V for Very Good

I caught V for Vendetta on a flight the other day - well, I caught most of it. I missed the first 10 minutes or so because I was under the impression that we were still taking off and it was unlikely that the inflight entertainment would not have started so soon.

Silly me. Obviously I am still thinking back to the days when screens dropped from the cabin roof and everyone was stuck with watching the same show. And the screesns couldn't drop down until level flight had been attained in case someone whacked their head on one. Or something like that.

Clearly I am not flying often enough these days to be up with all the latest stuff. I managed to fluff the check-in procedure as well. There are these kiosk things at the airport these days - little red things like Daleks - that you have to punch your flight and name into. Too bad if you can't use a keyboard. Anyway, I totally screwed the process by hitting the wrong button and saying that I was carrying all sorts of dangerous goods like munitions, knives, guns, gas, flares etc. The bloody system boots you out at that point and you can't go back and start again. You have to front up to the "help desk" for a strip search and cavity probe. Having dyslexic fumble fingers is not a good idea.

Anyway, I waded into the movie at about the 14 minute mark. I noticed that it was playing when it was 10 minutes in, and it then took me 4 minutes to extract headphones, find jack, work out how to bring up the screen on an arm, find the movie setting, select the channel and all that. I didn't realise that you had to undo a little catch in order to raise the arm holding the video screen - I just about ripped the bloody thing out of the seat trying to get it raised. By the time I finished with it, the catch was a bit bent and mangled. Stupid bloody airline. They have signs for just about everything and anything, but none telling you that you need to flick a catch to get your screen out.

I must write to the Head Honcho and complain. If you see little stickers stuck up in front of you next time you fly QANTAS saying something about releasing a catch to raise the video screen, you'll know my campaign or harassment and spleen venting has been a success.

Where was I? Oh yes, something about a movie. I have to hand it to the Poms - they know how to do a really good, dark, mysterious thriller about the black arms of government and all that. For some reason, the yanks can never pull it off. The poms have churned out some ripping yarns in the past involving horrible Prime Ministers and the like - Edge of Darkness has always been a big favourite of mine, and the whole Urqhart series was most excellent. There is something about Englishmen in pinstripe suits that can be made just so deliciously evil.

There were a few things that spoilt it though. The whole Matrix style knife throwing etc was just so unnecessary. The Wachowski Brothers need to be move on. The story is terrific - we don't need any more bullet dodging and that sort of thing in a movie like this.

Another annoying thing is the evil PM was made out to be a convservative. Given that the Tories have been out of power in the UK for oh, about 10 years, I find it odd that they would choose to make the government a conservative government. Why is it that the lefties can't be evil?

That aside, the middle bit was a very convincing movie about the nature of nasty, evil repressive governments. Funny how people are more likely to believe a movie about a British government behaving badly than say Saddam Hussein. If this movie had been set in Iraq in 1995, the critics would have scoffed and said, "His regime is not that bad".

One thing I noticed in the in-flight magazine was that all the movies had a critics rating and a peoples rating. All the good action flicks had the critics giving lower rating than the plebs, whilst the arty, wanky movies had the plebs well outscored by the critics.

Funny how the plebs are usually right.