Seen in January 

No ordinary Joe, in Pixar's Soul. Image via The Movie Db.

Almost a year into a pandemic and I'm still not out of stuff to watch. Every time you turn on the television there's something new (or old) to stream. A stream of content conjures a beautiful cool creek flowing o'er your tired feet (or maybe something naughtier, I'm not the boss of your imagination). In any event, I threw myself before the glowing screen and I share with you here what I saw. Make of it what you will.

Soul
Disney+
What is your purpose in life? What's it all mean? What happens when you die? All classic cartoon themes. Well, for Pixar anyway. In their latest film, Joe, voiced by Jamie Foxx, is a jazz pianist and grade school band leader who has finally landed the gig of a lifetime. Unfortunately, he's also landed in a coma after falling through an open manhole. Now he finds himself in some kind of purgatory afterlife trying to find a way to get back to the world he left. He teams up with a soul named number 22, played by Tina Fey, who, unlike her soul peers has rejected the idea of ever going down to earth to be born. This becomes a bit of a buddy travel movie with someone who refuses to die paired with someone who refuses to live. Like their films Wall-e, Up, and Inside Out, Pixar finds a story that is funny, very beautiful and surprisingly moving. I'm glad I have a large screen television but this film's visuals and music would have been spectacular to see in a theatre.

Kiki takes to her broom. Image via The Movie Db.

Kiki’s Delivery Service
Netflix
This is one of the simpler Studio Ghibli stories. Kiki is a young witch who, by some witch decree, has at thirteen, reached the age when young witches must leave home to hone her witch skills. With her only skill being able to fly on a broom, Kiki soon finds a job in her new home as a courier, making deliveries by broom. She meets a young boy who is fascinated with her ability to fly and though she rejects him at first, she slowly befriends him. It's a basic story of a young girl who loses then regains her confidence. The animation of Kiki floating above a charming city is really pretty delightful. For at least a couple of nights after watching this movie, I dreamt of flying over Lake Ontario or sitting high atop a downtown rooftop.

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Join Us and Be Alone Together 

As the rest of Ontario joins Toronto in the post Boxing Day lockdown, I would just like to assure them that everything is going to be alright. In fact, life may not really be that different at all. We're all used to being unemployed, stuck at home, going nowhere by now, right? A little while ago I went into the office to retrieve some equipment and the lockdown was a lot more evident in an emtpy office building. Here's a clip of what it was like.

Some Starry Night 

Sometimes the Universe doesn't care for your plans.

As Toronto finally joins the rest of Ontario in “Stage Three”, which sounds more like a cancer diagnosis than a pandemic economic recovery plan, we’re trying to return to normal except we really aren’t. We’ve had almost 40,000 cases of COVID-19 with almost 2800 deaths, so there’s really nothing normal here, new normal or otherwise. Whether it’s all the restaurants that can’t fully re-open or the closure of movie theatres or the fact that travelling somewhere, anywhere, now feels unnecessarily risky, the pandemic has sucked a good deal of fun from the summer. More than the pandemic however is my own skin which won’t quite heal from the urticaria that has plagued me for the last eighteen months. Fun in the sun is a no-go. Stepping out in the searing bright sunshine almost immediately leads to painful hives. I’d love to go for a paddle but sitting in kayak sweating would be my undoing. A cool swim might be the perfect summer treat until I have to shower and soap up which may turn my skin into a living version of kimchi.

Instead, I’m trying to focus on the stuff I can enjoy this summer instead of all the stuff I’ll miss due to either the Pandemic or Urticaria. I might not get the long rides, kayaking or swims but there will be hammock hangs, grilled meats, home made ice cream, and movies on a shiny, new TV beneath the chill of the A/C.

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Seen in May 

Cary Grant in the most cinematic way to try to kill someone in North by Northwest. Image via The Movie DB
It turns out, the merry month of May was spent on the couch watching the world go by through many panes of glass (windows, monitors, televisions). Yet it was also a good month. Snacks were snacked and television streamed directly into my head. What can I say? Times like this require a diversion or two. Here's what diverted me in May.

North by Northwest
Crave

One of my favourite films and a huge hit for Hitchcock, this story starts as a case of mistaken identity and kicks of a road trip, cross country chase with Cary Grant as a cad of an advertising executive desperate to find out the identity of George Kaplan, a cipher whom James Mason wants dead. It all leads to more famous non sequitur set pieces like Grant being lured to a corn field where someone tries to kill him with a crop duster. Why? Because it’s fantastic cinema that’s why. Oh and why not through in the world’s most glamorous industrial designer, Eva Marie Saint while you’re at it because Hitch had a fetish for platinum blondes. I’m not sure how many times I’ve seen this but only this time did I realize the title of the film comes from the moment Grant finally is told everything and plans to film northwest from Illinois to South Dakota leaving from the Northwest Airlines airport gates. Is it convoluted? Of course. Is it complicated? Sure. It’s pure Hitchcock in Technicolor with one of the best damn movie scores of all time by Hitchcock regular Bernard Herrmann.

