Yesterday is exactly one month to my birthday. I am not sure what I will do for my birthday this year. Last year I could not really do much since I had to look after my mother who was really sick on Chemotherapy. And Radiotherapy. What I might do is have a quiet dinner with my mother and brother… And then at some stage meet my father for a meal. And meet some of my friends for dinner. I need to think about these things now so I can make sure that people are free…

Sahara

I saw the movie Sahara, and I really loved it. The story is a bit far-fetched but I think it was a bit toned down from the book. I was a bit anxious as to how the movie would turn out, and in the end I think it came off well. I am sure that some others will not agree with that, but I liked it.

The opening credits were cool… They brought the viewer up to date with the history of Dirk Pitt, if you looked very closely. And you needed to look very closely to see things. The credits are shot in a ward room of a ship, and show some of the press clippings from Dirk Pitt’s History. I can only assume that the opening scene was filmed with a robotic crane camera since the focus and the camera moves were perfect.

Matthew McConaughey was if anything slightly young for the role of Dirk in my opinion. I had always imaginged that he was a bit older. And Al Giordino was definitely too young. Missing as far as I could tell was the cameo by Clive Cussler which always appears in the books. Penelope Cruz did a good job as the love interest, and the principal female actor, but I think that someone like Nicole Kidman might have done a better job.

Lambert Wilson who was The Merovingian in The Matrix movies was one of the slightly ‘bad’ characters in the movie. Not that his acting was bad, but he was playing a bad character.

There were many cases where the dialog was full of understatement. It was so Clive Cussler. He did a good job working with the script writer moving his novel onto the big screen.

One of the other things I saw in the movie was a trailer for “War of the Worlds”. This was strange… Without many details. I did remember the dialog from the book and the album… It will be interesting to see what the movie is like when it comes out.