Nicholas Brendon

Nicholas Brendon has died at just 54 years old. Some may find it odd that I mention his death when I didn't mention Chuck Norris. I've never been a Chuck Norris fan and it seems like most of his fans are ironic fans anyway. Even now they're sharing memes showing Norris readying for some smackdown in Heaven. The underlying joke generally seems always to have been, "Isn't it funny that this guy's supposed to be a badass?" I'm not a Chuck Norris fan but I can't get onboard the irony train.

Now, Nicholas Brendon was not among my favourite actors. He was one of the stars of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of my favourite TV series, which aired for seven seasons starting almost thirty years ago. He was probably my least favourite character but only by default. I didn't hate him. He played Xander, one of the core group of high school friends around Buffy who helped her slay vampires. Xander was generally seen as a stand-in for series creator Joss Whedon, who was cancelled a few years ago. In a video streamed a few days before his death, Brendon condemned the recent attempt at a reboot for trying to start the show up again without Whedon, whom Brendon said had been "punished enough". Brendon did voice some support for Charisma Carpenter when she made allegations about Whedon's "toxic" behaviour.

Brendon himself was guilty of unambiguously worse behaviour, having been arrested for domestic assault at least three times, in one case even attempting to strangle his girlfriend. He pleaded guilty to charges at the time. But to-day, Brendon's Buffy co-stars are publishing odes to the actor. Charisma Carpenter qualified her statement by saying, "I will miss the version of the man I once knew."

Meanwhile, I haven't found one article that even mentions attempting to contact Whedon for a comment on Brendon's death.

Sonnet 1985

As shadow shipment passed inspection late.
No citizen arranged the go between.
The crucial figures met, discussing fate.
Some story actions truth cannot redeem.
The tea was poured but all the cups were gone.
And now the table's wet and no-one knows.
The sketchy hostess holds an extra pawn.
His heart, beholding her, now warmly glows.
Some strings of garlic line the kitchen walls.
The water flowing out the door is deep.
Beyond the hills, a cloudy monster calls.
A stolen watch was really very cheap.
Mistaken thieves were taken back in time.
The markets now are all bereft of lime.

It's a Twin Peaks World

I started watching Twin Peaks season three again last night. That first episode is so brilliant. I think most people got the impression, when Twin Peaks first came out, that it was the citizens of Twin Peaks who were remarkable oddballs. Season three makes it clear that it's humanity in general that's odd. There are weird people in New York, in Las Vegas, and in a town called Buckhorn in South Dakota.

One of my favourite sequences in David Lynch's oeuvre is the one around Ruth Davenport's apartment. I wish there were clips of it on YouTube. Lynch shows again how inimitable his knack was for creating weird characters. People who try to imitate him are unable ot strike the balance required for credible weirdness. The characters use common phrases in such a way that you suddenly realise how odd common language is, like when Ruth's neighbour calls the police and can't remember her own address, saying helplessly, "You know I know this!"

I love the conversation between the police and the handyman who's immediately suspicious that police are there for him. I love how the character has a clear line of thought, how he's clearly working things out but from a completely wacked out standpoint, as when he asks the police, "How did you know I was going to see Chip?" Maybe this guy's a conspiracy theorist but he clearly also has something to hide that makes him anxious about the sudden appearance of the police. Even people who aren't up to anything get nervous when the police show up.

It almost seems like Lynch and Frost were trying to set up a spin-off set in Buckhorn. Maybe they were but, with the Roadhouse vignettes, it feels more like they were trying to set up an impression of this world of strange narratives all around us, happening all the time, that occasionally bump into each other leaving odd impressions. Again, it's strange, but also extremely realistic.

Alas, I can't find any Buckhorn clips. There are plenty of short Black Lodge clips though.

If You're Gonna Murder, Make It a Perfect Murder

Michael Douglas and Viggo Mortensen conspire to commit the perfect murder of Gwyneth Paltrow in 1998's A Perfect Murder, a loose remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder. It certainly doesn't improve on the original but its blander title is a fitting indicator of how unremarkable but not exactly bad the movie is.

Douglas plays another Wall Street guy, this time his name's Steven, and he's married to Paltrow's character, Emily. She's having an affair with pre-Lord of the Rings Viggo Mortensen who plays David, one of those bohemian movie artists who live in a massive loft space in a major city. Let's go back to that economy, okay?

It turns out Steven knows about his wife's affair but his reaction is to offer David half a million dollars to kill her. He gradually accepts the offer after some reluctance.

