Posted by Pinky.

When I was flying to Japan this last time the flight was sooo long I had time to watch quite a few movies (or just parts of the really horrible ones). I wanted something funny so I watched Bridesmaids (Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, the guy from IT crowd) and The Hangover (unfunny people except for Zach Galifianakis), but... mieh. Can't recommend those. But I did watch Louis C.K. doing standup - I'd never really seen him before, but wow, he is an amazingly good performer, and some of his jokes (do people call these things jokes?) are just brilliant. People around me must have been wondering, "Why is that cat laughing? What's she watching?"

The most interesting movie I saw on the airplane ride was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Judi Dench, Maggie Smith). If you're like me and you've been thinking a lot about aging and death recently, watch this movie. It will make you cringe (brace yourself - Indian people not portrayed nicely in this movie) but there’s also some very nice writing going on. Somehow I like this quote:

"Everything will be alright in the end... and if it is not alright then it is not yet the end."

Nice.

For most of this trip I was staying with Mugi (I like to call her Mugiko) and she loves Hollywood action movies.

Mugi: "American movies look so expensive. How do they pay for so many explosions???"

We watched - together - all the something-something Bourne movies (spoiler alert: Matt Damon kills many, many people) and all the Bruce Willis "Die Hard" movies. They were SO BAD! It's fascinating to me how these movies with all their fake politics and gallons of special effects blood can be so popular when the real world - which happens to be a thousand times more interesting and a million times more savage - tends to creep by largely unnoticed... ~pinky