Pajiba

I don't even think I can come up with one for this. The past several years we've flown Jet Blue, and if I watch anything it's mindless TV. I find it difficult to settle into a movie while flying.

$5 for headphones?!? That is a serious rip off. Air Canada only charged $2 last time I flew and even if you factor in the exchange rate that's ....$2.21 or so.

Sorry, on topic, the last movie I watched while flying was Children of Men, which was pretty good. The flight I was on was 1 hour and 50 minutes long and the movie, sadly, was longer. I still haven't seen the ending. That sucks.

I don't think I've ever watched a movie on a flight. The majority of times I've flown, I was headed from Orlando to PA, and the flights were too short to offer movies.

The one time I flew internationally, I was too doped up on Xanax to watch whatever they were offering. It was the only way I could fly overseas without losing my shit. I hate flying.

The romantic atmosphere of flying, even these days, puts me in a strange and receptive frame of mind wherein even the SkyMall catalog and the Airline magazine can usually choke me up a bit. I find a rare calm and clarity up in the yonder. By the time I land, I've always solved all of my life's many problems and I'm ready to take on the world. It's akin to watching a good movie in that sense, but instead of competing with my mind as a movie might, the flight focuses it. Something always happens taxiing to the gate, I guess, because while I often do retain the clarity and focus beyond the movie or the flight, I've never solved ALL of my problems after leaving a flight or a movie. I do, however, usually regain the drive to try to do so, and solve a few of them shortly thereafter.

If I saw a movie in that frame of mind, it might sneak in and have a profound impact on me, but thus far I have never watched an entire movie on a flight. I tried watching Gigi on a flight to France once, but it couldn't compete with electronic golf accessories and gasoline-powered home pedicure sets. And fixing things in Paris.

I've flown to Europe and back, flown cross country eight times and I've only ever seen one in-flight movie (hurray budget air). That movie? How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. All by its lonesome it's blehck, but something about watching that movie and being able to look all around the plan to see the guys in my youth group cringing in disgust as her antics ensued was hilarious. For that flight, it was perfect.

I still remember the look on one guy's face when she ruined poker night. Ha!

This doesn't apply to me, because I find myself detesting movies I later watch with enthusiasm on my couch.

Fuck airline movies- Latin American bus movies is what it's all about. A piece of shit bus nuking through twisting Peruvian high desert roads is far more frightening than a tin oblong. There are not that many people that die on airplanes each year. However, 800 people die on Peruvian roads each year. And then you see headlines like "Bus flies off of 60 meter cliff. No survivors." [accompanied by a photo of a mangled pile of metal that may have been a bus]

Suddenly, any fucking excuse for a movie is good enough.

Dragonball Z, with Spanish dubbing? Awesome.

P.S. I Love You? Play it twice, porfavor.

Transformers? Eh... okay, whatever. Better than spending all my time envisioning my impending doom.

And the last film I saw, coming from Arica, Chile- Knowing. Cage is almost better with a shitty b-list Latin voice actor dubbing all of his dialog. I still prayed for that fucking bus to crash.

And the shitty, filmed-in-a-theater-and-burned-to-a-DVD film quality will make you long for Mission: Impossible III at 32,000 feet.

Disturbia, coming home from Spain a couple of summers ago. I should have known I'd like it because it was about a serial killer, and who DOESN'T love a good serial killer movie?

Can't remember a good one. But oh, how I do remember The First Wives Club and Failure To Launch. Yes indeedy, I do remember them.

I always watch the screen without being plugged into the sound, and just listen to my own music. If I can figure it out without hearing any of it, then I consider it to be a good airplane movie.

18-hour flight from Taipei to Seattle, 2001.
Couldn't sleep at all.
Rush Hour 2, 4 times. It sucked MORE every time.

