Yesterday G and I saw "Up In the Air," Jason Reitman's film starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Walter Kirn. The credits feature a lot of amazing images of clouds, as you see them from an airplane; fields of them stretching out forever, impossibly puffy, pneumatic, full of air. The movie was not the sort of romantic comedy I thought it would be. It takes a rather more dim and realistic view of the human heart and shows how the very thing we imagine ourselves to be can turn out to be our undoing. It was actually kind of dark and poignant and unexpected. Clooney and Farmiga are both gorgeous and at the top of their respective games (for once Vera isn't playing an impoverished drug addict) and the new girl, Kendrick, is fresh and unmannered. Afterwards, we went to Union Square Café, to use an anniversary gift of a meal there we had received from G's parents. I hadn't been in ages but it's really the same as ever: warm, efficient, enjoyable.
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