Word: kirn
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What's gutsy is that writer-director Jason Reitman (adapting Walter Kirn's novel) is springing a movie about a toxic social problem at a time when more than a tenth of the workforce is out of a job. Moreover, Reitman hired a few dozen unemployed nonactors to play the parts of staffers who get the hook. These folks aren't performing; they're bleeding on camera. (See pictures "Glitz and Glamour at the Venice Film Festival...
...days at home." He's not so much a frequent flyer as an occasional lander. On one flight, when a pilot sits next to him to chat and asks, "Where do you live?" he replies, "Here." Ryan is a citizen of Airworld, as he explains it in the Walter Kirn novel on which the movie is loosely based. "Airworld is a nation within a nation, with its own language, architecture, mood and even its own currency - the token economy of airline bonus miles that I've come to value more than dollars. Inflation doesn't degrade them. They...
...Kirn's novel inched into nightmare, as Ryan got mixed up with a company called MegaTech and became convinced someone was stealing his miles. Reitman, who previously scored with the quirky hits Thank You for Smoking and Juno, and who shares screenplay credit with Sheldon Turner, soft-pedals the satire and pumps up Ryan's relationships with Alex and Natalie. The movie's development of three strong personalities, each with grails the others don't seek, shows a maturity rare in modern movies. So does Reitman's refusal to judge any of the three. He doesn't force comeuppance...
...puzzled by Walter Kirn's depiction of Princeton. While I cannot comment on the Princeton of the 1980s, when Kirn was there, I do know that the Princeton of today offers intellectual stimulation that far surpasses the philosopher-name-dropping that Kirn suggests is the end point of a Princeton education. The "X factor" is not egotism but motivation. The established alumni networks may help down the line, but the attention that Princeton's professors give to their undergraduates is the school's most appealing trait. And I hope that Kirn reported the cheating he saw to the Honor Committee...
...Driven Out of Montana Now that fuel prices are going up, i can appreciate Walter Kirn's difficulty in taking the long drives that any trip in Montana seems to entail [Oct. 17]. I recently had to quit - almost before I started - a job in Kalispell, the closest town of any size (pop. 14,000) to my home. That's about 50 miles [80 km] away. The daily round trip on $3-per-gal. gas meant that after the associated costs of commuting I'd be earning only $2 an hour. That spurred my decision to move somewhere that...