Happy Valentine's Day (3 of 4) A Pop Culture Salute.....

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon: The Stars of "9 to 5"

Tonight, we thought we'd go back to the days when we blogged about the degrees of separation given stars were from Kevin Bacon through the web site The Oracle of Bacon, devised by computer scince at the University of Virginia a decade and a half ago.

With that in mind, we focus on the three female leads for "9 to 5" (1980), which was turned into a tv sitcom and a Broadway musical. The film starred Jane Fonda (pictured top), Dolly Parton (pictured bottom) in her film debut and Lily Tomlin.

None of the women have actually been in a film with Bacon, and each of them are two degrees removed from his.

Fonda was in "Stanley and Iris" (1989) with Robert DeNiro and he was in turn in "Sleepers" (1995) with Bacon.

Parton was in "Miss Congeniality 2" which I reluctantly saw at a movie theatre in Guatemala City, Guatemala, with Stephen Tobolowsky who was in  "Murder in the First" (1995) with Bacon.

Tomlin was in the Woody Allen film "Shadows and Fog" (1991) which co-starred Peter McRobbie who was in "Sleepers" with Bacon.

Parton will be performing in Portland, Ore., on June 8th for Dolly Parton Hoot Night (we are not making this up!).

Amazingly enough, Bacon is also only two degrees removed from early film star Lillian Gish and Shirley Temple, who hasn't made films since she was a child star. But, he is a full three degrees from Mary Pickford, a star in the 1920s, and Turkish actress Turkan Soray, who is known as the queen of Turkish cinema.

http://www.oracleofbacon.org

http://www.dollyparton.com

http://www.portlandlive.com

Happy Birthday, Cuneyt Arkin

Today, we celebrate the 74th birthday of '70s Turkish action movie icon Cuneyt Arkin who turned 74 on September 7th. Arkin was born on this date in 1934 in Eskisehir, Turkey.

While he has over 300 films to his credit, we only have time to mention four here.

The first one is "Hayatim Sana Feda/My Life is For You, Feda" (1970),a romantic comedy, melodrama which was likely influenced by 1950s Hollywood melodramas, which were often directed by Douglas Sirk and starred Rock Hudson.

In this film, a Romeo who has burned his bridges has a chance to reclaim his Juliet, a female Turkish lounge singer played by Turkan Soray, the queen of Turkish cinema who often starred with Arkin, after she goes blind.

In 1973, Arkin starred in the first of what would be several films based on the popular "Kara Murat" comics, including "Kara Murat Versus the Black Knight" (pictured here). The basic plot is that Kara Murat, an ancient warrior in the days of the huns, goes after the bad guys and kicks some major ass in the process.

Turkey and Greece went to far over Cyprus in July of 1974, which lead to the production of many action films with nationalist themes. This would include "Once Vatan/My Country First" (1974) in which Arkin plays a Turkish agent who goes to Cyprus and goes kung fu on the Greek villians. Such films were, to my knowledge, also made in Greece around this era, with the roles reversed. And, yes to answer your question, "Once Vatan" is basically a Turkish Chuck Norris movie.

Lastly, Arkin will always be best known for "Dunayi Kurtaran Adami/The Man Who Saved the World" (1982), which is also known as "The Turkish Star Wars." The film borrows music and actual sequences from the George Lucas classic, but the similarities end there. The plot is a very strange one to summarize, but the film has aliens in muppet-fleece who decide that central Turkey is for unexplained reasons the best place to invade. But, they are no match for Arkin's gymnastics tumbling and kickboxing abilies.

Happy Birthday Cuneyt Arkin

Cuneyt Arkin, Turkey's leading machismo action movie hero of the 1970s turns 73 today.

We are big fans of Arkin who is perhaps best known in the rest of the world for his gymnastics stunts that he performed as the lead in the famous/infamous 1982 film "The Man Who Saved the World," which is also known as "The Turkish Star Wars" since it was a rip-off of the George Lucas mega-blockbuster.

Arkin, who has appeared in more than 250 films, made his debut with "We Are Not Alone" in 1964. Up until the '70s, he was predominantly a romantic leading man along the lines of Gregory Peck or Rock Hudson with Turkish cinema goddess Turkan Soray often playing his conquests.

But, that quickly changed when Turkey's brief war with Greece over Cyprus in 1974 caused a nationalist frenzy in Turkey which was illustrated through Arkin's film of the period, most notably "Once Vatan/My Nation First" (1974).

Arkin also starred in "Little Cowboy" (1973), which is perhaps the ultimate oxy moron- a Turkish Western!

Though none of his films are available in the United States except through Turkish good distributors like tulumba.com, several of his films like "Lion Man" (1975) and "Holy Sword" (1982) have developed underground cult followings.

SIDEBAR: The world basketball championships are underway in Istanbul and both The United States and Turkey have performed well so far. Turkey beat France 95-77 and the team will next face Slovenia on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Team America, with NBA players like Kevin Durant, bounced the African nation of Angola out of the tournament with a 121-66 win in which a former Montana State player named Divaldo Mbguna scored four points for the losing side.

Turkey also won a road game by a 3-0 score against Kazakhstan (which is where the fictional journalist Borat hailed from) in a European Cup qualifier on Friday.