Well, let's get to the obvious question. Is it a perfect murder? The plan is to have David enter the wealthy couple's luxury apartment through a service door using Emily's key which Steven leaves taped under the railing of the stairwell. Steven knows Emily takes her bath at the same time he goes to his normal poker game which puts her in a vulnerable position while he has a solid alibi. It's very similar to the plot of Dial M for Murder and goes awry in basically the same way.

What are the flaws in this plan? Steven doesn't have as much leverage on David as Ray Milland's character has on his stooge in Dial M for Murder. Steven can reveal to people in town that David has a criminal past and an assumed name, but he doesn't have the blackmail material that Ray Milland has in the Hitchcock movie. A Perfect Murder combines two characters from the Hitchcock movie; the man the wife is having an affair with and the con-man who has to commit the actual murder. This makes Steven's proposal much riskier. There's a chance that David really does love Emily, as she apparently loves him, and the two might collude to effect Steven's demise.

Direction by Andrew Davis and cinematography by Dariusz Wolski are standard fare for a '90s thriller. Gwyneth Paltrow is very pretty and gives a good performance though there's not much to her character. She's a simultaneous translator fluent in multiple languages, reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn's character in Charade.

A Perfect Murder is available on The Criterion Channel.

Movie Business

I almost forgot all about the Oscars, even though I made predictions back in January. I was right about One Battle After Another winning in most categories but I was wrong about Teyana Taylor winning Best Supporting Actress. The award went to Amy Madigan from Weapons, which I've not seen. Taylor was also accidentally barred from taking the stage by a security guard. Someone must be sticking pins in her Voodoo doll. It sounds like she was pretty gracious, too, even celebrating the actress who won.

I'd say an even bigger scandal was the absence of Brigitte Bardot from the "In Memoriam" section. If the victory of One Battle After Another didn't tell you about the Academy's political alignment, Bardot's omission makes it perfectly clear. Whatever her politics in later life, Bardot's status as someone who fundamentally changed the global film industry can't be denied. Omitting her from the "In Memoriam" is absurd.

Also this week, a trailer for the upcoming Spider-Man movie has finally been released:

I'm surprised by how prominently the Punisher is featured in the trailer. I really like Jon Bernthal's portrayal of the character on Daredevil and Punisher, I hope it'll feel like the same character.

It looks to me like Peter Parker's going to get the Venom symbiote in this movie. It looks a lot like the comics arc with Peter investigating a spacecraft and then something appears to jump from one bystander to another, altering their personality. If it is the symbiote, I guess it won't be the one from the Tom Hardy movies, despite his cameo in No Way Home.

A Long Time Ago, in an Ireland Far, Far Away

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone, though it's already the 18th now for me here in Japan. I listened to the Dubliners when walking home after work and then I had a bottle of Guinness Extra Stout and a glass of Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey. I also roasted garlic and spread it on wheat crackers with sliced cherry tomatoes, basil, and oregano. Not exactly Irish but it was tasty. For a movie, for some reason I wanted to watch The Phantom Menace. Liam Neeson is Irish so I guess it makes a kind of sense. I fell asleep watching it, though. The last thing I remember was Obi-Wan Kenobi saying, "The negotiations were short."

Yesterday was also graduation day for third year students and my last day at the school I was working at. Also, my last day working at a school in Japan because I'm going back to the U.S. next month. It's been an educational six years but for now I just want to talk a little about the school I just finished working at. This relatively small school has one of the best art clubs I've seen in Japan. The junior high school art clubs are always amazing and the students are always light years ahead of anyone I remember from when I was in junior high school, myself included. But this particular school has an art club amazing even by Japanese standards. Several of the second year students are making what I would call professional quality work. The club leader is a girl with a refreshing reverence for art history and I was pleased to see her interest in Gustav Klimt and a variety of Renaissance artists. I introduced her to the Pre-Raphaelites and I was pleased to see she took a liking to them.

I also hung out with the brass band a little and had some great summer afternoons talking with two students in particular. One girl had an amazing knack for natural language acquisition. I've been telling people for years they ought to watch movies in English but this girl was living proof of the efficacy of doing so. Freely talking to her about English idioms and common phrases felt like the kind of thing language education ought to be most of the time but too rarely is, at least in Japan.

Anyway, I hope all the students have bright futures ahead of them. Many of them certainly have skills and talents for brilliant careers.

