Lights, Camera, Action!

As intriguing as Abu Dhabi can be, unless you are connected with social groups, it can become just as repetitive a place as anywhere else.  Believe me, you can only go to so many malls before you want something more.  Luckily there are a lot of events that come to AD.  The biggest one of the year is usually the F1 concerts.  F1, or Formula 1, is like Nascar but the cars are smaller and cooler looking, not sure which goes faster.  Anyway, Abu Dhabi has a big F1 race that happens every year and to celebrate they go all out and invite the biggest names they can get a hold of to come and perform concerts during the weekend.  The year before I got here seemed to have been the best year that there will ever be: they had Beyonce, Kanye West, and Prince.  Can you imagine that concert? Last year they obviously catered to people of a different hue, as they got Paul McCartney.  Now I like some of the man’s songs but excuse me if that’s not a bit of a letdown.  This year they managed to snag Ceelo, Missy Elliot, and Eminem.  From what I understand, Ceelo and Missy were free, but you had to pay for Eminem.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to go to any of them because I was brutally sick at the time with one of the many desert sicknesses the students have passed onto me, and I subsequently passed on to my wife.  

One of the other big annual events in Abu Dhabi, and the main topic of this post, is the Abu Dhabi Film festival.  We went last year with some friends and we made it a point to attend this year too.  The festival consists of about three or four Theaters venues around the city showing different featured movies.  There is a big schedule to look through online and you can reserve your seat and buy the tickets right there.  They also have classes for aspiring film makers and producers.  We signed up for a class about being a film producer out of genuine interest but apparently there was not enough participation of so the class was cancelled.  

We reserved for two movies: Sparkle and Flight.  Both were at the Emirates Palace, which doesn’t normally have a theater but obviously they constructed a screen for the event.  Going to the Emirates Palace is always nice anyway; the ambiance is impeccable.  Turns out it is also a pretty good place to see a movie too.  

We saw Sparkle earlier in the week, and had Flight on Thursday night (i.e Friday night in the US).   I was a little surprised that Sparkle was even here given the heavy Christian Church musical influence in the movie.  The audience was mostly black or ethnic women, with sprinkles of Arab men and women.  Overall we enjoyed the movie.  You will be happy to know that at the end of Whitney’s big solo “His Eye is on the Sparrow” in the church, she received a resounding round of applause from the entire theater.  

We followed Sparkle up with Flight going into the weekend, and this was the big Premiere, so the place was packed.  At the time this was only the second showing of the movie in the world, after New York.  They even had the bodyguards on cam alert.  There were two big burly guys with Mission impossible style night vision goggles kind of hanging off to either side of the theater.  The one closest to me even had to pass me on our row a few times to tell some guy to shut off his phone.  The movie wasn’t due out for a couple of weeks and they did not want someone to record and leak the movie.  

So the movie was great, and after the showing the actual producers of the movie took a moment to do a little audience Q and A.  It was really nice to hear the conversations of actual people in the business.  They produce as a couple, Laurie McDonald and Walter F. Parkes, and are two of the original founders Dreamworks (yes that Dreamworks), and are still currently on the board there.  They were name dropping all over the place, I think intentionally.  I recall them saying something like  “…and when we did a little movie called Catch Me If You Can, etc…”  To be honest though they have a right to name drop, they have worked with all the biggest players in the movie game.  Here is a very shortened list of movies they have produced (I think you may recognize a few):  Men In Black 1,2 and 3, Little Giants, Deep Impact, Amistad, Gladiator, Road to Perdition, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, Sweeney Todd, Dinner for Schmucks,.  And that’s just what they have done personally.  I can’t imagine what it would be if you included Dreamworks into the equation. 

 

I can’t recall much of the Q and A, but I think what I do remember being said ( and what I took away from it the most)  was when someone asked about what it takes to make a great movie, or something similar leading to a conversation that involves the topic.  Ultimately they said you have to get yourself a big star and good director, and essentially everything picks up momentum from there.  Flight was chugging along for 5 or 6 years in development, then Robert Zemeckis signed on to direct the project.  Then once Denzel was on board (no pun intended) the movie moved quickly.  

They were also asked why did they make the movie.  The story is actually based on a novel that the couple read the rough drafts of.  They liked the concept and took it from there.  The events were inspired by actual events that happened, but unlike the movie, everyone in real life perished.  However, the maneuvers Denzel uses to save everyone were actual maneuvers used by the pilot of the doomed plane.  They worked in real life too, at least they bought the pilot some time.  In real life, it was only until the emergency landing that the plane was destroyed (By the way, I hope none of what I write here is a spoiler for the movie, if you have seen trailers for the movie you should already know that Denzel saves the people on the plane because of his good piloting skills).  

And so the night ended.  I was able to grab a few pictures of us and the red carpet.  Hope you enjoy.