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I went and saw a sneak preview of Coach Carter tonite. Very good movie. Sam Jackson did a great job. When he gets pissed I keep getting reminded of the Dave Chappelle skit... "It's my beer bitch!"

Anyway.. one of the previews they had was for a movie called "Sahara". It's based on a book by one of my favorite authors.. Clive Cussler. I've been reading his books since I was a teenager so this was exciting.. until I saw who was plaing the main characters.

Dirk Pitt - Matthew McConaughey... okay.. Dirk Pitt is like 6' 4" in the books and tough. Matthew is... well a pussy. I can live with this since it gets worse.

Al Giordino - In the books, Al is a short, stocky Italian guy with curly hair. In the movie, he's played by Steve Zahn, a goofball who's about as Italian as Chris Rock.

Admiral Sandecker - Short guy, with red hair and a vandyke beard. In the movie.. it's William H. Macy.

Needless to say, I'm excited that they're making this movie.. but at the same time, I think the cast sucks ass. Did the people who did the casting even read the books? Probably not.. no one reads these days.

Anyway, the trailer can be found here if you want to check it out: http://www.saharamovie.com/

I thought Cussler vowed NEVER to sell a movie right to Hollwood again. Hollywood butchered "Raise The Titanic" in 1980 with, you guessed it: a crappy cast and watered down script.

Excellent novel. Horrible movie.

It seems to occur more frequently nowadays.

"Raise The Titanic" could use a new version, closely sticking to the book this time. With modern SFX, it would be a good movie.

Clive Cussler saved me from going insane in China when I was over there for 3 months. Couldn't find any decent books until I went into the lobby of a hotel.

Odd that it's taken so long for someone to make a movie.

Yeah, it is surprising.. but Hollywood figures people would rather see movies about CIA agents like Jack Ryan than some guy from NUMA.

Ian wrote:Yeah, it is surprising.. but Hollywood figures people would rather see movies about CIA agents like Jack Ryan than some guy from NUMA.

And then they butcher Jack Ryan's character too, by changing him three times. Alec Baldwin made the perfect Jack Ryan (I can't stand him IRL, but his character was spot-on and the movie was fairly well written), Harrison Ford was decent (and would have been tons better if they had written the movies appropriately for his character) and Ben Afleck was just plain, horribly wrong.

Yes, Ben Affleck was horrible in that movie. They twisted the whole plot to make him fit in better too.

Ian wrote:Yes, Ben Affleck was horrible in that movie. They twisted the whole plot to make him fit in better too.

That's why I didn't go see it. I would have worked with Harrison Ford, and if they'd stayed true to the book, instead they murdered it completely.

LoneWolf wrote:Alec Baldwin made the perfect Jack Ryan (I can't stand him IRL, but his character was spot-on and the movie was fairly well written)

what movie was that ? i can't seem to recall seeing Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan.

It was a small part in a movie with no-name actors called "The Hunt for Red October." I'm not surprised no one but me has heard of it.

ah! forgot about that one...

JamieW wrote:It was a small part in a movie with no-name actors called "The Hunt for Red October." I'm not surprised no one but me has heard of it.

Sean Connery as Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius - no-name??

Yeah. Had some joker named "James Earl Jones" in there, too. Sam Neill. Tim Curry. Scott Glenn. No names.

I would be happy to see a Cussler novel turned into a movie.I have not seen "Raise the Titanic",but I liked each one of Cussler's novels.He is one of my favorite authors.

I hope that they make this movie good.

::Pranav::

JamieW wrote:Yeah. Had some joker named "James Earl Jones" in there, too. Sam Neill. Tim Curry. Scott Glenn. No names.

Good one!

pranav81 wrote:I would be happy to see a Cussler novel turned into a movie.I have not seen "Raise the Titanic",but I liked each one of Cussler's novels.He is one of my favorite authors.

The new one that he wrote with his son is pretty good. I'm almost done reading it.

Seems like William H. Macy is the best match of the three then?
I mean I can visualize him with a beard (and if necessary dyed red hair); think I saw him with a beard in a recent made for TV movie.

Ian wrote:
The new one that he wrote with his son is pretty good. I'm almost done reading it.

Which one Ian? Name please....


::Pranav::

VEFF wrote:Seems like William H. Macy is the best match of the three then?
I mean I can visualize him with a beard (and if necessary dyed red hair); think I saw him with a beard in a recent made for TV movie.

Too bad he doesn't have one in the trailer.

pranav81, it's called Black Wind. It's pretty good. It focuses a lot on the kids (Dirk and Summer) but has Pitt and Al in it.

The wife and I went and saw Sahara this morning. It strays A LOT from the plot of the book, but it's an entertaining flick. My only real complaint is how they portray Al. In the movie, he's a total dumbass.

Ian wrote:

pranav81 wrote:I would be happy to see a Cussler novel turned into a movie.I have not seen "Raise the Titanic",but I liked each one of Cussler's novels.He is one of my favorite authors.

The new one that he wrote with his son is pretty good. I'm almost done reading it.

"Black Wind". Already finished it. A colleague of my wife's lent it to me. It's pretty good.

Cussler writes pretty well, though I personally think you have to turn your reality distortion field from 0 up to about 20% when reading, at least for the ones I've read so far. I'm now settling into Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I absolutely loved his novel "Snow Crash", this one is taking a little longer to wade into.