More Movies, etc.

As I'm sure you could see with the last photo entry, Operation: Fly Around In A Really Loud Tiny Plane went well. We did not plunge into the side of a highrise in baseball player fashion. Rather we cruised around between 1500 and 4000ft getting a really awesome perspective. Next time D and I are both back in California, we're going to fly back to NYC in his plane. This takes a lot longer, but it will be way more fun.

We saw a post-flight movie, Charlie Wilson's War. At first, I was not particularly enthusiastic about this movie since I generally don't like movies about recent history. But it surprised me - it was funny and interesting and I wasn't bored despite knowing how it was all going to end. Phillip Seymour Hoffman was clearly the standout performance in the bunch. I also appreciated that the movie didn't end with us winning the covert war in Afghanistan, but also showed how we royally screwed up the clean up from the war (sound familiar?)

On New Year's Eve, I saw National Treasure: Book of Secrets with my parents. Dad's choice, but I liked it. I think these movies get kind of a raw deal because of when they're released. Book of Secrets was a fun, entertaining movie that didn't try to be anything it wasn't. If these movies (this one and the first Treasure movie) had been released in the summer, they would be hailed as fun summer blockbusters. But because they are released with all of the movies trying for Oscars, they are panned. Plus, the National Treasure movies have no blood and no extreme violence, which makes it an action movie fit for kids AND adults. That's pretty rare in the current movie industry where most action movies are strewn with the guts of all of the "redshirts".

I've also been Netflixing up a storm, trying to catch up on all of the movies I didn't watch for most of the year. I saw Stardust (fun fantasy movies which reminded me a bit of older fantasy movies before the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings phenomena) and The Hoax (boring bio-pic, though Richard Gere did a good job acting in it).

I love vacation. Flying! Movies! Reading! Dissertation? Nah.