Midsomer Murders

I love watching British crime TV shows. I wouldn't claim any level beyond the superficial, but yes, there will always be one on my mind. I lately have been steadily working through Midsomer Murders - it accompanies me as I clean my house, as I eat lunch alone (I work from home), and as I chop vegetables for dinner.

For those who don't know the show, it follows Barnaby, the chief inspector, as he investigates murders in the county of Midsomer in England. In the great tradition of Agatha Christie, he uncovers the dark secrets hidden beneath the unassuming countryside where pub owners mix with wealthy landowners. 

There are a couple of factors that endure the show to me. The accent is always a factor - my grandfather was a British immigrant to Canada and had an ever so slight accent by the time I got to know him and he had a brilliant teasing sense of humour. He never could convince me that he had six fingers, but he sure did try. I find the accent to be a lovely mixture of soothing tones and playfulness, something the show does not fail to live up to.

The second factor involves the casting. I'm tired of seeing highly polished individuals who not only have employed personal trainers full-time, but also must be wearing a thick layer of carefully applied makeup. The actors in this show look as if you could actually find people like them on the countryside. This nod to authenticity is oddly daring for me coming from the North American continent, where plastic is beautiful.

The final factor is the landscape - I remember being stranded in England after a bird had an unfortunate and flaming accident with an airplane engine at Heathrow. My small family and I were shipped out to a countryside hotel near Windsor Castle. I fell in love with the scale, the bunnies and the greenery. We are missing such fresh smells in downtown Toronto. The landscapes evoke such pleasant sensations as does the architecture: small stone buildings and delicate wooden trim in charming gardens. 

As anyone who studies or watches horror and crime narratives, the most innocuous settings and characters inevitably hide the most heinous deviations. If the show does feel a tad formulaic after a time, it's because it is. The formula and the lack of diversity may be the show's major faults. It does ignore a whole swath of the British population (at least to the point where I am currently in the series). This lack of diversity gives the show a dated sense, as if it did really belong to Agatha Christies' time. These faults are all made up for in my mind at least, by its final redeeming point. If I can't fall asleep, Barnaby's understated questions sooth my own inner interrogations.

Who am I (Kein System ist sicher, 2014)

Who am I? A nobody. A nobody superhero whose secret power is to be invisible.  Baran bo Odar's latest film had two screenings recently at TiFF 2014. I only had the chance to make it to the second one and the director was conspicuously absent. He gave "missing his daughter" as an excuse. It's hard to be disagreeable with such an excuse and really I didn't have too many questions.

I haven't seen his first film Silence yet and now it has made it onto my list of to be seen. Not because his latest is particularily brilliant, but rather that it is a solid piece of rather unusual filmmaking from Germany. Instead of the often slow and contemplative pieces coming from the Berlin School like The State I am In. Odar's Who am I? has more in common with Run Lola Run, Tom Tykwer's 1998 film about a disenfranchised rebellious daughter, and the neat tricks you can play with time and film. Like Tykwer's film, Obar explores the Berlin landscape in a fast pace of filmmaking more in tune with the Berlin electronic dance music scene than with emo.

Obar's film latches on to the theme of young alienated masculinity with power and parallels the hardship of the protagonist, Benjamin, with his comic book heros, who all inevitably lose their parents to a violent death. Obar however casts a wide social net beyond the question of "belonging" that touches on the effects of alzheimer's, suicide, the absent father figure, social alienation, racism, consipiracy theories and also love.



The film is centered on genius hacker Benjamin who belongs to a small group of activist hackers known as CLAY. They escalate their pranks, seeking recognition (and ultimately a sense of belonging) from the "big players" until they come up against a group involved with the Russian mafia. This could have been another movie on an almost worn out trope, but its playfulness and the fast pace keeps it going, even tricking the audience at the end into believing the authenticity of the reveal.



One of the curious turns of the film involves its emphasis on reality. The internet, the dark net and so on are all composed eventually of real people sitting in real coffee shops. Forgetting that this reality exists is portrayed of the potential problems of the immersive virtual world we are in the midst of creating. No system is safe because no person is infallible. But also because each virtual system is interwoven with a dynamic and changing reality. At the heart of this film is the recognition that the immaterial and the material cannot be separated.

