Egyptian cinema hasn't been too popular in America, but now there's good news. A production company based out of Cairo called Good News for Film and Music is trying to make Egyptian films that appeal to Western audiences in addition to those in Arab countries. Last year Good News released The Yacoubian Building, which was the most expensive film ever produced in Egypt and was intended to be accessible to moviegoers in Europe and North America. The film has screened at a number of international festivals, including Berlin, Rome and Tribeca, where it won an award for Best New Feature Director, and though it wasn't nominated or even shortlisted for the foreign language Oscar -- it was Egypt's official submission -- it has so far been pretty well received (see Cinematical's review here).

Now Good News is following the success of The Yacoubian Building with a few more high-profile films that should be geared towards and possibly appeal to American audiences. The first is a biopic about Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and the history of al Qaeda. According to Good News head Adel Adeeb, the plot will focus on the two al Qaeda leaders as they contact an American journalist in order to tell their life stories. This seems likely to be a framing device for a film told in flashback, and the fictional Western filter should make it easier for American audiences to digest the film, which will certainly be controversial no matter how accessible.

I constantly complain about modern special effects, how CGI creatures don't look realistic enough, but I have to admit this is pretty hypocritical of me. I love the work of effects legend Ray Harryhausen, and his models were never believable. There was a lot more inventiveness and craftsmanship in his effects, though, and there's no denying that the films he worked on have a creative spark that many modern fantasy films lack. Sometimes I think that my preference for model work over CGI has to do with their tangible appearance, but then that doesn't explain my forgiveness for the composite shots in Harryhausen films, which typically appeared as flat as today's worst CGI.

Anyway, despite our now having films with great computer effects like Jurassic Park and Peter Jackson's King Kong, Harryhausen will never be forgotten. Earlier this year, the 86-year-old received a well-deserved George Pal Memorial Award at the Saturn Awards and he was celebrated in the documentary The Sci-Fi Boys, which screened at Tribeca. Now, thanks to YouTube, someone is presenting all of Harryhausen's creatures and spaceships in a chronologically edited montage. Check it out below: