Seriously, when Leslie told me she was on the verge of getting a job offer in "Abu Dhabi," the only data on the city I could retrieve from my brain was the Garfield/Normal reoccurring bit. I'm obviously more cognizant of western media attention on UAE now that I live here, but during my recent three-week U.S. sojourn, I felt like coverage of the UAE was inescapable.
The single-most interesting example is the Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol trailer release, featuring Tom Cruise back as Ethan Hunt and moving with a purpose in and around Dubai. The trailer highlight is Cruise repelling down the Burj Khalifa (starting at the 1:51 mark), the world's tallest building (for now).
The scenes on Da Burj (George Wendt voice) compelled by attention far more than the non-memorable plot and character set-up that precedes it. It's a nice stylized look at the structure, with more shininess and air clarity than I believe you'll ever see in person. And I have no taken in Da Burg from most angles.
Approaching Dubai on the road from Abu Dhabi (approximately 12o kilometers between), the city starts coming at you in waves of skycrapers out of the open desert - waves because there are 3-4 clumps of skyscrapers with less-developed areas for a few miles in between. The effect is that you have no real scale for the skyline as you approach it - with almost everything being massive or at sand level. So nothing tall looks as tall as it actually is, especially Da Burj. From a couple of miles out, you could probably convince yourself that it's a 70-story building surrounded by 30-story buildings.
Then as you get closer you realize the buildings around it are all probably around the size of the Empire State Building, and they only go about halfway up Da Burj. And when you stand next to the Burj and look up it, with the four-level Mall of Dubai connected to it on the side, you fully believe your by the world's tallest building.
From the Mall of Dubai outdoor area:
From 124 floors up Da Burj (featuring my thumb):
We've been around Da Burj numerous times during our must-visit stops at Potbelly and Taco Bell in the Dubai Mall, but this past weekend with friends in town, we splurged and paid to go as far up it as they'd take us. Unfortunately that's only to the 124th floor - no where close to the needle-like top - and the experience of going 55% of the way up the world's tallest building does not seem worth $30. For viewers of the above picture trying to grasp the entire scope of Da Burj, here is what you should deduce - those are very tall buildings in the background, very far below the outdoor observation deck where we stood, and that thumb is still a long way from the top.
To compare:
The whole Burj is 2,717 feet high.
The thumb picture is from 1,483 feet high.
The Empire State Building is 1,25o feet high.
The whole Burj is 160 stories.
The thumb picture is from the 124th story.
The Empire State Building has 102 stories.
You can get more background on Burj Khalifa on its Wikipedia page, including all of its records and the costs of such an undertaking. The point here is that its a pretty amazing structure, but the tourist visit to the 124th trip is a jip. Hopefully Tom Cruise's endeavors will take us closer to the top.
As for the movie, the filming in Dubai stirred up a lot of excitement round these parts. The trailer was posted on all my favorite English-speaking UAE sites, including The National, Gulf News and Emirates247.
I believe the most notable UAE portrayal in Hollywood to date was the less-than-favorable look at Abu Dhabi as the setting of Sex And The City 2 (although it was actually filmed in Morocco). The film was viewed by many critics as a lampoon of the UAE. (I need to watch SATC2 and provide commentary as a separate blog entry at some point, but of course the movie is banned here, so I'll have to figure out a cheap way to watch it).
I bet a lot of the natives here view Mission: Impossilbe - Ghost Protocol as a chance to overtake SATC2 as the UAE's most noteworthy splash in western entertainment. The UAE wants to be seen as a spectacular country, and getting Da Burj front and center in a worldwide blockbuster action adventure would make up for being mocked by the world's foremost chick flick franchise.
(A commemoration to the filming of Ghost Protocol on the ground floor of Da Burj, featuring a director's chair made for Sheikh Mahammed bin Rashad al Maktoum, the prime minister and vice president of UAE)Personally, I'm interested in the movie to see how Dubai and Da Burj are portrayed visually and culturally, and because Brad Bird of Ratatouille/Pixar is directing. If he can make me care about a cooking cartoon rat, he can definitely get me re-engaged in the MI franchise.
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