Jumanji: The Case of the Killer Animal-Plant

I recently watched Jumanji again after almost 20 years and as is usually the case, I saw the film through fresh eyes. After having written a dissertation on plants, I notice plants all the more and especially monstrous portrayals of them.

For those of you not familiar with the film, two children find a magical board game in a house and they begin to play it, in effect, restarting a game begun some 26 years earlier. The premise of the game invites the players to "seek to find a way to leave their world behind." Each time they roll the dice a new challenge materializes in the form of nature gone wild. Whoever finishes the game, wins and puts everything back to normal.


One of the enticements to play comes from the invitation to experience a new world. A new world that is really an other nature that is amplified in some way, where the distinctions between species are blurred and the laws of regionally disparate biomes are ignored causing jungle and sub saharan animals come to small town America. Mosquitoes become larger than life and can pierce glass. Various wild animals ranging from elephants to rhinos stampede through the town. A lion appears from nowhere and then is trapped in a bedroom. A hunter kills humans instead of animals. The little boy becomes a wolf when he tries to cheat. A torrential downpour - a monsoon - threatens to drown all four players. The monkeys ride motorcycles and a vine like plant grows with such speed that it can grab onto people with its tentacle-like tendrils and kill them with a poisonous spray or gobble them up with its vicious flower-mouth.



The game distinguishes between two natures (or two worlds), the orderly and predicable nature of small town America and the nature of the jungle and sub saharan Africa. On the one side is the civilized world, but one where a small boy feels disenfranchised and misunderstood. On the other is the uncivilized world of the jungle that transforms the young civilized boy who is sent there into a wild man, played by a very hairy Robin Williams, who is also clothed in leaves. As soon as possible after returning from the jungle Robin Williams transforms himself into a civilized man by cutting his hair, shaving his beard and putting on proper clothes.



This distinction is also critical for the out-of-control killer vine. Just as William's long hair represents his descent into the uncivilized world, the incredible speed of the plant's growth signifies its own uncivilized character. The vine does not behave as a proper plant should. Instead of the docile house plant that exists as more of an object than a being with agency, or the agricultural crop that we eat, the vine can both kill and eat us. This visualizes the hidden dangerous properties of some plants that can poison us and the slow growth of a vine that is otherwise invisible to the naked eye. The unusual speed of the plant's growth also gives the vine animal properties, making it seem more animal-like. It can strangle like a python and spray poison like a snake. It breaks the natural laws that divide animals from plants, which is really breaking the laws of the civilized world - or how plants are supposed to behave in America. The vine's effect on the civilized world is to return it to a precivilized state as seen in the way it eventually transforms the house into a mini-jungle.



The effect of making a plant monstrous is to make it seem even less like us. It amplifies the plant's position as the radical other, by revealing it to be also uncivilized. In contrast to the short, well-manicured lawns of the small town, this plant takes over the house and crosses over the boundary that divides nature and civilization.



This plant also represents a comment on the fauna of Africa and the sub sahara. This world belongs to the uncivilized world and is an other world. The film reinforces stereotypes about Africa through its representation of an other nature that has not been dominated by humans. What makes a civilized world is its domination of the natural world - its taming of plants and animals.



Winning the game becomes a metaphor for human civilization. The order of the small town returns and the chaos brought on by misbehaving nature recedes or is put back in its place. However, the heartbeat of the game - its locating signal beats on and represents the primal threat involved in this natural world - it's always possible to return to this precivilized state... or to leave our world behind.

The Heart and the Bottle by Oliver Jeffers

It's rare that a children's book will touch me so deeply. The most of them quickly get on my nerves rather than cause tears to well up halfway through.

The empty chair is such a moving symbol of loss. Whether it means death or absence, it doesn't matter.

What matters is that the empty chair echoes throughout the little girl's life. As a result, life is emptied of all meaning. Until that meaning can be filled again. If the mourning goes on too long, one forgets how to stop.

Just as the book illustrates the effect of loss, it also suggests its solution. Another little girl, who hasn't yet felt her life empty out, can lead the way to a meaningful life.

A children's book is not just a story but also illustrations. Oliver Jeffers succeeds in representing curiosity through references to scientific illustration in addition to various artistic conventions. In the pages on the stars, he also demonstrates with out ease or any sense of pedantry the difference between educated knowledge and a child's imagination. When looking at the stars, the adult sees constellations and the child sees a bee with its butt on fire.

I first encounter the quiet rhythm of Jeffers' books in Lost and Found about friendship and haven't been disappointed yet. He makes the magical real. Just like a child.

Carissa Klopoushak and Friends.

Seeing an old friend and former classmate succeed gives me a vicarious pleasure and pride. Even though I dreamed one day I would be rock star fronting a girl band with all the associated coolness that would entail, I won't. So it's great to know a musician who did work so hard to get where she is.

Carissa Klopoushak and Friends gave a rousing performance of mostly folk music at the Toronto Summer Music Festival. I would say it was a great performance with one caveat: I'm a total dunce when it comes to music.

Yet, I would say that I can tell good music from bad based on the "cringe-anticipation factor." It's my own scale, first developed while watching figure skating with my older sister. If I begin to tense up in anticipation of cringing at some massive screw-up, then the performer isn't very good. An excellent performer puts me at ease; she convinces me that she is performing well. And I believe her.

While she was playing, Carissa (and friends) convinced me. I believed in her pleasant voice and in her dancing violin. I am not really a big listener of Ukrainian folk music and was pleasantly surprised. I thought though that the really tasteful chairs at the Heliconian Hall should have been cleared away for a dance floor. Prompted by the music, the listeners would have been kicking up their heels instead of sitting politely and quietly. But then again, I feel the best way to listen to music (and understand it) is to dance.

Her credentials back the performance. She has been hired by the Ottawa symphony orchestra (I believe, please forgive if I have gotten this wrong), recorded several albums with her band Tyt i Tam and is the head artistic director of Ritornello Music Festival. Impressive.
nelson higher educational
The only criticism I would dare throw in her direction is more contextual than musical. For the uninitiated like me, we could have used more of an introduction (and a smoother one) to the music. They did an original arrangement of what I believe was a classical work. I didn't hear the composer's name clearly and now will have to harass her for it.

Carissa also didn't play her violin alone. The friends, Alexander Sura and Jean-Christophe Lizotte, played the cimbalom and the cello. It's completely unsurprising that Sura studied the piano, since the cimbalom, in principle and in sound, seems very similar to the piano. His soloist work was entertaining to watch and provided a nice break from the tone of the other pieces. Celloist Lizotte remained in the background as a strong player but didn't showcase any solo pieces of his own.

Watching Carissa play violin last Thursday reminded me of another time I heard her play. Around 20 years ago, she played for a group of us in the school basement as a part of show and tell. When I think about that performance and about a room in her parents' basement filled with instruments, I could almost call her career path, her destiny.

When I think about my own parents' basement, it was filled with books instead of instruments. It's no surprise that I didn't become that rock star and that Carissa is still rocking that violin. 

Die Innere Sicherheit (The State I'm In, 2000)

After having finished school, I can now expand my view. As a part of the process, I've decided to move beyond Weimar cinema and New German Cinema to the Berlin School.  So, I've entered the quasi modern state of film. Finally.



The film was released in 2000, which can hardly be called recent, but compared to my focus on films from the 1910s and 20s, it was released yesterday. Christian Petzold directed the film and wrote the screenplay along with Harun Farocki, a director in his own right.

What struck me most about the film was its focus. Instead of concentrating on the terrorist parents and telling the sensational back story, the rather mundane problem of their fifteen year old daughter's, Jeanne's, first relationship is at the center of the film. The criminal activity of the parents remains at the periphery and is never fully explained, yet plays a central role in the generational conflict and the girl's rebellion. Instead of forbidding her to see him for the usual parental reasons (bad influence, too old for her), she is not allowed to see him because it might reveal their secret.

