We lost Dexter last week. He was probably twelve but he might have been a little younger, and it was peaceful and awful and if Christmas hadn’t already been ruined by the pandemic that would definitely have done it.

I haven’t been in the mood for blogging, or doing much of anything else, but the latest episode of Someone Else’s Movie is out today so I’m forcing myself to promote it.

After telling everyone we were taking this week off, I ended up bagging John Patrick Shanley — the Oscar-winning writer of Moonstruck, and a filmmaker in his own right whose first feature Joe Versus the Volcano was covered on the show just two weeks ago — for a shortish but still very fulfilling conversation about Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, one of my very favourite movies released in this miserable year. And so I share it with you all today, because that’s how podcasts work.

You know the drill. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. And then maybe go looking for last Friday’s NOW What, which features myself, Rad, Glenn and Kevin doing our holiday movie thing, discussing the Christmas releases of 2020 and teasing not-yet-available titles like Nomadland, Promising Young Woman and News of the World.

And should you want to go deeper on some of those, my reviews of The Midnight Sky, Soul and Wonder Woman 1984 are up at the NOW site for your enjoyment. (I also covered a few other titles in last Friday’s What to Watch column, if you were wondering about All My Life and Wild Mountain Thyme.)

But, you know. This is all just maintenance. My dog is gone and everything is miserable. 2021 can’t come quickly enough.