Black Gold Delivers

At a film festival near me...

Kristi and I trekked over to Katara yesterday to check out the world premier of Black Gold at The Doha Tribeca Film Festival. Back up. On second thought, I'm not sure if we can really call it the world premier, since our tickets were for the second screening that started thirty minutes after the first. Just for posterity purposes, I'm going to say it qualified. We were in the beautiful Katara Opera House while the other screening was occurring at the open air theater at Katara, constructed just for the event. No complaints from me not being in the "open air". Our controlled temperature environment with red cushy velveteen seats suited me just fine. A pleasant surprise awaited us on our chairs in a black gold embossed envelope filled with umpteen Black Gold commemorative post cards. Nice touch DTFF. For me, the gift alone was well worth the 30QR ($8) admission fee. As for the movie itself, I found it enjoyable and entertaining, but remember I have somewhat of a skewed interest. Parts of it were filmed in the deserts of Qatar, where I, myself, have ridden the high dunes and faced those horrid desert winds. Ok, so maybe not while fighting off the enemy. Nonetheless, Antonio Banderas brings a bit of mirth to his royal emir self while struggling for power with the handsome rival emir payed by Mark Strong. And Tahar Rahim, well, he had me at hello. Freida Pinto, (Tahar's love interest in the movie) was just ok, seeming a bit awkward at times or maybe it was just her character. Who knows. The only drawback in the film, for me, was missing out on some of the conversation. The "English" speaking characters were pretty heavily accented at times and I could have used some English subtitles along with the Arabic ones that were displayed. Other than that, kudos to all involved for bringing film to the desert.

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