I don't remember the name, but the last time I watched a movie on a flight it was this little British flick about a jewish kid planning his bar mitvah. He wanted a super-extravagant one like his brother had, but his dad had just lost his store so his parents (and btw, Helena Bonham Carter played his mom) were all like "Well, you get one in the backyard with no fancy catering and oh, by the way we're gonna schedule it the day of a major soccer match so no one will actually show up." He was so upset he walked out of his own bar mitvah and when his family was looking for him they found his plans for what he wanted, which he'd put so much effort into and they all felt like shit and I cried, on an airplane, in front of people. Fuck airplane movies.
As a side note, I think all airplanes should be legally required to play Snakes on a Plane for every flight over two hours.

I had to watch The Family Stone with the IU Hoosier basketball team on the plane ride back from a second-round loss to Gonzaga in the NCAA tourney in 2006. We went straight from the loss to the airport and spent about four hours sulking and hating Morrison's bitch-stache and listening to a bunch of anorexic bitches be catty to Sarah Jessica Parker for...I don't know what exactly. Probably for pretending to be in her mid-twenties when her face actually looks like the underside of a plastic bowl that accidentally got set on a lit stove burner. And then the fucking ending where the bitch passes out a picture of the cancer-stricken mom while pregnant with her whiny, emo punk bitch daughter and everybody gets all choked up and hug it out. I half expected a voiceover to come in and tell me to buy some fucking Hallmark cards.

Fuck that noise, and also Salt Lake City for being a piss-poor choice to host a NCAA tournament game. You can't walk anywhere in that frozen cunt of a town without running into a pack of glazed-eyed white Mormon missionary girls who want to talk to you about Jesus and Moroni and giving ten percent of your paycheck to making sure the only rings the gays can buy are cock rings. And they'll be coming for those next, those fucking closet cases. Why don't you butt out, get married, entomb yourself in the SLC suburbs and devote your life to spitting out more blonde bigots and gulping handfuls of Valium.

I'm gonna go find a drink strong enough to forget about The Family Stone, IU Basketball, Mormons, and IU Football, who are the sponsors of tonight's rage. Tip your waitresses.

I haven't been on a plane since 9-2000, and the majority of my flying was done before movies were that common on planes. I can't remember what was played on the flights back and forth to Europe in the early 90's. I remember being happy for something to watch though.

I did, however, take the train from Portland to Seattle a few years ago on New Years weekend. How the Grinch Stole Christmas was playing. I actually rather enjoyed it at the time, but then again, anything to distract me from my misanthrope (now Ex) husband getting increasingly pissy about the family with 4 small kids creating havoc behind us was welcome.

Actually yes!

I'm not counting movies that would never have been available to me except by virtue of the airline selection (cause I had one of those too), but there was a movie that I'm sure if i'd seen it anywhere else I would have left it alone. But as it was, I ended up loving it and almost crying. It was Sweet November, the movie with Charlize Theron and Keanu Reeves. I don't doubt I would have been tremendously critical of it on the ground, but the combination of being essentially forced to watch it plus being in a tired, drained state (20- hour flights) made me very receptive... and I was grateful. I've never gone back to look at it again, for fear that its flaws would remain in my mind more than the original experience.

See , even now, looking it up to make sure I got the actress right (I will never, ever be able to tell Charlize Thereon and Ashley Judd apart) I'm reading that it's, like, won awards for worst movie ever. I think i'll just let the research slide, and retain my enjoyment.

krza, you make me giggle.

And you also made me recall a horrid film I was made to watch on a bus trip, on yet another band trip (the trip to SLC above was with band too). We were on a bus trip to Iowa with the IU Marching Hundred (motto- On a collision course with the Rose Bowl, the only variable is time). When the bus failed to reach a consensus (fucking clarinetists), the bus driver recommended "Christmas with the Kranks" and tuba player who was handling the DVD player was too nice to say no. On a bus, there are no headphone jacks. If the volume is loud, you can't ignore it. And by God, was it loud. What's worse, the twit driving the bus guffawed through every excrutiating second of that cinematic abortion. By the time motherfucking Akroyd made his first appearance I was ready to strangle puppies. And I LIKE Dan Akroyd. If he were thirty years younger I'd probably hit it. And there he was, playing the motherfucking dick neighbor. Who the fuck cares if your neighbor wants to go to fucking Hawaii for his fucking holiday? And to get your kid involved in petty misdemeanor crimes on that account is so fucking stupid that I...oh God, here it goes, they have me fuming over the disputed results of the All-American Upper Class Twit of the Year competition. Fucking savages.