A Convergence of Storms

I was watching Kurosawa Akira's 1946 film No Regrets for Our Youth (わが青春に悔なし) again last night. It's the first time I've watched it since reading more about the political situation in Japan in the 1930s. The beginning of the film is based on an incident in 1933 when a professor named Takigawa Yukitoki was threatened with dismissal from Kyoto University after giving a lecture deemed too radical. This sparked a reaction among the students and protests against incursions against free speech. In Kurosawa's film, the students are divided between moderate leftists and outright Communists but they're all actively opposed to fascism, Japan's invasion of Manchuria, and militarism in general. The movie was made under the auspices of the U.S. occupation of Japan so one has to take some of the messaging in the film with a grain of salt and it's worth noting that Kurosawa was unhappy with changes made to the ending of the film.

Still, his dynamic camerawork is already remarkable in this early stage of his career. The rapid sequences of shots of Hara Setsuko are electrifying as Kurosawa frames her as the wild, spiritual counterbalance to the boys' political radicalism. There are few clips on YouTube, this one has French subtitles, but the students are ironically extolling their university's virtues as a haven for free speech and freedom when they're interrupted by the sound of gunshots.

More striking than the gunshots is the angle of Hara's back as she leans on her arms, her head turned away from the camera, before Kurosawa's cut to her face as she turns to face her classmates. Later, there are energetic sequences of her playing piano, low angle shots from behind as she slams the keys, like a goddess of thunder, unable to articulate her displeasure in words. She's magnificent in this movie.

No Regrets for Our Youth is available on The Criterion Channel.

Lost in the Snow

A small community in a remote Canadian town is torn apart after fourteen children die in a school bus accident. Atom Egoyan's 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter is about as cheerless as you could imagine from the subject matter but, although it's really an ensemble film, the whole thing is elevated by a central performance by Ian Holm.

Holm plays a lawyer from the big city called Mitchel Stephens who comes to town to drum up support for a class-action lawsuit against . . . someone. For something. Bruce Greenwood plays the father of two of the kids who died. He was driving behind the bus at the time it slid off the icy road onto the frozen lake and could plainly see it was no-one's fault but bad luck. But someone has to be held responsible, right? Surely there was a screw loose in the bus or the railing was faulty. Once, when speaking with the parents of one victim, Stephens awkwardly uses the word "compensation". Even as he says it you can see in Holm's performance he's aware of how feeble the word is in this case. No-one seriously thinks "compensation" can come of this or of any effort in their power. But something must be done.

I saw an interview with Egoyan on Criterion before I watched the movie in which he said one thing that interested him in the story was the character of Nicole, one of the survivors, played by Sarah Polley. In the interview he explained that he was interested in how the entire community was aware that her father, Sam (Tom McCamus), sexually abused her but never spoke about it. In the film, for the most part, Egoyan allows the viewer to read between the lines, as Stephens has to, instead of directly explaining what's happening to her. I suppose the influence of Twin Peaks is pretty obvious and maybe, to a lesser extent, Fargo. It's almost unfortunate because until one thinks of those influences one doesn't really see the flaws in Sweet Hereafter. Both Twin Peaks and Fargo do a much better job of establishing a sense of community with idiosyncratic characters and layers of secrets and willful ignorance. One can almost hear Bobby Briggs saying, "We all knew she was in trouble."

Again, Ian Holm is amazing in the movie. His character is also dealing with his own family problem, a daughter who's grown up to be a drug addict. One moment, we watch him trying to appear compassionate while trying to convince people to join the lawsuit and in another moment wrestling with his love for his daughter and the knowledge that he can't trust anything she says. It's really a terrific performance.

The Sweet Hereafter is available on The Criterion Channel.

Banish the Boring

Well, here's some good news. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot is dead. Obviously I love the Buffyverse considering how I've been talking about Angel and Buffy here lately. When I heard that series creator Joss Whedon was to be shut out of the reboot, that it would instead be directed by Chloe Zhao, I figured it would be dull, soulless, studio drivel. Well, it turns out the filmed pilot was just dull, soulless drivel that the studio wanted no part of. Good for them.

The more things change the more they stay the same. Twenty years ago, talentless directors like Brett Ratner or Paul Haggis mysteriously kept getting work in Hollywood despite plainly being inept. Now they're both cancelled and Hollywood has retrained their policy to prop up a different group of undeserving rich people. Or maybe Chloe Zhao's used up all of her chances. Maybe we can hope that the Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy directed Star Wars movie won't get off the ground. Or are we to really believe that the one episode of Ms. Marvel she directed really demonstrated that she should be directing a Star Wars movie?

