Burj Olympus
The city of grand delusion + the "king of vain"
Last week I went to see Mission Impossible 4 : Ghost Protocol for one reason – Dubai on film – that’s all, I swear. Despite the fact that the Emiratis milling around in the background of the film reminded me of the transparently rendered ‘locals’ in an architectural fly through, I fell for all its Franchise Colon Sequel tricks like a real chump. That includes gawking at this publicity stunt Cruise pulled of sitting barefoot on top of the f*cking Burj.
The city of grand delusion + the "king of vain"
I know MI:4 shooting in Dubai is old news and this particular celebrity is not in this blog’s usual purview but after seeing these pictures I have to say, Tom Cruise is an immortal and Burj Khalifa is his Mount Olympus.
I’d go into a deep thing here about the politics/poetics of the Hollywood action-hero-as-pseudo-sacrificial-ecstatic-body in post millennial cinema or something but for now my thoughts linger in the shallows. There is just something in the thrilling idiocy of Tom Cruise hurling himself (for real) out of the 130th floor over that great big barren that had its effect.
Real et Surreal – Tom Cruise repelling past the hotel window of a hotel guest:
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[...] with the skyscraper’s first recorded suicide here and which Sophia Al Maria portraits here) – but how smoothly would the setting fit within the overall arc of the [...]
ps does anyone have any thoughts about what the graffiti at the top of the worlds tallest (soon to be trumped) tower might say? I hope it’s the workers whose names are at the apex. x
I refer you to what Gaudi said about people not being able to read the inscriptions at the tip of his Sagrada Famila ‘It doesn’t matter, the angles could’.
Tower of Babel? anyone?