Add in Jamie Lee Curtis in a bikini and you officially have me throwing strangled puppies onto the burning pyre of Godtopus, a blasphemy that shakes the earth and makes the heavens shudder.

I was, in a word, displeased by that portion of the road trip.

Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, the first one. My best friend and I were both in tears on a flight to Europe. We both were silently weeping, trying to make no noise, and then looked at each other and realized we were both crying...and then laughed at ourselves...and then went back to crying.

I look out the window, the better to alert the pilot when the wing falls off or direct the pilot when we need to land in the Hudson River.

Dustin, flying has always made me very nervous as well. I hope you have minimal bumps; I've had a few scares in my day. One of the things I've started doing to counter the nervousness - assuming I get a window seat - is taking photos at 30,000 feet. It varies in results, but I've gotten some extremely cool cloud formation shots over the last few years.

As to the diversion, I seldom bring myself to watch the in-flight movie. I rarely fly on the fancy airlines that offer uncensored movies, so the movie is edited, the sound is spotty because the engines tend to overpower the headphones, and beyond that the environment just can't do movie-watching the justice I like to try to give it, even if it's a bad movie. I prefer reading, gaming, or just listening to the ipod.

The last times I do remember giving in and watching the movies were on trans-Pacific flights. Those are so long that you have to mix up the activities. That was several years ago; I watched part of Gone In 60 Seconds and part of that Woody Allen movie where they rob the bank. There were others, but I don't recall them.

I remember not listening to but half-paying attention to the monitor when that romantic comedy with the NSync guys and Emmanuelle Chriqui was on. I probably got more enjoyment out of it than I would have with dialogue.

I remember watching that god awful WW1 fighter plane movie, Fly Boys or something? I was a little surprised as there was a lot of fighter plane mid air machine gunning action going on but the airline had everything covered. When the heros plane got shot down it faded to black then faded up with him on the ground near a crashed plane. I guess you can show planes fighting just, you know, not crashing.

On one of my last flights the entertainment system was broken and it would play videos but there was audio. This mind you was on a 11hr flight. So what did I do? I found the foreign section of movies and watched some again action flick with no sound but with SUBTITLES!!

Korean Air: Chaplin with Robert Downey Jr. and four actual Chaplin shorts! Awesomeness.

Then for some reason after that I decided to watch Marley and Me because Jenifer Aniston is hot. Bad choice, that movie was awful. Most of it was so incredibly bland, it was like eating plain white bread with water on the side. Then it smacks you upside the head and expects you to be sad, even though it didn't earn that right at all.

Chaplin was a pretty good Biopic, I just wish I had watched it first to wash the taste of mediocrity out of my mouth.

Cat, as a Hoosier and parent of 2 about-to-be IU students (one of which is shooting for the Marching Hundred), I salute you. You are a freaking riot! I throw a chair onto the basketball court in your honor.

On one plane ride back from South Africa, I watched Becoming Jane (meh) Waitress and Stardust. Pretty damn good combo. I had my own headphones.

About 10 years ago, I was flying from Hawaii back to L.A, a 5 hour flight, when an infant started screaming the minute we took off and continued wailing at the top of its lungs. I felt defenseless against the constant wailing (and it continued the entire flight) until the flight attendant came by with headphones for the movie. I said to myself, "This will be the best $5 I ever spend. I don't care what the movie is!".

Roll credits. Chevy Chase in........National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation......gulp! Well, I liked the first one and I love Vegas so it can't be that bad, right? Let's put it this way......NPH might be Dr. Horrible but this piece of junk is Lord God King Horrible.

I'm convinced the creator of Saw must have been on that same plane and developed all of his evil "Would You Rather?" scenarios just so he would wouldn't feel so beaten by this one.

