Movies on a plane

I've got plenty of movies to discuss here, so let's start with the stuff I saw on the airplanes to and from England. (This has the advantage of eating into my Oxford backlog as well.)

On the flight to England, the entertainment setup in the plane was awesome---there were several movies/shows that interested me and we could start any of them at any point we wanted. (There was a lot of music as well.) Yeah! I could have done the same with my portable DVD player, but I decided to take advantage of what was on the plane that I didn't have.

I still spent a while just listening to my iPod to chill out. In terms of visuals, the plane had four episodes of "Arrested Development." Based on the very positive recommendations, I watched those. One of them was the series premier and the others were from various seasons. Verdict: I approve! Now I'm going to have to catch up on this along with everybody else...

I was thinking of watching a few episodes of the US version of "The Office" but decided I'd do so on the way back. (Sadly, this was not an option.)

I was deciding between several movies and decided on New Police Story, which I enjoyed quite a bit. It's Jackie Chan kicking ass with subtitles. Old school and yet from 2004.

I also played a game of tetris but because of my lack of sleep, general trouble with flying, and the unintuitive controls, I only got to 16th level.


On the way back, we still had a bunch of different channels, but there were fewer choices than before and now we had to synchronize with starting and stopping times.

The movie I watched was Pretty Persuasion, a black comedy which might actually be the most cynical film I've ever seen. Hell, this was even a little bit too cynical for my tastes, and that's very hard to do. I did enjoy the movie, and it's just shy of very good, but Election is a far better movie that follows similar lines. One thing the movie did extremely was the foreshadowing in the very first scene. The particular choices of lines at that point become very important later, though it takes most of the film to realize it. By the way, the lead character is a royal bitch, and none of the other characters were particularly likeable either. In fact, I don't think there was a single likeable character in the entire film.

I may have also seen a few tv episodes when I was on the voyage home, but I can't remember any at the moment. I played a game of Tetris and only got to 17th level. I also played a game of chess, but unfortunately this was the same chess program that I tried on my flight to Australia and its level of play was pathetically low. The damn thing would make a move and then retreat on the very next move, which is such a waste that anybody who knows what they're doing at all can beat the crap out of the computer (or "nail it against a fence," as we say back in the 'hood).