Up in the Air

I saw the film "Up in the Air" the night before I left for Japan. The film stared George Cloney as a specialist whose principle employment duties involve flying from city to city to fire employees of other companies. Scared bosses contract the termination duties out to the company he works for. He is a life long bachelor who has no interest in settling down. He meets up with his female opposite, who is also flying around the country, although it isn't clear what she does. She is his romantic counterpart in the film. He is further joined by this young graduate who proposes to his boss that they shut down the traveling aspect of their job and simply fire employees via webcam. The George Cloney character is really upset by this development since he enjoys the perks of traveling first class and accumulating frequent flier miles.

The film was a fairly straight forward tale of the unavailable emotionally isolated bachelor finally coming to want to stay in one place and build a relationship. It works on the level of taping into the cultural phenomenom of the life long bachelor, and Cloney is well cast since his actual life mirrors that of his character. The film traces the familiar path of the tough guy who finally starts to care.

What I found most disipointing about the film was the utter lack of substance. The main premiss was that a whole heap of people were being fired, the characters don't seem to reflect much on their role in the whole process, and also don't seem to have any concept of societial implications, they are focused solely on thier personal lives, and on the difficulties of the job itself.

But, the issue is not so much the characters since they are merely tools by which the director is telling us a story.

Granted I did not watch the ending of the film, so possibly he also finally starts to care about what he is doing.

All in all I found the film very slow paced, and not that interesting. How many times do I need to see George swipe a card at an airline terminal. And the relationship with his family seems trite.


I went out last night with my friend Dan, we went to a couple of bars on St. Laurent Street. The first one had more wierd hipsters. Although I did meet an interesting girl from Bagdad, who had a lot to say about the situation there.

Later on we went to this real fun bar with a mechanical bull. I got to ride it for about 20 seconds before I went flying. It was fun, but, I felt like there should have been more rope to grasp.

The people there were really great. Lots of cute french canadian girls, and lots of guys plainly dressed. Almost everyone looked friendly and open to having a good time, a much more amiable crowd than the previous bar. I can't for the life of me remember the names of the bars at the moment.

The flight is supposed to be another 14 hrs untill I reach Tokyo. I hope the in flight entertainment is good, and that the food is also delicious. I neglected to inform them 24hrs in advance that I wanted the vegitarian meal, so I'm stuck with whatever they give to everyone else. But, on the upside there will be lots of delicious Japanese snacks on the plane.

As I was getting off the plane I got to see the local US TV, and it was disturbing to say the least. No wonder the Daily Show has so much to make fun of. The Anchor-women was taking forever to question this wildlife guy about sharks in Cheaspeke Bay. Granted that is unusual, but given the global warming of the planet not that surprising. I could have sworn that she never mentioned global warming. I did get the impression that she was trying to milk the story as long as possible, and drag it out. I couldn't watch that kind of news, I would simply go crazy. I don't know who they are pitching it to, but the intelligence level is most definetely very low. Although even the BBC is getting more and more like that. I guess I think that we are graudually being made more and more braindead.