Tag Archives | series

Lebanese Mir-Jean Bou Chaaya to Direct Netflix First Arabic Original Series

By Rami on March 6, 2018 in Television

Netflix recently announced it is launching its first Arabic original series titled “Jinn”, which will be directed by Lebanese Mir-Jean Bou Chaaya (best known for Very Big Shot) and written by Jordanian Bassed Ghandour who scripted the Oscar-nominated Theeb.

Fortunately for us, Jinn is neither a Lebanese drama nor Bab El Hara kind of series. On the other hand, it is supernatural thriller that tell the story of teenagers who discover a genie (Jinn in Arabic) in the ancient Jordanian city of Petra.

Filming should start towards the end of the year with a cast from several countries around the Middle East and it should be available for streaming somewhere around 2019. You can read more details about it here.

BBC Pop Up Are Coming to Beirut And Want to Hear Your Stories!

By Rami on January 29, 2017 in Journalism, Travel

BBC Pop Up is BBC’s mobile bureau, it’s a small team that travels to different cities one month at a time to make documentaries.

They have previously been to several places like Russia and India and made some pretty interesting videos. The way they get inspired to make their stories however is different than other show, instead of deciding by themselves what to report on, they rely on suggestions submitted by the inhabitants of the place they’re visiting or other people who simply want to know more about a certain topic related the country they’re in.

Throughout the month of February, BBC Pop Up announced on their twitter account that they will be flying to Beirut, and in a country like ours with countless problems and so many awesome things at the same time, I bet they will have a quite busy month! From the refugee crisis, to waste management, messed up transportation system, our food culture, and cool places off the beaten track like little Armenia (Bourj Hammoud) and cities like Tripoli and Saida… there’s just so much to talk about.

You can submit your ideas to BBC Pop Up through their website or write to them on bbcpopup@bbc.co.uk.

Lebanese Drama Series – Facial Expressions 101

By Rami on November 10, 2016 in Series, Telecom

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Lebanese drama series are basically known for the exaggeration in absolutely everything! From make up and hair design to sophisticated emotions and weird reactions that seem like they’re forced on the actors. And now just when you thought no one can get cheesier than Peter Semaan and Youssef El-Khal came Rami Ayach!

Blame it all on whoever convinced him he has what it takes to be an actor! I spotted him on LBC last night and his performance is horrible beyond words. These photos are all taken from a single scene where he was supposedly angry at the girl he loves. What’s the deal with all those weird facial expressions?!

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Yeah… this is basically how he’s conveying anger, this also serves as a reminder for me to keep switching channels every time I bump into some Lebanese series on TV!

Lebanese TV Stations and Copyright Basics

By Rami on September 27, 2016 in Television

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Most Lebanese TV stations have been uploading their content to YouTube for a while now, and I’m personally glad they do because I rarely manage to watch programs on time. My wife and I usually put my little kid to sleep and then start watching our favorite shows starting 8:30 or 9:00PM, including anything interesting we might have missed on a Lebanese station thanks to YouTube.

However, I’ve been lately noticing that those in charge or maintaining the YouTube channels are sometimes uploading every show the stations are airing regardless whether it was produced by them or not. For instance while it is normal for LBCI to upload their news reports or Nharkom Saiid for example, I don’t think it’s ok for them to upload a series they bought from some production company because they don’t have the right to redistribute it.

Yesterday for example I was going through MTV Lebanon videos and noticed that they have every single episode of “Metel El Amar” series on their YouTube channel even though it was produced by Marwa Group (link). On the other hand, LBCI have episodes of “Shaware’ Al Zell” (produced by Phoenix International) on their channel.

I know there’s no way to compare but imagine some European TV channel uploading Game of Thrones episodes the minutes they finish airing them, that would piss HBO off big time… And in case you’re wondering, I personally don’t respect copyright laws as I get most of my movies and series from torrent websites, but I was just thinking that TV stations should be more responsible about such things.

Game of Thrones Board Games Available at JouéClub

By Rami on May 24, 2016 in Games, Series

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I was at JouéClub the other day when I noticed the Game of Thrones editions of both Monopoly and Risk were available there for 119,000L.L and 79,000L.L respectively. They’re a bit pricey but I guess the books and series fans will definitely love them. (I know I did!)

They’re unfortunately only available in French language, but I hope JouéClub gets the English ones too.

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Kawalis Al-Madina – The Real Story Of Al-Madina Bank Scandal

By Rami on April 15, 2016 in Television

I’m not really a fan of Lebanese drama series, but I have lately found Kawalees Al-Madina which recently started airing from Wednesday to Saturday on Al-Jadeed TV quite interesting.

The series is written by Ghada Eid (presenter of Al-Fassad show), and even though the crew denies it but it is mostly based on the true story of Al-Madina Bank collapse between 2002 and 2003 which was mind boggling at that time. Other corruption stories of the kind that went public but never got settled down legally the proper way are mentioned as well, such as the drug ring that was uncovered among AUB students during the same period. I remember the media suddenly stopped talking about that ring because the son of some politician turned out to be involved in it.

The reason I see Kawalis Al Madina so relevant right now is because several scandals were unveiled over the last few months from garbage, to illegal internet, and finally the manipulation of health care bills by corrupt ISF officers, but unfortunately they’re all on the way of being covered up without holding any of the key suspects accountable for their wrongdoings. The biggest proof about that being how incapable is the ongoing investigation about illegal internet in identifying the nature of a stupid fiber optic cable in Nahr El Kalb!

Disregard the lousy acting we always complain about in Lebanese series, but as long as we are unable to punish the corrupt people in authority, I think it is just fair to irritate them by exposing them on TV and let the public know about their sleazy jobs.

Belghalat – A Satire Musical by Michelle & Noel Keserwany

By Rami on February 12, 2016 in Lebanon

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The famous Michelle and Noel Keserwany are collaborating with M Media on a satirical musical called “Belghalat”. The project is made of four episodes each criticizing a certain side of life in Lebanon through their witty songs.

Judging by the songs they made so far like Jagal El Usek, 3al Jamal bi Wasat Beirut, and Zaffatleh El Tarik, I highly doubt the upcoming series will be any less better than the previous videos.

The first episode will go online on February 15th, but I have no idea if the subsequent ones will be posted on a daily or weekly basis. Anyway, for now you can watch this teaser that M Media posted today.

Here’s How Netflix Fails in Lebanon

By Rami on January 12, 2016 in Lebanon

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Soon after Netflix launched its service worldwide I quickly signed up for a free trial to see how good will the streaming be over our lousy internet connection, and I was unsurprisingly very disappointed with the experience.

I have a 2Mb connection, and I was never able to stream a show in HD, the maximum resolution I was getting was probably 360 or 480p despite setting the playback parameters in my account to only play shows in HD. A friend of mine who has a 4Mb was also failing to load anything in high quality. And judging by the figures Netflix posted on their data usage, the results seemed pretty reasonable since 1 hour of HD streaming consumes up to 3GB, so there’s no way you can get that quality unless you probably have an 8Mb subscription.

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Therefore until the internet infrastructure gets a massive upgrade here in Lebanon you’re better off without a Netflix subscription. And even if you managed to get a super fast connection, you should know that the Middle East’s catalog is different than that of the USA and lacks some of our favorite shows like House of Cards for example due to licensing issues. To get over that you’ll have to resort to using some VPN service all over again to cheat the geographical restrictions.

So basically just ditch the idea of subscribing to the service and keep that torrent client installed in your PC for the time being.

Claire Danes in Beirut

By Rami on October 2, 2012 in Funny

So as I mentioned in a previous post, the events in the first episodes of “Homeland” take place in Beirut, but its producers decided to shoot these scenes in Tel Aviv and make it look like Beirut as shown in the above photo. Still, the result didn’t seem pretty convincing to Karl from Karl reMarks blog, and so he offered the below alternatives!

Beirut featured in Homeland TV series

By Rami on October 2, 2012 in Lebanon

Fatima Ali, the first wife of a Hezbollah district commander, has information about an attack on the United States. Fatima refuses to speak to anyone but Carrie, who knows another secret from having recruited her eight years ago: She loves Julia Roberts movies. (What did she think of her in “Charlie Wilson’s War”?) This leads CIA counterterrorism director David Estes (David Harewood) and avuncular CIA vet Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) to pull Carrie back into the business for a three-day, one-off mission to Beirut, Lebanon. (The Beirut scenes, however, were filmed in Israel.) Source

Funnily enough, the scenes in Beirut were all filmed in Tel Aviv.

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