Since I can’t seem to get that other post written to my satisfaction, I’ve decided to write this one instead.

So … last night, my wife and I numbed our brains for 106 minutes (6,360 seconds, if you’re keeping score) and watched the movie Red Eye. (Which, sadly, is not a sequel to the 1978 Battlestar Galactica episode, The Lost Warrior.)

This movie is what I would describe as "zero sum", as if I’d walked into a bank with five 1$ bills and walked out with one $5 bill. Unless I were carrying a Costanza wallet and space was at a premium, I’d be exactly no better and no worse off than when I started.

To summarize the movie, then: It starts, things happen, it stops.

To an airplane geek, however, there’s a bit more to it. Most of the film takes place on an airliner, that, in the tradition of every movie that makes any reference to commercial avation, is painted in a fictitious livery, and magically transforms itself several times.

Actually, unlike the classics, such as Trans Global, Columbia, and Oceanic, the fictitious airline used in Red Eye … isn’t. They chose the name Fresh Air, which is a very real airline started in Nigeria in 1998.

The choice of names was clearly coincidental, compounded by the fact that the real Fresh Air flies 737’s, sort of like the one they used in the movie.

Their 737’s, however, don’t change paint jobs (magically becoming United airplanes), sizes (the double-aisle 2-3-2 seating and saftey cards that read "Boeing 767" clearly identify the interiors as those of a … Boeing 767), and manufacturers (the 737 becomes an Airbus A-319 a few times, for no adequately explored reason.)

I think there was going to be a point to this, but it’s lost in a sea of multi-tasking.