Looking Forward, Moving Backward

I recorded this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie last fall, just a few weeks after Riceboy Sleeps won the Platform Prize at TIFF … and I’ve been sitting on it ever since, waiting for the film  to start its theatrical run.

And since then, Anthony Shim‘s exquisite drama — about a mother and son emigrating from South Korea to Canada and trying to find their place in a landscape that makes no sense to them — onto both the festival and awards circuits, where it’s done very nicely for itself; just a couple of weeks ago, it won the TFCA’s Rogers Best Canadian Film Award, and it’s up for five major prizes at next month’s Canadian Screen Awards.

The film is finally in theaters, so you can get to hear us talking about Lee Chang-dong’s 1999 masterwork Peppermint Candy, which was a major influence on Anthony’s vision for Riceboy Sleeps and is also just a brilliant picture, full stop. (We screened it at TIFF last year, in a new restoration I assume will be announced for North American release any day now, and it’s a knockout.)

So go listen! Subscribe on Apple PodcastsGoogle PlayStitcher and/or Spotify,  or download the episode directly from the web. It’s a good one, you’ll learn stuff. And then come see Riceboy Sleeps at the Lightbox this weekend, why don’t you? Anthony and his co-star Ethan Hwang will be there for a Q&A with Justine Abigail Yu after Friday night’s 6:35pm screening, that’s going to be good.

And then, I dunno, go catch up on Shiny Things? Last week I wrote about Criterion’s painstaking 4K restoration of Michael Curtiz’ Mildred Pierce and the way Warner’s new 4K set of Rocky movies can’t help but illuminate the conflict between Sylvester Stallone the emotive character actor and Sylvester Stallone, the populist filmmaker. Have you subscribed yet? And if not, why not? I’ve been doing this for a while, you know.

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