I'd had a point

Allow me to begin with under-five-sentence movie reviews, beginning with in-flight entertainment.

Becoming Jane-- Very good.

Alvin and the Chipmunks-- Pretty lame, but a good choice for in-flight entertainment.

Mr. Magorium's Magic Emporium-- Okay.

The Golden Compass-- I bet the book(s) from which it was adapted was/were really good. It was a compelling in-flight film.

I am Legend-- Are you f*ing kidding me? Abysmal movie and very bad choice for in-flight (slow, boring, people kept jumping whenever a mutant thing jumped out on the screen). There's a bigger issue here, though: the Will-Smith-Saves-the-World movie market is saturated. I don't even seek out the genre, yet can't help but have seen a high number of its films (including two of the subgenre: Will-Smith-does-shirtless-pushups-so-he-can-save-the-world).

There are at least three films I'm forgetting--there would be more, but United decided to show several films going both ways, which is just wrong--but it's hard to keep track.

***
There's been an eerie thematic convergence in the reading materials I've come across over the last month or so: animals in general, and in particular the human-animal relationship-- and even more in particular, the dynamics of not-free animals. On the way to China, I read the excellent Water for Elephants, which I couldn't put down (nor could the person to whom I'd lent it on the cruise). One of it's key themes, the circus. On the way back I started Life of Pi, largely about animals, zoos, the ethics of zoos. Last week's issue of the New Yorker is themed Journeys, but many of the articles are about animals, and Jonathan Franzen's (which is mediocre; gets good toward the end) also gets into the ethics of zoos. I can't remember where I was going with this-- mom's phone call threw my train of thought. So there you have it, a pointless list of animal-related reading.

***
I still don't remember what I was getting at, but I finished Franzen's piece and it's worth reading (well, most of it is worth skimming) for China watchers. See abstract.