There has been some interesting work on Disney Star Wars and Marvel shows, work done by women and ethnic minorities. Why not work more with Steph Green who directed good action sequences in the second episode of Book of Boba Fett? I also think Deborah Chow deserves a second chance. I think all the problems with the Obi-Wan Kenobi series were down to actor and studio meddling.

Anyway. I'm just happy, at least for now, Buffy's tomb remains undesecrated.

Sonnet 1984

Another voice diverts the normal band.
But who are they when swapping singing birds?
Another name denotes another brand.
No reason now to hum with perfect words.
So people gathered late to hear the songs.
The million dollar tickets sold to gas.
Who are the spenders turning up in throngs?
A jiggling, laughing orange pumpkin mass.
Collaborations melt to single grots.
The alloy brings a crew of ghostly gents.
The naked babes interpret inky blots.
And they must pay their catastrophic rents.
So this was how the show continued on.
Computer art created shadow spawn.

Dare to Believe in Quality

A new teaser for the upcoming season of Daredevil was released to-day. Supposedly Elden Henson's character Foggy can be briefly glimpsed but, if so, it goes by too fast for me. I sure hope they're not going to resurrect him. I continue to be puzzled that fans want him back.

Am I a sucker because I'm holding out hope this season could be good? I watched the first few minutes of Wonder Man and, despite the good reviews, found it to be the usual flavourless gruel. But Disney always buys good reviews.

The original run of Daredevil was so good and I love Jessica Jones, I'm so happy to see Krysten Ritter in the role again. And her and Karen teaming up as Daredevil's sidekicks is a terrific idea. I sure hope this thing ends up being good.

汚名

I discovered Prime Video Japan has a lot of classic American movies but only if you search for them by their Japanese titles.

They're all hard-subbed, which means you can't turn off the Japanese subtitles, but that's a small price to pay for such a treasure trove. I was watching Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 film Notorious last night, which used to be a movie that I watched repeatedly. Watching those conversations between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in the first part of the film felt like coming home.

His performance in this film is often cited as the best in his long career. He's so restrained but you can see what he's holding in. And she's at the end of a long tunnel of despair. I could watch these two talk for days.

The Japanese title of the film is 汚名, "omei", which Google translates as stigma or infamy. It's funny, I've asked a few teachers if there's a word for "infamy" in Japanese, or an opposite of fame, and I've been told no. It's hard to know anything for sure these days. This fog gets me.

30.0 Years

This brand new Neon Genesis Evangelion short was released to YouTube a few days ago, following its screening at a special event in Japan. It marks the 30th anniversary of the franchise's inception. It definitely leans hard into the light comedy side of the series rather than the dark, psychological elements that originally made the title famous. It's effectively funny and cute. I always did like Asuka, she and Misato being my two favourite characters. I remember seeing an interview with one of the creatives involved with the project, I think it was even Anno Hideaki, the director, in which he said Japanese fans tend to prefer the quiet, submissive Rei and Americans like the loud, assertive Asuka. I guess I fit that stereotype. All the same, it's easy to forget that Asuka's supposed to be half-German.

The short features two versions of Asuka, one from the original series and one from the Rebuild of Evangelion movies, amusingly appearing as a comedic double act as they explore alternate realities, presenting different outcomes to the series' events for Asuka. The Rebuild movies did not end with Asuka ending up with Shinji but with one of Shinji's high school friends instead. Apparently this did not sit well with the original Asuka.

Shortly after the release of this short, it was announced that there's going to be a new Evangelion series spearheaded by Tsurumaki Kazuya, a director who's increasingly taken the reins in Anno's Gainax splinter company, Khara. I loved Tsurumaki's work on Gunbuster 2 and FLCL, not to mention the Rebuild of Evangelion movies. His work doesn't have the depth of Anno's original but it's always impressive. I'll certainly watch the new series, even if it probably is a cash grab. I guess it'll have to be in another alternate universe. Hopefully it'll work out better for Evangelion than it did for Marvel.

The Conquering Screen

One of the most spectacular absurdities of American culture is the televangelist. The often flamboyantly dressed, vociferous carnival barkers of televised faith somehow inspire devotion and millions of dollars of donation. To properly examine such a phenomenon, it might help to be a foreigner. In 1981, Werner Herzog made God's Angry Man, a documentary about the televangelist Gene Scott. It's not a moralising film that seeks to come to a conclusion about the nature of American televangelism but, instead, like all of Herzog's films, focuses on the peculiar passion of an extraordinary individual.

