Of sand and more sand

Lisa and I went to see Sahara the other night. Based on Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt adventure novels, and starring Matthew McConaughey, Penelope Cruz and Steve Zahn, I wasn't expecting a real cerebral two hours, and I wasn't disappointed. It was the definition of a Big Dumb Movie. But by golly, it knew it was dumb, and had fun. it's the same kind of silly actioner that National Treasure was, only Sahara does the whole schtick better, with surprisingly earnest acting. There are lots of groan-inducing scenes that would be awful if they weren't so entertaining. Wind-sailing a wrecked plane across the desert. A Civil War ironclad in a gunbattle with an attack helicopter. A James Bond-esque fistfight atop a solar collection tower. But the thing that really sold me on the film came early on, during the credit scroll as the camera panned over newspaper clippings. Most were lost on me, since I haven't read many of Cussler's novels, but the one headline that read something like "President honors team that raised Titanic," had me choking back guffaws. Raise the Titanic being the first Dirk Pitt adventure I ever read (filled with a number of deus ex machinas) and made into a somewhat mediocre movie. I know that if the team that did Sahara had done Raise the Titanic, it'd have been a lot more fun.

And speaking of sand, this weekend the family will embark on the annual trek to the Port Aransas SandFest. There are some incredibly talented sand sculptors that participate in the event, as you can see in my gallery from last year. And $20 says that the prevailing theme in this year's creations has to do with John Paul II's funeral and the coming Vatican conclave...

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