Stiff competition for airplane movies

I had a four-hour flight from Melbourne to Broome on Sunday. It was plenty of time for two movies, as long as they were short-ish -- or maybe not even so short, considering that we were on the tarmac for an extra 30 minutes at the start, with access to the entertainment system, as they fixed something wrong with one of the cargo straps.

I was lucky to get in one.

Granted, Benjamin Millepied's Carmen was 116 minutes, but the bigger obstacle -- and the cause for numerous pauses throughout the movie -- was being on my first-ever flight on which free WiFi was offered.

Free WiFi, of course, meant messaging people about my free WiFi -- "I'm sending you a message -- FROM AN AIRPLANE!" -- as well as what seemed like a true luxury for me: watching live baseball during a flight.

One of my fantasy pitchers was pitching during the flight, making it all the more special. (And potentially nerve-wracking on the second-to-last day of the matchup, had I not earned the bye week in my fantasy baseball playoffs.)

Fortunately, the baseball was laggy enough that I only watched it in little pieces here and there. But then I was also checking other scores, reading baseball news ... in short, all the things I usually have to do as soon as the plane lands.

If this is going to be the standard going forward, airplane movies may be in trouble. 

Now, it may not be. These circumstances were somewhat unusual. We flew Qantas, our preferred airline and one of the most consistently generous on in-flight options, but we flew it domestic, which we almost never do. In fact, we only rare fly domestically anyway, as international travel is more common for us. To my knowledge, you still don't get free WiFi on the international flights, though it's been a year since I've taken one of those on Qantas. (Our flight to Vietnam earlier in the year was a different airline.)

But if I do have free WiFi, especially on an international flight, I think the days when I collect four or five new movies on a flight may be gone. It's just too much of a temptation to resist, even if it is only things like playing Lexulous and Wordle, or checking Facebook.

And how much did an internet distraction impact my feelings on Carmen?

Well I can't say I would have liked it a lot more without pausing, but I liked it quite a bit. And since I obviously missed its theatrical run, it was going to be a paused viewing regardless.

Yeah, you should definitely check out Millipede's movie -- I mean, Millepied's movies. Does having a thousand feet make you a better director? Whether that's the case or not, I really liked his modern-day take on the opera, starring Paul Mescal and Melissa Barrera, though I did check Wikipedia after the fact and determined the actual story here (a border town romance) only has a very few things in common with Georges Bizet's work. Having a thousand feet does apparently make you a better dancer, as Millepied is a dancer himself and dancing features memorably and romantically in the film.

I suppose I could have checked Wikipedia during the movie, but what can I say -- I have not worked out all the advantages of in-flight WiFi just yet.