Herzog interviews Scott's parents as well but most of the film consists of Herzog's interviews with Scott himself interspersed with clips of Scott's broadcast. In the interview segments, Scott complains about persecution and the burdens of his vocation, even his desire to give it up. The segments from his broadcast fulfill the film's English title, showing a man raving at the camera, occasionally relieved by amateur bluegrass performances. The film's centrepiece is a bizarre tirade in which he berates the audience for not sending the final 600 dollars of a pledge drive. He precedes his rant by quietly staring at the camera for several minutes, threatening that he will remain silent if no pledges come in.

It's hard not to think this man's business owes its existence to masochism. Why else would anyone willingly send this man money? Of course, Herzog is focused on one aspect of Scott's personality. Maybe there are other times in Scott's broadcast in which he provides his viewers with comfort or insight. But Herzog doesn't provide any perspective from Scott's audience, this is not an analysis of the televangelist phenomenon but an exhibition of a bizarre personality. It's certainly fascinating. Scott's presumption of dominance in relation to millions of strangers makes it seem that his delusion is absolutely flawless.

God's Angry Man is available on The Criterion Channel.

Blu-Ray Bebop

Watanabe Shinichiro in The Criterion Closet to-day. He's the director of the original Cowboy Bebop, an anime series that's not widely known in Japan, at least not in my experience living here. I had one student a few years ago who was a fan. He was one of those students whom I wish I could have done more, for whom I wish I could have been a better, more insightful teacher. The fact that he was a Cowboy Bebop fan is enough to show how relatively isolated he was.

Watanabe's picks aren't so surprising. Maybe the Jacques Tati box set is most surprising but Watanabe's work does sometimes have the detached, deadpan quality of Tati's comedy. I didn't expect him to pick Suzuki Seijun's Branded to Kill as the only Japanese film among his choices but if I'd thought about it beforehand I probably would've predicted it. It's a stylish, postmodern gangster film, which is basically what Cowboy Bebop is. I have not met one person in Japan who's told me they've heard of Suzuki Seijun, by the way.

It's funny how the trailer promotes the film as "humanity laid bare" over a clip of one of its most absurd scenes, of a gangster dancing hysterically while under a hail of bullets. Branded to Kill is one of Suzuki's most detached, most ironic films. It's closer to some of Watanabe's post-Cowboy Bebop work than it is to Cowboy Bebop which, though it is postmodern, has warmth to it, a kind of warmth that almost seems to come through accidentally through the characters' chemistry. More like Tati, I guess.

Where's the Harm?

For a season of television that's primarily impressive for how grim it is, Angel season five has a surprising number of fun episodes, really the best comedic episodes of the series. A January 14th 2004 episode called "Harm's Way" uses the short version of the character Harmony's name for a pun, one of several episodes to do so. It must have been a surprise to everyone that Harm turned out to be one of the most consistently funny characters in the Buffyverse.

Played by Mercedes McNab, Harmony first appeared as a background character, one of Cordelia's snooty high school friends in the first seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By season five of Angel, she gets to be the unapologetically shallow character that Cordelia used to be. She fits right in with the new premise of Angel's crew running an evil law firm when she takes the role of Angel's secretary. In "Harm's Way", we see how her job entails fetching Angel's mug of pig's blood and handling the catering for a meeting between two demon clans, resulting in the untimely appearance of a camel. The episode uses a dovetailing of premises to present the audience with something that challenges their complacency in accepting plot formulae. In the standard language of television, we would be compelled to sympathise with Harmony, and we do, in her attempts to please the implacable Angel, complaining at one point that she works extra hard because she doesn't have a soul. And that's the catch. She doesn't have a soul so compliance with the new policy that forbids killing people for pleasure or sustenance doesn't come naturally to her.

Just like with Spike in the middle seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, some of the best stuff in both series comes from when it plays around with its hazy mythology around what defines a character with a soul compared to one without one. This issue is also explored with Spike, now a part of Angel's cast, when he resumes an exploitative, casual sex relationship with Harmony even though he now has a soul.

What the heck is a soul anyway? I'm sure someone will figure it out one of these days.

Who's the Family To-day?

