Much to my delight (and surprise) after the older plane that I took north, my return flight to Florida on Wednesday night featured one of those spiffy newer models with the multi-media touch screens. I was particularly amused by the film choices within each category--while "Hollywood" featured a couple of monster hits like SPIDER MAN 3, "Classics" turned out to be X-MEN 2 (!) and "Avant Garde" offered up WAITRESS (!). Nice way to kill a couple of hours in the air, but who's picking the titles for these categories? Still, I was quite psyched by one of the choices in the "Canadian" listing: Guy Maddin's BRAND UPON THE BRAIN! So while virtually every chairback headrest glowed with the colorful images of Peter Parker, Wolverine, and Keri Russell and her pies, I was on my own with BRAND's lovely and bizarre flickering b&w images and Isabella Rossellini's soothing narration. I loved what I got to see, but exhaustion from a week of late nights, early mornings, tons of screenings, and a cold got the best of me as I slipped off into dreamland. The images on the backs of my eyelids were merely an extension of Maddin's childhood memory play. I'm ready to see MY WINNIPEG again...

--Matthew