Things I’m Sweating: Up In The Air

Up in the Air is a movie comin’ out soon by Jason Reitman starring George Clooney. I hadn’t heard about it until it blew-up at the Toronto Film Festival. And since then I’ve been watching the trailer ad nauseam. People have been jerking it off calling it Clooney’s most charismatic role yet, that it’s some sort of zeitgeist for our times. Whatever. I’m stoked.

On a personal level, I’m obsessed with the idea of movement in our lives. The notion that we must continue moving, striving, accelerating. When Clooney hits the line in the trailer, “The slower we move, the faster we die” I was beyond sold. I’m perpetually fearful of the idea of stagnation. The idea that at some point we stop living and turn our eyes to the sky, resign from really dreaming, and die.

I’m a sucker for modern existential crisis movies. Fight Club, American Beauty. This movie seems to have the potential to riff on the same ideas. Who knows. Maybe it’ll suck. But thematically, it’s hitting all the right notes to keep me looking forward to its eventual release.