I gotta say, I'm becoming a real fan of Atom Egoyan. I watched his first movie a few days ago, 1984's Next of Kin, which is a fascinating film about performative family dynamics.

Peter (Patrick Tierney) is 23 and lives at home, quietly traumatised by his constantly bickering parents. They go to family therapy and Peter ends up sneaking into the office after hours and seeing tape of another family's session, an Armenian family whose son went missing. So he goes to their home and pretends to be their son.

Not as though he's trying to fool them. They all engage in role play and soon they're engaging in different scenarios and everyone seems to gain a kind of delight or contentment from performing an idealised or exciting family dynamic. There's an absurd, almost manic energy to the last portion of the film as though the characters are revelling in some kind of liberation. Each member of the group is very generous with the other in a way reminiscent of a good improv troupe. When one person starts something, the others support it from the point of view of what kind of emotional impact they're trying to achieve. It's a fascinating perspective on human relationships. Maybe we all ought to live life more like performance art.

Next of Kin is available on The Criterion Channel.

Sonnet 1983

Without a spark, the meaning wasn't clear.
No energy expended lit the bulb.
Conducting thoughts occured through mild beer.
More dreams distilled than little bubbles hold.
We went where dizzy crows discussed their war.
The glowing watchers know what's going down.
"It never changes," says the mutant boar.
A tragic day befell the stormy clown.
Across the beach, he chased the pranksters off.
At sea, his loopy girl was laughing hard.
Zosima told the girl she shouldn't scoff.
Alyosha held a torn and worthless card.
The curtains couldn't catch the sun or moon.
But clouds appeared to cool the heavy noon.

Another Last Day

Tuesday was my last day at one of the junior high schools where I've been working over the past year. I was surprised by the very kind expressions of farewells. One of the second year English teachers I worked with gave me this bouquet of artificial flowers:

She was one of the most hard-working and resilient teachers I've worked with. Another teacher gave me some kind of bread snack, sort of like bruschetta but frosted with a cherry flavoured substance. It was really good. He was one of the most sensible of the younger teachers I've worked with, as was a young woman who also teaches English to first year students. I worked with several impressive teachers.

It's an amazing school, a big one, with a surprising number of non-sports related clubs. It has an art club, a literature club, a handmaking club, a drama club, a brass band, and an English club. Of course I got to know the English club members and I was always impressed by their energy. I also generally hung out in the art club and occasionally in the brass band and drama club. I was continually astonished by the high level of work coming from the art club and I think the drama club has members who'll become skilled filmmakers. I wish I'd had more time for the literature and handmaking clubs. I spent a lot of time talking with a pair of sisters in brass band, the elder of whom was particularly keen on practicing English and was always a delight to speak with.

This was the first school where I spent some time observing classes of other subjects, primarily to see how differently other subjects are taught in Japan and gauge student attitudes toward them generally. I was surprised how often the Japanese language teachers were friendly and interested in talking about English. There was also a really impressive third year social studies teacher whose ability to remember information related to her subject enabled her to display some engaging extemporisation.

The school principal took me to dinner at a really amazing izakaya. It was easily the best food I've had in this town and I've had a lot of good food here. I ate so much sashimi, quail eggs, fried squid, and Japanese style fried chicken. The meal concluded with some incredible green tea over rice. This is normally considered the poor bachelor's easy meal but this restaurant turned it into a culinary masterpiece with a pitted umeboshi on top that combined with the rest for a perfectly balanced set of flavours.

It was a fitting experience to cap off a memorable year at a memorable school.

Unanswerable Questions

The parents of a murder victim and the parents of the killer meet for a discussion in 2021's Mass. It's an effective little chamber piece.

The victim and killer were high school students and the incident was a school shooting in which several people were killed, including the killer, who shot himself. It's an all too common scenario in the U.S. these days. The film stars Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton as the victim's parents, Jay and Gail, while Reed Birney and Ann Dowd player the killer's parents, Richard and Linda. I wonder if that's a Twin Peaks reference. Richard and Linda were the two mysterious names on the note Cooper finds in the last episode of Twin Peaks.

The dialogue goes as you might expect. There's a sense of horrible futility while at the same time there's the unstoppable compulsion to do something. Details of the killing and the killer's motives remain superficial, mostly the focus is on the grief and anguish of the two sets of parents. It's not Bergman but it's not bad.

The film was written and directed by Fran Kranz, an actor, best known for his role as Topher on Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. Mass is available on Amazon Prime.