angelofvic

This little short film kept popping up on my social media feed for about six months before I allocated the slim 11.5 minutes required to watch it.

As it started I immediately got a 'Last Flag Flying' (2017) vibe from it -- quirky, but touching. That about says it all.

Since watching it, I have been thinking a lot about the three actors, especially Dot-Marie Jones, who, in an unforgettable performance, nearly steals the show.

Here's what the writer/director/actor, Luke Barnett, says on X/Twitter about the genesis of it:

"My mom died when I was 17. I only have a handful of pictures and zero videos of her. A couple years ago, on my birthday, I got a text from a number I didn't recognize. It simply said 'happy birthday' with a YouTube link. I clicked it and my heart stopped. It was my mom.

"I had to pull over immediately. She was telling me how proud she was of me and how she wondered what I'd become. Maybe a policeman, a preacher, or even a clown. I couldn't believe it.

"Well, it turns out the random phone number was my friend Jon's dad, who had found this video on an old VHS tape they made before a 1999 school event. I was 16.

"This experience got me thinking... what if we could have one last conversation with someone we lost?"

This documentary, which details Flannery's deep religious faith, as well as her painful loneliness and eventual debilitating illness, offers a better understanding of the twisted weirdness, violence, and grotesque in her works.

In many of these works, the violence and grotesque spark an inwardly mysterious revelatory connection to revelation and salvation and the divine, if viewed correctly through O'Connor's perspective.

If you have read some of O'Connor's work and found it compelling but often too off-putting and weird, this film should make you think again and reconsider the deeper meaning of her compelling but very unusual and seemingly dark or "twisted" themes.

It's also great to learn about the flesh and blood person behind the iconic stories.

Highly recommended.

I checked this out on the PBS website, because it looked like a bit of a change from the copycat crime/mystery series populating PBS offerings these days.

I was right. From the very start, we learn that the four main characters are a fascinating little group of misfits, and the actors who portray them are wonderful too. Then add in the two or so other characters who are regulars on the show, and you have a full deck of entertainment.

So it's sort of immaterial what the investigations and crimes are, because the characters' personal lives are even more interesting. But the writers are good and have cooked up an imaginative slate of crime and mystery events, some of which regularly intersect with a mob boss and some which give the viewer a gasp of surprise and shock when they suddenly happen.

One other interesting thing is that the series takes place in Montreal, so the characters speak French (with easy-to-read subtitles), or rather a Franglais mix of weirdly accented Montreal French called 'Joual' mixed with English words, phrases, and sentences. It's pretty interesting in itself.