesting and the process with the Turkish Police and how they handle and process a crime scene was one of the best parts.

Though this was a fiction film, it could have been based on a true story with the reality of the plot and characters. The plot deals with a few detectives working for a Turkish Police Force, and battling tough elements and personal struggles while having to solve a tough crime. Within the main plot, characters personalities were seen almost right away and each character was likeable in their own way. The casting for this film was very well done; the actors filled their characters roles. This made it seem much more realistic, and lees of a fiction based movie.

Hunting Season/Av Mevsimi was a film that anyone interested in: crime, thrillers, mysteries, dramas, or an overall well-produced movie should view. The film was approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes. With this there were some long points in this movie, where the scenes were long and sometimes hard to watch. But this was a small aspect of the movie, in which did not effect my overall viewing experience.

http://www.todayszaman.com/arts-culture_turgul-presents-decent-thriller-in-av-mevsimi_228682.html

The link above is for a news article from Sunday’s Zamam that reviews the film Hunting Season/Av Mevsimi. It gives a detailed plot description about what occurs within this movie as well as commenting that this movie is a “decent thriller”.

This review gives an overall neutral critic on the film Hunting Season/Av Mevsimi. The author points out positives and negatives about the film in this article. Some of the positives were the acting and atmosphere of the film. Some of the negatives were the plot and long, boring scenes. Both the positives and negatives are valid points that many people who watched this film experience as well.

http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2014/silent-seas-rowdy-nights/

This  article discusses how Hunting Season is a popular film. It also discusses the actor Cem Yilmaz and how this was his first major role in a drama film. Yilmaz is a comedian so this genre of acting was different than his normal roles.

This article points out one actor in particular, Cem Yilmaz, and how this was his major role in acting. Many words such as: hot-headed, inability to play by rules, and not sympathetic describe the role that Yilmaz played throughout the film. A short clip (the video below) shows a scene in the movie where Yilmaz’s warm and charming personality is portrayed throughout the film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1668191/

Above is the link to the website where the film review was found and below is the review written about the the film form the website.

The movie is a good attempt to create a new genre for Turkish Cinema, but that’s it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1668191/reviews?start=10

Above is the link to the website where the film review was found and below is the review written about the the film form the website.

Av Mevsimi (Hunting Season) is in certain terms as good as a production can get in Turkey: great cast, great cinematography, great sets, state of the art technology unfortunately though the great production could not be translated into a good movie. Yavuz Turgul is a masterful screenwriter, the best in Turkish cinema history for sure. He knows his mathematics very well. He was time and again proved this since Muhsin Bey. There is no hole in his scripts which is impossible for other Turkish films and scripts that contain more holes than swiss cheese. Mr Turgul has had the self made fortune of collaborating with Sener Sen for over 30 years now! Sener Sen has not appeared in any movie that was not written by Turgul. Hopefully after this his mind will change. Because as masterful as Mr Turgul is with script mathematics he is just as unimaginative and lacks creativity when it comes to tuning that mathematics with great story lines, engaging characters and witty developments. Unfortunately he keeps repeating himself and regardless of whether he is writing about an old time bandit (eskiya), a teacher who has returned to his Istanbul home after years at Anatolia outskirts (gönül yarası), a Mafioso who still embraces old ethic codes like a samurai (kabadayı) or as with this picture about a forensic chief he is depending on the same main character and similar web of story lines. Every main character Mr Turgul created since Eskiya have been the same and unfortunately he alone has access to Turkey’s tour de force actor Sener Sen. The acting and directing in the movie has been the most disappointing aspects of the picture for me: at times the acting is raw, at times authentic and at other times comical (Çetin Tekindor’s delivery of last lines). The Turkish media and critics that is composed of a few monkeys scratching each other’s back and never writing anything bad about bad movies made by influential people has of course spoken of this picture too as a ‘masterpiece’. Unfortunately it is not! Especially the acting of Cem Yılmaz, a loved persona by myself too, doesn’t get better than any of the characters from Turkish police TV series such as Arka Sokaklar. The storyline never gets interesting or clever. At an age when CSI and similar TV series are putting such emphasis on the storyline, Hunting Season manages to be as interesting as an episode of CSI NY, and nothing more. Compared to Millennium Trilogy it is a movie for people who have no idea about the genre. The music selection was good but Mr Turgul has for the first time agonized me with his use of music as a mood pusher. The music always makes itself more than apparent! Which is very sad as the use of music has always been one of Mr Turgul’s strenghts. Editing and the overly washed light footage are other inconsistent elements of the movie. At times the editing reminds one of Svankmayer’s pieces: creating an alter persona through blurring of images and movement of the camera close to the face however this (as with Tekindor’s last scene) makes the movie more comical than anything! The worst aspect yet of the movie was the unnecessary voice over! If anyone catches the meaning of that voice over please explain as all it did was push feelings down the throat of the audience in arabesque ways and it didn’t even have a finely tuned closure. 5 stars for what Mr Turgul means to Turkish Cinema and regardless of how disappointing he has been still the contribution Cem Yılmaz will have to the same art.

This link above is to the trailer for Hunting Season. Unfortunately, there are no English subtitles to any of the trailer for this film. But through watching the preview you get a sense for how this movie fits the genre of a drama and mystery film. This trailer also gives the viewers a feel for the main characters in this film, and a small portion of their behavior. The two and a half minute long trailer attracts views and interests them in watching the full-length film.

milesmuncie.wordpress.com

This link above is for Miles Muncie’s website on the film “I Saw the Sun”. This website is very well done and includes all aspects required. Reading the movie summary and articles about the film, I was able to get a very good sense of this movie and what it was about. I actually was able to find the movie and watched it after reading these reviews, because it seemed like a well-produced movie.