Thanks to In-Flight Entertainment
I would probably be among the few who cope very well with long flights as I look forward to discover and check out some good movies in their In-Flight entertainment. If I don’t find something new and worthwhile, I am sure to find some good ones to revisit.
It was the same the last time as I watched quite a few movies. Many couldn’t last my patience and sleepy eyes but three of them really stood out and I still remember them quite vividly.
Man on Wire
Now this is actually a documentary, not really a movie but it’s pretty enthralling nevertheless. It’s about this French tight rope walker, Philip Petit, who walked between the Twin Towers of New York in the early 1970s. The documentary juxtaposes interviews with the protagonists with actual footage and probably some added shots to create unbelievable tension as the end approaches. Or maybe it’s something about watching this documentary when you yourself are 30000 ft in the air that gives one some added goose bumps.
At some point doing this documentary you realize, confounding though the very notion is that Philip Petit was more at home on a wire, alone and 1350 ft high in the air without any safety than anywhere else. It’s not an act which is risky, at least to him; if everything which needed to be done in terms of preparation was done.
A Police Department official said “I observed the tightrope ‘dancer’—because you couldn’t call him a ‘walker’—approximately halfway between the two towers. And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire….And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle….He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again….Unbelievable really….Everybody was spellbound in the watching of it.
You can say that again.
Philip Petit was charged with disturbing public peace among others. These charges were later dropped.
The Mongol
A movie about a world conqueror (Genghis Khan) before he became one, set in twelfth century Mongolia comes with an added curiosity factor and you are not let down by the director who weaves a bewitching tale of treachery, mammoth struggles and pulsating action in an enthralling landscape like never seen before.
While watching this, I couldn’t but help compare this to something like Jodha-Akbar which really bored me to death. When can we have some realistic gritty historical stories of our own? If you ask me, to make one like that, you cannot just depend on works authored by court writers. Freedom of press wouldn’t have been a priceless notion then, I presume. One has to use some creative imagination and unwrap all that nobleness from the erstwhile kings and queens and show their warts and skeletons in their cupboards. It’s another thing that something like that would never get past censors or even if it did, would get banned in seven states.
*****Interruption*****
As I write this, The Mother suddenly appears (I am spending a couple of weeks at home).
“Can’t you listen to another song? You have been listening to this one since yesterday!”
“What’s wrong with this one?!” I inquire.
“Please play something more pleasant- this one keeps shouting ‘Phisal Gaye- Phisal Gaye’!”
“It’s not ‘Phisal Gaye’ but ‘Bisar Gaye’” I clarify.
“What does that mean?”
“Well…” I ponder, “I am not sure, actually”.
“I am sure it’s something bad”.
I counter, “It need not be. The song also has ‘Swaha Swaha’ and ‘Rama Rama Re’”.
She left the scene, though I feel, not entirely convinced.
*******Continuing********
The Waitress
This is another gem of a movie of which I had never heard earlier. It’s a bitter sweet romantic comedy about a waitress -brilliantly played by Keri Russell- who is trapped in an unhappy marriage with a controlling husband. Her life is redeemed by her close circle of misfit friends at work and her passion for making delectable pies, a new recipe every day. But all her plans of ditching her husband for good come crashing down when she discovers that she is pregnant. To add to the complications she also finds unexpected love with her married gynecologist.
There’s a wonderful scene when her husband discovers that she as been saving money around the house, unknown to him. The money which is meant to be her passage to freedom now has to be excused as being saved for the baby’s crib. As the crib arrives in the house, ‘Damn Baby!’ is the thought in her mind. Hilarious.
The highlight in the movie definitely is the understated humor that runs throughout in spite of the hopeless circumstances that Keri’s character finds herself in. Don’t miss this one!
Which movies did you discover and come to love when you were among the clouds?
Tags: Movies
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Man on wire and The Waitress are good ones.
‘phisal gaye’/bisar gaye’…lol. nice interruptions!
Watched waitress, its a good one.
I am always cursed with bad movies in-flight, with no where to run or hide. My glass of scotch never fails to enterain me , when aboard:)
Will watch MAN ON WIRE , tonight.
as for my list of movies, when I was in a flight… its all garbage, I cant think of a single movie, worth a mention
“it also has swaha swaha hey and rama rama re…” good one. so you’re back, the guy who came in from cold, huh?
bipin- maybe your disappointment with in-flight movies has something to do with all that Scotch…?!
.
wb- oh yes, am back wb. And very glad.
i never found a good movie on the IFE, unless you can call Krazzy 4 as good ;)
most of the times i found already-seen movies. i try and bide my time by reading magazines or novels mainly. but sometimes there have been good episodes of some sitcoms.
my brother watched Swades during his flight to australia. it was a highly compressed version (runtime 1.5 hrs only) and he had no clue about the songs and scenes i wanted to discuss with him later on
Amit- Krazzy 4, oh my god! I saw ‘Singh is Kinng’ listed this time and quickly skipped it…
Waitress is a really good movie- never over the top, genuinely nice.
I agree. Waitress is a really good movie. And it certainly has a lot of fans. New movies have rolled in to the schedule of movies in flights. Some are really good.