Airplane Reviews - to Austin and back on BA

For my most recent work trip to Austin, we flew British Airways there and American Airlines back. As always, I find British to be considerably better than American. The service and food is better and there is a much bigger movie selection. Having said that, the flights were all fine. On the flight back to the US, the flight attendant stopped by my seat, asked if I was "Mr. Lazarus" and asked if there was anything at all he could do for me or if he could get me anything. This was my first trip as an Executive Platinum flyer, so I guess this is what they do for the one or maybe two individuals who are at that frequent flyer status and aren't sitting in business or first class. His tone and facial expression were really saying, "I actually have some level of sympathy for you given that you have flown over 100,000 miles sitting in coach and you are still sitting in coach. Is there anything I can do to ease the pain?" Jenn's suggestion was that I tell him what I really want is to move up to business class and see if he can he do anything about that. We watched two movies each way and surprisingly there were more hits than misses.

On the way there, we passed the time with a Ryan Gosling double feature. I still hate the son of a bitch because of having to sit through the Notebook, but he redeemed himself a little with Crazy, Stupid Love, so I was willing to give him another shot. First, we watched Drive, which had the feel of a Quentin Tarantino film though I don't think he had anything to do with it. It was an action-y, but with a good script and excellent acting. Many actors (Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and many others) could learn something by watching how engaging Gosling was without talking too much. Albert Brooks was great in it, but I could have done without the fork in the eye. I loved the movie. It was very violent, but entertaining from start to finish. My only real complaint was (spoiler alert) Christina Hendricks getting her face blown off. If you're going to put Joan Holloway in your movie, you should keep her on screen and you sure shouldn't blow her face off. On the bright side, they went for the face and didn't mess with her best assets. You think she had a rider in her contract?

Anyway, Ides of March was the second Gosling feature. The acting was good, and it was a well executed film, but I couldn't really get into it. I also found it to be fairly predictable. I also think it's weird that Evan Rachel Wood has been around for several years and truthfully, I have no idea how old she is, but it seems like she's been playing teenagers for about 10 years. On the return trip, we were on American, which had a much more limited selection. Since we had flown over in February and were flying back in March, we were excited to see the new month's releases. This is our life. For the second year in a row, we watched the year's best picture Oscar winner on an airplane, and immersed ourselves in The Artist. It was just as good as advertised. It's definitely hard to get into because it's a silent film, but the story is good, the acting is excellent, and overall, it's just a very clever and creative movie. Because there is such a small amount of originality in entertainment today, it probably got a little more attention than it maybe deserved, but it was good and if I had a vote, I would have voted for it over the The Descendants. Actually, if I had a vote, I probably would have voted for Beginners, which was the best movie I saw last year.

Jenn couldn't stay awake for our second feature, The Muppet Movie. I grew up on the Muppets and have seen all the movies and was excited to see it. To say this was disappointing is an understatement. I don't question how this movie made money because it was from people like me and other parents of my generation taking their children to see it, but what I do question is all the good reviews of it. The story is so dumb and while the original Muppet Movie is really clever and written confidently in a way that the audience is trusted to get the joke, this one is like a bad stand-up comedian feeling the need to explain the jokes to the audience. The songs also don't work at all and don't seem to fit at all with the tone of the rest of the movie. I have no appreciation for what it is they were trying to do. Lastly, the voices and personalities of the Muppets were different. I realized the voices would be slightly different because Jim Henson passed away, but I don't know why they would change the tone and personalities and the characters. Fozzie was like a shell of his former self. It was sad. I like Amy Adams and Jason Segel and would be more than happy to watch them together in another movie, but as usual, I think we're better off leaving nostalgia and our old movies alone, especially when they have stood the test of time and are still good.