Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Travel 25/3/09 (3) – In the air over the Atlantic

Coping with long-haul flights is different for each person. Catherine can often manage to sleep on planes, especially in her ear-plugs, eye-mask and mind-shield. I can rarely it. Even with less than four hours sleep under my lids I still was not able to drop off on the plane. Two large coffees didn't help matters. But then being stuck on a plane is a good chance to catch up on the three W's: watching, writing and reading.

Out of curiosity, and the fact I've watched all the others, I took in Quarter of Sausages (also know as The Bond Conspiracy). In it, Jason Bond moods and broods through a succession of killings frequently juxtaposed with similarly dramatic performances (operas, fiestas and other fights). Bonds are a lot more psychological these days and villains no longer want to take over and/or destroy the world. In Question of Sportsnight, the secret organisation (excitingly more spectre-like than Spectre ever was) wants to get in on the lucrative game of utilities management. Anyone who didn't already think that water providers were more evil than al Qaida of Saudiarabia can feel a Quantum of Smugness.

In all, Quest for Seweragerights is enjoyable and somehow gritty yet over the top at the same time. Three Roger Moores out of 5.

Sitting in a plane, you can't help but get a glance of other people's screens. These, half-glimpsed images (always from the same small subset of films) often get merged in the mind and you wonder how you missed the subplots in the film you saw about the street kids in India and escaped cartoon zoo animals. Personally, I think this would have made a much better film (worthy of 4 or even 5 Roger Moores) and would be called Quantum of Slumdog Madagascar.

The second film I watched was Suspect X, a Japanese cop drama starring your favourites: Masaharu Fukuyama, Matsuyuki Yasuko and Tsutsumi Shinichi. A repressed yet somewhat tense story where emotions are kept in except for the odd crime of passion or vent. In the end, love wins over science although this being a Japanese film not in a happy singing-dancing way but in an "everyone's doomed to a life of depression" sort of way. Two Masaharu Fukuyamas out of 5.

Sometime during the films, the cabin crew offered "doody free" items. Implying everything else they offered so far had been filled with faeces.

No comments: