He arrives at the drainage tunnel he first found from a clue scrawled on the missing girl's notepad. He wears his jeans and light-coloured jacket. The Pin recalls a vampire, with his dark clothes, cane, and protruding ears. Dode and the Tug look like classic thugs, one in black leather and the other, a sleeveless A-shirt.

Someone died here. Someone else almost certainly will, in the next few minutes. We don't know who.

Rian Johnson directed three memorable episodes of Breaking Bad and some big-budget Star Wars films but, when the history of motion picture gets written, he may be best remembered for Brick, an oddball film from 2005 that he penned while in film school. A bizarre odyssey, Brick blends the hard-boiled detective with the teen movie. We have a compromised hero, double-crosses, dark doings, highly stylized dialogue, and stunning cinematography. Although filmed in colour, the shadows of …

Now my mother is living alone with the TV as the oversized non-HD eyeball staring back at her one way. She has been living this way for nine years or so, since my father dug a hole to run electric to a house he built and died almost instantly from a heart attack. Now she lives a block away from her beloved beach and boardwalk but seldom sets foot off her block. She totters only to the 7-11 and only travels elsewhere when people take her to get groceries. Before, it…

It was highest my 23rd year, but I didn't know it at the time. It had been steadily building up. The first time I noticed the river, it was a bit of a thrill. Something I had never seen myself before.

It was growing in strength then, and what at first was something I occasionally played with, eventually became deep enough, and fast enough, to sweep me away. It introduced a new and growing danger. And perhaps if not for the guidance of some clan elders, I would have found myself carried…