Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Jon Stewart Nails the Underpants Bomb Debacle

Okay. So the reality is that we're going to have severely increased aggro in our traveling lives, that the stock of these (probably cancer-causing) full-body X-ray companies is most like zooming and that we can look forward to having underpants banned. Why? Because the whole security industry is about as effective as Bush during Katrina. This guy pays for a one-way big-buck ticket to Detroit, has no luggage or even a coat, after his banker father's been telling everyone who won't listen that his kid is about to make trouble, but they load him right into the plane, explosive knickers and all. But why listen to me? Jon Stewart nailed it in 9 minutes on his return from his winter break on Monday.

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Film Review: Up In the Air

There’s been so much Oscar buzz around this George Clooney romantic comedy that I was persuaded, against my usual allergy to the genre, to see it. A couple of friends had called it a “romance for grown-ups,” which sounded better than the alternative.

However, I found little romance and less maturity in this film. Wit was absent entirely. There wasn’t a single character I could like or admire. And the basic plot setting was pretty grim: Ryan Bingham’s (Clooney) job is to fly from company to company to fire people.

When a young Princeton graduate who has joined the same company comes up with a plan to save travel expenses by using webcams to give employees the bad news, Ryan’s wandering, unfettered lifestyle is threatened. The newcomer Natalie (played by Anna Kendrick in a chronic state of being startled by the headlights of reality) apprentices herself to Ryan. Meanwhile, he hooks up with a woman named Alex (played by Vera Farmiga in an excruciatingly goofy hairdo) who insists that she is much like him. In the end, a highly unlikely plot development involving Ryan going from hard-boiled to scrambled, leads to a narrative twist that leaves us yawning.

Perhaps the grossest aspect of “Up In the Air” is the shameless, multiple product placement. One airlines and one hotel chain are aggressively promoted. Both Ryan and Alex “coincidentally” use the same brand of luggage with the logo frequently in the shot. Unfortunately, I don’t care enough about this film to look into how much these companies paid or bartered in order to turn the film into a drama-mercial.