Casual in Istanbul

Who Wants To Be A Producer?

Remember the great short movie "Masturbation:Putting the Fun Into Self-Loving"?We bet you do! It was the award winning short movie of writer-director-producer J.T. Tepnapa.After the huge success of Sunflowers , Masturbation , Drag Queen Heist and Begging For a Change , J.T. is working on a new title called "The Judas Kiss"...

OMG! who designed this amazing teaser poster??(LOL).Now you have a chance to see your name on closing credits of a feature film! You can donate money for Judas Kiss to be recognized as a benefactor , visionary , associate , senior or executive producer on the closing credits plus tons of goodies :)J.T. is a really good friend and one of the best persons in the world. So you can help him finishing his movie and you can amaze your friends and confound your enemies ;)

One Last Effort for Frank!

After a few days worth of voting at the Saatchi Gallery website, Frank's painting has scored incredibly and he is now a finalist.  He is now just up against ONE other person.The head to head voting has already begun! Please follow this link and head on over to the new page and vote for Frank's painting ( scoring it a ten-10 stars ! ) once again.

Vote for Frank !

Vilain Garçon Summer 2007

Vilain Garçon strikes back with their spring/summer collection!It includes many new items, extending its collection of t-shirts and introducing its very first sports tank tops. Of course, the new Vilain Garçon range keeps its very tailored and tight-fitting cut that emphasizes the male's body.Customers do appreciate !Even though its themes are still very much in keeping with the Vilain Garçon spirit, the new collection is also made of other materials and other colors and resorts to other effects.

For all the Naughty Boys worldwide, the watchword this Spring-Summer season will thus be "LU(st)XURY".Because they are provocative, sensual and sassy, once again this season, Naughty Boys will be able to assert their desires and fantasies with pride.What's more, the items of the new collection are now available in one extra size (XL) for very hefty naughty boys...

The new campaign's visuals for this collection were designed by the photographer François Kalife.

Bye Bye Until Next Time!

I love the Airport Terminals...I love going to the airports to catch a plane for traveling , i love going to the airports for picking up someone i really care ,looking at the board to see if the plane landed already , waiting next to the gate to be able to see a good friend is coming out of it ,  and this time that good friend was Yogen !Before 2,5 months , just before the day Mehmet got sick , we've met one of the greatest guys on the planet. We've really had great time together. But that was the last day of his trip so we could spent only 12 hours together and we couldn't get enough of him!

Late November , we got an e-mail from him about his schedule and about his trip to Istanbul.We were like "YAY" .So i had that job interview on Tuesday morning which wasn't far from the airport.After that i headed to the airport to pick him up. It was great to see him again.We had lunch  later that night. He had lots of business meetings for two days. So we came together on Thursday. We spent two nights together which were great ; we cooked , ate , drank , talked ; i made both Yogen and Mehmet watch my geeky Star Wars stuff. It was really fun...
The hardest thing for us was let him go after getting used to his presence.After Mehmet left for work we also left the house for airport. This one was a really sad drive. I made him listen Madonna's Immaculate Collection on the way to the airport(and warned him not to tell anyone that i'm such a geek! well i still have doubts about that...lol)...
Bye Bye until next time...

Antoine Doinel

"Oh, I lie now and then, I suppose. Sometimes I'd tell them the truth and they still wouldn't believe me, so I prefer to lie..."
This is just a post to mention our favorite movie Les Quatre Cents Coups/Four Hundred Blows and to greet our loyal commentator "Antoine"(who had his nick after the movie's main character Antoine Doinel). Although it's a movie from 1959 , we watch it with same excitement like we had our first time...Especially it's a must for Mehmet...

Frank Malafronte...

You still don't know who Frank Malafronte is? Shame on you! He was one of the first persons whom we met in blogosphere with his great blog Left Brain. He is good looking , hot and most importantly ; a true intellectual guy with a great talent...painting!

With his brilliant artworks he participated in several group exhibitions , also some solo exhibitions in Boston and Rhode Island.There are also publications about him and his works in some newspapers and magazines.
"As an artist, I am inspired to create because it is important to me, because I believe in it, and because I am passionate about what I do. I can only create art that comes from my soul.  I can't create it for other people.  I can't create it so that people will want to buy it.  I can't create it so critics will respond to it.  Because of that I feel very grateful and fortunate for the tremendous reception of my works. I am starting to make a living on something that I am excited to do.  I am very grateful to have a good number of people in Boston and Manhattan who now collect my work."
Frank captures incredibly great visions - and is executed with great style from his amazing talent...well we are not art critics and we are not capable of making fancy comments about his works...all we can say is his style is young and passionate and his works are really fascinating. Now is the time to scoop up his work before it becomes more famous & expensive!

Here are two gates to explore Frank and his works...Each sides of the image below will lead you to two different places! Just click...

Yogen!

Mehmet has a very good 6th sense.He can sense good things are coming. Well generally i meet people who contacted us through Casual in Istanbul. Mehmet always tells me "you are the PR guy, go and meet". But this time , after i told him that i'm gonna meet this guy , he insisted on coming with me even he was sick a little bit. I found him in a vintage bookstore as usual on Istiklal Street(in Beyoglu area) , then we headed to the Taksim Square where we were gonna meet Yogen...He'd sent us an e-mail about his business trip to Istanbul and invited us for a drink and we agreed on meeting him on his last night in Istanbul.He was waiting for us under the monument (ok we were a bit late;). We met him for the first time.At first sight Mehmet and i suddenly liked this cute and sweet guy a lot!We began talking about everything while we were drinking and talked , talked , talked while eating , walking...we talked like 12 hours without a break.

It was one of that rare and very precious nights in lifetime. It was like we know each other forever and having a very fun and a comfortable conversation with an old and a good friend. I drove him to the airport , it was 5 something a.m. we had coffee while waiting for his check-in and as you can guess we continued talking...

Yogen , we feel very lucky to get a chance to meet you , we still have so much things to talk:D ; so come back soon :)

Kisses

Ali & Mehmet