My dad was involved in advertising, and one of his jobs once was taking a picture of some cat-related product for a Skymall catalog. He used our cat for it, and for, like, decades after that you could still find that picture in planes across the country.

As for the actual diversion... I can't remember if I've ever seen a movie on a plane. If I had to pay for the headphones I can guarantee I've never done so.

Best show I've ever had on a plane (I noted that I like to look out the window) was flying out of LAX to come home back East and the plane flew west out over the ocean and made an enormous turn back to the east and flew over L.A and the ... what are they, San Gabriel Mountains? and the desert beyond, and the desert was all dark browns and burnt oranges and reds and yellows, just spectacular from 25,000 feet, and then flying over the canyons of what I guess was the Colorado River. I don't fly much, so it's still an Event when I do, and I thought, I feel sorry for people who do this all the time and get kind of jaded and don't look out the window anymore and would rather watch "Marley & Me" than look at vistas like this.

I will watch Harry Potter, any Harry Potter that's available. I just flew Continental to Edinburgh and they had all of them (minus the most recent). I do enjoy HP outside of the plane, but not in the same fanatic "They have Harry Potter!!!!!!!!!!!" celebration that I do up in the air. Maybe subconsciously I think that their magic powers will rub off on me and I'll be able to cheat death when the engines die and we plunge to earth.

Pirates of the Carribean 3. On my way home from Ireland two years ago...a 7 hour flight that was perfectly broken in half by this stupid yet engaging and insanely long movie. I also watched my first ep of 30 Rock, a Simpsons episode, and I started watching both Mr. Brooks and Shrek 3 before turning them off and playing the Winnie the Pooh version of Memory.

gp, AvB, dammnitjanet: Awww, gee guys! Y'all make a girl bashful.

@ dammitjanet- Yay for new Hoosiers, especially Hundred rookies! If the kid in any way likes basketball, tell him/her to audition for the basketball band,as you get free courtside seats to every home game and the chance to travel with the team to exotic locales...like, um, Salt Lake City and Sacramento. Also, if the kid plays brass, auditioning for the Crabb Soccer Band is also a ton of fun and is a paid gig ($20/game) with the opportunity to travel with the team. The misery of IU Football is almost balanced by the fun of the Basketball and soccer experiences. IU Football Fever: Contract It! And then seek medical attention!

And if IU should see fit to award me a modest stipend in exchange for this free advertising on their behalf, I would not object.

Don't know if anyone's mentioned it, or even thought of it, but what about in flight porn? You know, a little curtained off section where the smokers used to be? It'd certainly take your mind off that whole flying cylinder thing. Or at least put the image in it's, er, proper context?

...and don't call me Shirley.

I've never had to pay for headphones, but I only fly transatlantic and they - well, every airline I've tried - just give them out. (They collect them back, too, but I hope they don't reuse them, at least not with the same earpads. Ugh.)

Normally the headphones are crappy quality and the sound sucks, so I use the ones from my mp3 player. Much better at keeping out the noise of crying babies and my snoring seat-mate. Except - and this still bugs me - on my last flight, with Air New Zealand, they had headphones with two-prong thingies, so my own headphones wouldn't work. Damn those Kiwis. Damn them to hell!

My mom is still pissed off from Fatal Attraction once being the movie on one of her trips many years ago. She enjoyed it in the theater and would have liked to see it again. She was just cranky because she knew it wouldn't make a lick of sense once it was edited down for general viewing.

Dude, fly MFing Qantas to Australia. Their selection is amazing (considering). I watched In Bruges, Gran Torino, Juno, and several others and barely put a dent in their library.

I recently saw Star Trek on a plane from Canberra to Perth -- those are in Australia, for those unenlightened many -- and found myself pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it was.

Having said that, they also had the Nia Vardalos flick My Life In Ruins on the same flight. 'Twere bollocks, everything expected and less.

Saw an unedited cut of American Beauty on a return trip from either London or Amsterdam....awesome.

Every other trip, not so much. Whoever decided that foisting fucking Volcano on any audience can suck my ass.