Friday, June 16, 2006

Flying in The New World Order


Sitting on a plane, I size up the crowd, does it have that Sunday evening made for TV movie quality?

You see, if you have enough of this type of situation around you and you are headed for some sort of disaster. It may only be sitting on the tarmac for hours, delays or perhaps a mid-air plane crash, water crash landing and subsequent utter human degradation and cannibalism. Or merely yet another terrorist attack in the form of a ticking bag (I know they no longer tick) or the random surface to air striker missile...who knows, you may even be looking down at the very moment, watching a lovely little plume on the ground heading toward you and it would probably all be over before you could reach for your DuMaurier Lights for a smoke at 30,000 feet. I mean fuck it right?

And I don't even smoke.

So, you ask? Who is in this 'made for TV movie" what makes this quality? It exists somewhere between the fear mongering "AIRPORT 1977" movies and the spoof "AIRPLANE!" movies. The cast is simple: The young over-weight borderline Goth girl who crochets, the ornery elderly couple (with a secret! Was he a Navy SEAL????) an array of annoying 20-40 somethings and of course, children. KIDS! Why they are the very symbols of Tragedy and Hope! And lets not forget "feisty pluck" (just like the Newt girl surviving against the odds in Aliens II)

Throw in some Stewardess character actors: Young red head, hot under the collar, slightly bitchy but knows her stuff.

Tall leggy blonde, she hasn't been the same since she dumped her co-pilot boyfriend (who died the next day in some sort of heinous plane crash)

And lest we forget, the Matronly stewardess who goes from being the mamma to father confessor to Madam of the air. Oh Yes, nothing adds spice and says 'naughty harlot' quite like a 40+ airline stewardess who works charter, mmmmm charter.

Yup, considering all these tropes that I have described from the examples in front of me, ...I am pretty much guaranteed to be flying into the Bermuda triangle.

Monday, June 05, 2006

June 05 2006

Rifting on one of my favourite paintings in London, the lion hunt by Rubens.