01 / Movie
Tokyo Story
An elderly couple travel from the coast to visit their grown children in Tokyo, and find that everyone is kind to them and nobody quite has time. Ozu keeps his camera low and still and lets scenes run, so the small hurts land slowly: a trip to a spa to get them out of the way, a widowed daughter-in-law who turns out to be the most generous person in the film. Watch it when you can sit with something quiet for two hours.
A slow, dialogue-led family drama in Japanese with subtitles. It deals with ageing, neglect and death, and the ending is sad rather than consoling.
Source / learn more ↗02 / TV show
Columbo
Almost every episode opens with the murder, so you know who did it before the rumpled lieutenant arrives. What follows is a long, polite siege: Peter Falk's Columbo keeps coming back with one more question until a confident, wealthy killer talks themselves into a corner. Taking the long way round is the whole point. Start with any episode from the 1970s seasons; they barely depend on each other.
Episodes run roughly 75 to 100 minutes and move at a 1970s pace. Every story is built around a murder, though the violence is mild by modern standards. Streaming availability varies by region.
Source / learn more ↗03 / Anime
Cowboy Bebop
A broke crew of bounty hunters drift around the solar system on a battered ship, chasing bounties they mostly fail to collect. Most of the 26 sessions are self-contained, mixing noir, westerns, comedy and Yoko Kanno's jazz-heavy score, while the characters' pasts slowly catch up with them. It suits this month because it wanders on purpose: the detours turn out to be the show.
Made for adults, with gun violence, drug use, death and a melancholy ending. A few episodes are pure comedy and can feel out of step with the rest. Availability varies by region.
Source / learn more ↗04 / Game
Grim Fandango
Manny Calavera sells travel packages to the newly dead, and takes the slow route himself when he follows one wronged client across the Land of the Dead. The journey takes four in-game years, told in four acts, each a year apart, mixing film noir with Mexican Day of the Dead imagery. It is a point-and-click adventure, so you progress by talking and solving puzzles rather than by reflexes. The 2015 remaster by Double Fine adds an orchestral score and modern controls.
A 1998 puzzle adventure, and some of its puzzles are obscure enough that many players reach for a hint guide. It involves death, crime and smoking throughout, with a dark sense of humour.
Source / learn more ↗05 / Album
Kind of Blue
Miles Davis gave his sextet, including John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans, sketches built on scales rather than fast chord changes, and recorded most of it in very few takes. The result is jazz with room in it: solos that take their time to find their way, and space between the notes. Listen once from start to finish, then again for one player at a time.
Five long, mostly calm instrumental tracks, about 45 minutes in all. If you want lyrics or a strong beat, it may drift into background music.
Source / learn more ↗06 / Book
The Remains of the Day
In 1956 Stevens, an ageing English butler, takes a few days off to drive across the West Country to see a former colleague. On the way he looks back over decades of service to a lord whose politics he never questioned. Ishiguro has him tell the story in careful, formal prose, so what matters most is in what he avoids saying. It won the Booker Prize in 1989, and at around 250 pages it is the ideal book for this month's challenge.
Very restrained, with little outward action. It deals with regret, loneliness and an employer's sympathy for fascism before the Second World War.
Source / learn more ↗