Charlotte Gainsbourg has a distinctive voice that is quiet and lovely with flawless English and French accents probably from her parents. 5:55 is filled with her whispering and quiet voice combined with synthesizers and piano to create pop songs that I find quite enjoyable.

John Hodgman has written a plausible, but fictional collection of facts that is very, very funny. The Areas of My Expertise is part of the tradition of Woody Allen’s Without Feathers, Steve Martin’s Cruel Shoes or Jon Stewart’s Naked Pictures of Famous People. Hodgman has a strange collection of anecdotes, facts, lists, and tables that are imaginative and create a parallel world filled with hobos, mysterious floating states, and alternate histories. It’s a great book to dip into for a laugh or to sit down and carefully read to find a unique perspective on the world.

Born to Kill is a classic film noir that surprised me with the collection of characters that are in the film. Directed by Robert Wise, it prominently features strong women in roles that challenge the conventional portrayal of women in films at the time.
Delightfully amoral at times, it can be funny and dark at the same time. Well-shot with a somewhat convoluted structure, it’s must for fans of film noir.

Andrei Tarkovsky made some of the most beautiful and melancholic films that I’ve seen. I discovered him via “Solaris”: and it probably was the first art house film that I saw. Slowly paced, poetic and beautifully shot, it was intriguing and different from anything that I’d seen before. Years later I saw Nostalghia which was filled with some of the most strikingly beautiful images ever seen on film.
Finally I saw Stalker which is a story about a man who takes people into a mysterious Zone that contains a room where wishes come true. The Zone is guarded and it is dangerous to travel there and the bulk of the film consists of the journey into the Zone with Stalker who guides Writer and Professor there. But a description of the plot doesn’t really explain the film which is more visual and poetic than literal (as you can probably guess from characters known as Writer and Professor).
Stalker mixes sepia-toned scenes with scenes shot in colour all with an incredible attention to detail. It is set in a decaying world filled with people without hope, yet somehow it has a beauty. It washes over you and is haunting, slow and strangely compelling like all of Tarkovsky’s work.

At this point with an amazing body of work Tom Waits could release a greatest hits double-cd with 20 or 30 songs drawn from his past and throw in a couple of new songs and it would make lots of people very happy. But that’s not the type of artist that Tom Waits is and instead he has a collection of 56 songs, some old and most new that are all distinctive and beautiful.
Every new Tom Waits recording is the same for me. I listen the first time and not everything seems to click with me, but a few tracks I will instantly fall in love with. The same thing happened this time and then with repeated listening it starts to fit me in the way that a shoe starts to fit you better and better the more you walk in it. So now I’m very comfortable with the wonderful sounds and lyrics that I love listening to.
The songs cover the whole range of Tom Waits and what he’s capable of with a beautiful melancholy feeling that is bittersweet and always welcome.

One of the best quotes that I saw from Ray Bradbury commenting on his writing was “I don’t try to predict the future, I try to prevent it.” In watching Children of Men (adapted from P.D. James’ novel) I thought about the present and the near future a lot. It’s a bleak vision of the future that is shot in a hand-held, immediate way with virtuoso shots that go on and on, enhancing the experience and lending a documentary feel to the entire experience.
Within the film are some of the most incredible extended sequences that I’ve ever seen in a film.
It immerses you in a world and tells a story in an immediate and fragmented nature that gradually allows you to piece the bigger picture together. While some darker films may wallow in the muck of the world that is created, there is a dignity and respect that Alfonso Cuaron has for the characters that kept me going through the darker stretches of the film. The darkness is also balanced with some humorous moments and harrowing action sequences that make for one of the best films that I’ve seen in a very long time.

Shot over 42 years, the documentary series that began with 7 Up returned to follow the lives of people in England every seven years. I first saw 28 Up and have watched the other films since then, which means that I’ve been following the series for 21 years now. By seeing how a group of people age and change over a period of time provides a unique perspective on their lives and how things have changed for them. It also provides a parallel with my own life, which has changed a lot over the past 21 years. While the context outside of the documentary has changed with the contrived situations of reality television, the latest instalment is a bit more self-reflexive with most of the participants much more settled and content than in earlier instalments. Director Michael Apted has been with the series since the beginning and took over the directorial duties beginning with 14 Up. It’s a fascinating and somewhat voyeuristic look into how things change over time.

Kid Koala’s reputation preceded him and I listened to him performing some songs live and the sounds that he squeezes out of turntable are amazing. With a jazzy feel and infectious beats, he has to be heard to be believed. Layering sound upon sound he takes scratching to the next level and adds a musicality that transcends and refines the genre.

A limited edition, seasonal beer from a microbrewery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It comes in quart bottles, which is about a glass and a half of beer (or 650 mL). Distinctive and delicious.

I heard someone talking about The Devil and Daniel Johnston on the radio and they played a bit of one of his early songs. It was haunting and I mentally added it to the list of films that I wanted to see. When I started watching the film it was fascinating and as it progresses it becomes an amazing journey with a person who has a unique, difficult and different life. A distinctive visual artist as well as a songwriter, Daniel Johnston is quite singular and my attempts at describing this film and the man to people usually consists of recounting many of the events that are described in the film. So I won’t do that here. It’s fascinating music and a compelling story that is surprising and told through tape recordings, music, short films, archival footage and interviews. While Johnston’s range of songs can be uneven, the best are great and unforgettable.