Friday night I went to a very fancy shopping mall in the Levent neighborhood to see a movie. Yes, I'm still working on my Academy Awards list and I saw "The Black Dahlia," which is nominated for Achievement in Cinematography.

It seemed kind of funny to go all the way to Istanbul to see a movie set in Los Angeles in the 1940s.

The movie was shown in English with Turkish subtitles. Sadly, the subtitles didn't make this horrible movie any better. Director Brian de Palma has completely lost it.

But here's the funny part: One of the characters in the movie is "Los Angeles Police Chief Ted Green" and he's pushing for passage of "Proposition B" to fund police facilities and police pay raises. (Bond money should only be used for capital expenditures not ongoing expenses, but I digress.)

Anyway, the only words in the subtitles I could understand were "Ted Green." It was very odd to see. I wanted to turn to my neighbor and explain I had the same name as the police chief but that seemed hopeless. I can barely ask for ice in my soda here, let alone describe movie character identification issues.