Westworld S03
HBO on Crave

Fans dumped on this Sci-fi series about a bunch of androids who self-actualize and work to save themselves by infiltrating human society for being too slow and cerebral but HBO persevered and added plenty of action sequences to keep the energy up. In general, this show does suffer from alluding to a great secret that will blow our minds, only to hold out so long that by the time the secret is revealed we forgot why we wanted to know. In season two we discover the park known as Westworld was nothing more than a way to harvest data from the human guests. In this season we discover the humans are as programmed as the robots. We’ve given so much of ourselves to the apps that dominate our lives that now those apps dominate us! Well d’uh. Several recent and important elections manipulated data and misinformation so effectively that a failed real estate developer/reality game show host became president of the United States. Yet, with this plot point aside, seeing Dolores work her technical mastery throughout our very connected future lives was a lot of fun. Though I really doubt exposing people to their own data would cause an anarchistic collapse of society.

Rope
Crave

Another Hitchcock classic filmed to give the perception of single take which gives the whole film a surprisingly stagey feel. The film opens when two college chums reveal they’ve just killed another old classmate solely for the kicks. He was a mediocre person. They were superior people. Why shouldn’t they create their own moral universe. The film seems to take this as some kind of valid argument that any intelligent person couldn’t dismiss in minutes yet it plays out throughout the film as the killers stash the body in the very apartment where they are hosting a soirée. Their old college professor played by Jimmy Stewart senses something is awry and spends the evening trying to pry out what has happened to the missing colleague. Despite some clumsy moments it’s a pretty incredible set up with the lighting changing from afternoon to dusk and a giant nearby neon sign suggesting the word “strangle” burning just outside the apartment window.

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I Can Get Used to This Lifestyle 

"The COVID-19 Lockdown has cleaned the air over Nepal and northern India. So much so that for the first time in many years, Mt Everest can be seen again from Kathmandu Valley even though it is 200km away." via the Nepali Times

That didn’t take long. Happy one hundred days of self-isolation and counting. I realized as I was making breakfast that I’ve consumed at least 2 kilograms of oatmeal and a litre of maple syrup in that time. I’ve also seen just how much chocolate a man can eat given 3 months in isolation. For me this isolation thing has been fine. Still working. Still getting paid. Full pantry. Yet there is a weirdness that everything is different and it will take awhile for that to go away. The air is cleaner, the waters of the Venice canals have cleared (no sign of dolphins however), people are riding bikes everywhere and everything is different now. How different? This different:

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21 Things That Will Be Different in the Future 

The Office of the Future

The question keeps coming up. After a global epidemic has ravaged our populations and our economies, what will the future look like? What will the future of work be; what will the future of travel be; what will entertainment, sports, or restaurants look like? I think I have some answers.

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End Times Margarita 

Stay at home, inside, spinning your wheels. Illustration by Paul Blow

Well, it’s been forty days since I last gathered with friends for a public event. One where we sat together, drank, listened and spoke to each other within a two meter radius and hugged each other good-bye. Forty days in the wilderness. Forty days confined in solitary. Forty. Four-tee. For tea. Language in an empty house sounds strange. It’s strange how long ago forty days feel. Not like a month or so, but almost entirely out of memory. Days pass like weeks. It’s the strangest aspect of this time. Time itself. I usually know the day of the week but have no idea of the day of the month. It’s messing with my perception of time. It’s a forced perspective of time, like a crazy kitchen but with minutes and hours.
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Is It Safe? 

Image from the Todd Haynes’ film, Safe, which pretty much looks like someone practicing safe social distancing.

Christian Szell: Is it safe?... Is it safe?

Babe: You're talking to me?

Christian Szell: Is it safe?

Babe: Is what safe?

Christian Szell: Is it safe?

Babe: I don't know what you mean. I can't tell you something's safe or not, unless I know specifically what you're talking about.

Christian Szell: Is it safe?

Babe: Tell me what the "it" refers to.

Christian Szell: Is it safe?

Babe: Yes, it's safe, it's very safe, it's so safe you wouldn't believe it.

Christian Szell: Is it safe?

Babe: No. It's not safe, it's... very dangerous, be careful.

This is a scene from the 1976 thriller, Marathon Man, starring Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier and Roy Scheider but it could just as well be a scene between the public and the public health authorities during a COVID-19 press conference. In truth, we only know what we know. What we know is the only way to beat a virus is to avoid other people who may or may not have or even know they have the virus. The only way to do that is to stay home and avoid other people. To me and those of my ilk, this is not really a problem. As explained often, I’m almost neither here nor there about seeing other people, even ones I really like. I have been accused of being incapable of making an “emotional connection”. I’m not sure about that but I do know that I do not have the capacity to love any one person enough to share a tandem bicycle, or even a two-person kayak. Basically, I’m like a low maintenance house plant, I’m here when you need me, but it’s alright to forget to water me for a week. To some, being separated from others is like sucking all the joy and sunshine out of the world.
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