All At Sea

Conditions: Light, Breezy.

All At Sea.

Okay so there’s been another cruise ship problem, and on the face of it, this one isn’t so bad. The Carnival Triumph lost power and had to be towed to port, and the conditions on board were pretty awful. But what gets me is how these things are happening at all.

The ship left Galveston, Texas, for a four-day cruise last Thursday with 3,143 passengers and 1,086 crew members. The ship was about 150 miles off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Sunday when an engine room fire knocked out its primary power source, crippling its water and plumbing systems and leaving it adrift on only a backup power.

- newsfeed.time.com

See what I don’t get is how a fire could knock out the primary power source, and there isn’t a secondary power source. These ships are monsters, capable of carrying over 4,000 people. As we’ve already seen, getting 4,000 people out of anything is a long and difficult process. How can something like that only have one power source? Is it so they can fit more people into it? It seems to me that once you have something capable of taking that many people, it should also be containing multiple independent systems – like something as basic as primary power.



Film Review: Flight

Robert Zemekis has spent the last decade or so building films out of computer graphics, generally ending up with somewhat creepy-looking and uneven results. So it’s a little surprising to watch Flight, with no computer trickery to be found – apart from a very realistic looking plane crash of course. Flight tells the story of an alcoholic pilot (Denzel Washington) who, confronted with a malfunctioning plane that is falling out of the sky, reacts with a maneuver that is as brilliant as it is cinematic. The subsequent crash landing only results in 6 deaths, basically a miracle. As the investigation and accompanying media circus go into full swing Denzel is desperately trying to clean up his act while emotionally falling apart at the seams. While it’s true that he’s being held up as a hero, it’s also true that being drunk and high while flying a plane is a federal offense (jail time!), and if it had anything to do with the crash he could be in jail for ever.

So the film settles into an examination of Denzel’s character as he recovers from his injuries, hides away from the media glare, lapses in and out of alcoholic binges and falls through a relationship with a drug addict he met in the hospital. She’s really his one glimmer of hope, but he has a lot further to fall before he’ll finally see that. It’s a strongly acted film about stress and desperation, and Denzel carries it as he always does, with grace and heart. The film works its way toward a big courtroom scene finale, where we see if the truth will finally come out.

But to me that’s not the key scene. The key scene is just before where Denzel, sober for just over a week, is put into a hotel suite the night before and comes face to face with the mini bar in the wee hours of the morning. That moment, where you can see the fight of the addict playing across his eyes, is where the film really hits you. It’s an interesting film, not really condemning as it is sympathizing and explaining. It’s also a bit of an uneven film, where we start with a big plane crash, then settle into a long examination of a flawed character. But it is a fascinating examination. Four flaps out of five.



- Peace out