Keeping secrets through silence is one of the main threads throughout the film and shapes the aesthetics of the film as well. Jeanne initially keeps her relationship to the boy, Heinrich, from her parents and only does so after they question her. Later on, after they return to Germany, she returns to seeing him and is once more forbidden from contact. Her parents teach her how to keep a secret while under interrogation. Remaining silent, giving the interrogators no ground, makes them unbalanced, nervous, and Jeanne uses this tactic with Heinrich, when he asks her about herself. As her parents predict, she later tells him all her secrets. Heinrich pays back Jeanne by ringing the police, perhaps selfishly unable to keep Jeanne's secret - she won't leave with them, if her parents have been caught.

Visually, the film is keeping secrets through its focus on Jeanne. The nature of her parents' criminal activities are revealed through brief visual clues that in no way reveal their violence. They are shown digging up caches of money and passports under bridges and other hidden spots. The violent extortion of an old friend occurs off camera as Jeanne talks about music with the other man's teenage daughter. Similarly, Jeanne's initial scoping out of the bank and her parents' later violent robbery are mediated through what appears to be surveillance footage. Images, which are not secret - publicly accessible and visual proof of the truth of Jeanne's initial report and how that reality can change. The side exit was open for Jeanne but not when the parents rob the bank. The choice of surveillance footage also maintains the integrity of the film's aesthetic by differentiating between the private world of Jeanne's life and the public knowledge of her family.

Jeanne's private life motivates what is shown and not shown in the final sequence of the film. The drivers of the mysterious black vehicles remain hidden behind dark windows and their identity unknown. They surround the white station wagon and drive Jeanne's mother off the road as her father sleeps in the back and Jeanne rests on her mother's lap. We see the station wagon roll over again and again, landing upside down. Jeanne is thrown out some meters away. She gets up and the final shot is her looking at the wrecked vehicle. It remains unknown to us if her parents have survived, but it is critical to the film to show her fate. She survives.

The last scene is emblematic of the film's feeling of nowness. What is important for the story is also important for Jeanne, which is why her parents' criminal activities are downplayed. It may be true that Jeanne will have other relationship, but the one she's having with Heinrich is more real and present for her than any of those other hypotheticals. In this sense, the film captures a particularity of being a teenager - my life right now far outweighs any other.

Oliv: A Paradise Island of Taste Bliss

When I go out to visit my parents in Saskatoon, I don't really expect to come across sophisticated tastes in the prairie. There are of course the Saskatoon berry products and my favourite, fresh raspberries from my parents' garden. When I unintentionally found Oliv, the self-identified "premium olive oil experience", I was both delighted and surprised.

They enticed a visiting friend and I in to the store with taste testing and air-conditioning. It was as if we had walked into a large winery. One half of the store consisted of vinegars, everything from the 18 year old aged to the espresso flavoured. The other half was a selection of oils from the light extra virgin to organic to porcini infused. Immediately, I knew they had won me over. The next difficulty lay in exactly which vinegar or oil I would take home with me. They were more than gracious with my continuing requests for samples. My final choice of cinnamon and pear vinegar left me with no regrets, deliciously accompanying both bread and salad.

Their oils reminded me of an experience I had on my honeymoon in Croatia. We had bought olive oil from an olive farmer on the island Dugy Otok, who poured it from a huge cask into an empty plastic coke bottle. Her candour and earthiness felt authentic and her oil tasted like olives, giving me the first taste of what olive oil should be like. If what the founders of Oliv, Awie and Isabeau du Toit, claim on their website is true, their olive oil is "chemically unaltered" and retains the goodness of oil made straight from the vine.

The du Toit's first store opened in Moose Jaw, SK. They have opened subsequent stores in Regina, Saskatoon and Phoenix, Arizona, but have not yet expanded east to my disappointment. The quality of their product would offer a stiff competition to stores already established in Toronto.

In more recent years, my parents' palate has expanded somewhat. If their shifting tastes are mirrored in the greater population of Saskatchewan, Oliv may have the resources to expand their business into a chain of stores across Canada. I wish them all the success and look to them as gastro-leaders in the prairie.