We're back with Da Vinci!

Life has been koo-koo lately but now the days are clearing up and I can get back to my work, so here I am, filling up the days with distraction. Yes, I need to be editing my film! But I need to do so many things at once or else I just procrastinate and then get nothing done. Strange, how my brain works... but at least I know it.

So, here we are, writing about watching, making lists. We're starting season 6 of Da Vinci's Inquest tonight! Da Vinci's Inquest is probably the best Canadian television series of all time, and I hadn't watched any of it while it was still on. But after watching just one episode, I was hooked! Based loosely on real-life Vancouver Chief Coroner Larry Campbell, it ran seven seasons (1998-2005), then one season in 2005 as Da Vinci's City Hall (Campbell was elected Mayor in 2002) and a final TV movie, The Quality of Life. We mean to watch them all! Sure, it has its stylistic flaws, overused and overblown background music, crazy titles. But Nicholas Campbell (no relation to Larry, I assume!) is a cranky old treasure and more people should know about this series. It's starting syndication in the States now, and it's low-key, character-driven storylines are finding an audience with people who are tired of slick, formulaic shows like CSI. Da Vinci is often completely wrong, and cases are often never solved.

Occasionally we take breaks from it to watch something else, most recently, Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and directed by Timur Bekmambetov. So absolutely preposterous, it's fun! Bekmambetov has a way of ramping up his unbelievable digital effects into the craziest action sequences, and though he has distractingly terrible music and ludicrous plot devices (The Loom of Doom!), it's clear that sheer craziness is the whole point.

And last week, Chris Marker's Sans Soleil - incredible that it's the first time I've seen it. An experimental essay-documentary about a man who travels, mainly through Japan and West Africa, writing letters about the things he photographs, the nature of memory, life on earth. It's beautiful, hypnotic, thought-provoking, incredible. Now one of my favourite films ever.