Lost and Found

Today’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie is about lost movies, in more ways than one.

See, I was able to book my guest, the writer and director Nancy Savoca, because her 1993 drama Household Saints was recently rediscovered and restored by Milestone Films, and its Toronto premiere at the Revue this weekend gave us the perfect hook. And Nancy chose to discuss another lost film, Euzhan Palcy’s Sugar Cane Alley, which she loves dearly and has been watching on an increasingly fragile VHS tape for decades.

But while we were talking, Nancy also mentioned that in addition to Household Saints, her first two features True Love and Dogfight were also being prepped for re-release in new restorations this spring … and that Criterion would be handling the Dogfight special edition. So I had to clip all of that, and not mention anything about it in the intro and outro, because Criterion’s announcement wouldn’t be happening until noon today, twelve hours after the episode dropped. But now it’s real, and I am over the moon for Nancy and her team.

It’s all for the best, I suppose, Dogfight is a goddamn masterpiece, and a proper celebration is well overdue — and maybe now Nancy  will have the juice to lean on Criterion to do something with Sugar Cane Alley, and that’s a win for all of us.

So join us in the celebration, why don’t you? Subscribe at the usual locations — Apple PodcastsGoogle PlaySpotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it in secret while you sit through your French lessons.

And then, of course, it’ll be time to catch up on the latest editions of Shiny Things! Last week’s missives covered two double-bills, as it turned out: I watched Joel and Ethan Coen’s Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers back-to-back, and then immersed myself in Arrow Video’s new 4K restorations of John Milius’ very serious Conan the Barbarian and Richard Fleischer’s not at all serious sequel, Conan the Destroyer.

What is best in life? Subscribing to my newsletter, of course! So do it! Do it now! It’s right heah!

The Deadest of Pans

On this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, I get to have a really fun conversation with comedian and actor Chris Locke.

I’ve been chasing Chris for a while, since I’ve been enjoying his work in  literally every TV series produced in Toronto  (including Run the Burbs, which returns for its third season tonight on CBC and CBC Gem), and a number of movies besides.

One of them is Jeremy Larter’s very charming PEI private eye comedy Who’s Yer Father?, now available on digital after a fall theatrical run, and it gave us the opportunity to schedule a SEMcast about a film very dear to Chris’ heart: The Wrong Guy, the 1997 comedy where Dave Foley played the worst fugitive in the world. Barely acknowledged at the time, it’s become a sort of cult object among comics and other professionally funny people, so it was a pleasure to talk it over with someone who counts himself a super-fan … even if it wasn’t the film we’d expected to discuss when we sat down.

I should also point out that this was recorded just before the new season of Fargo, and neither of us knew Dave Foley was going to be awesome in that. So there.

It’s a fun one! Subscribe at the usual locations — Apple PodcastsGoogle PlaySpotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it as you rifle through a hospital room looking for ways to disguise your identity.

And then get caught up on your Shiny Things reading! It won’t take long this week because there wasn’t much to write about — but I did take a look at Shout! Studios’ new Blu-ray of Walter Hill’s Depression-era Yojimbo remake Last Man Standing, and shared my optimism for the year that’s coming. Because I’m an idiot. Subscribe, why don’t you?

Happy Neo Year

Hey, look! It’s 2024 and we’re all still alive! Those of us reading this, anyway, and that’s … us? I don’t know how to structure an optimistic post, if I can be honest; it’s harder and harder to sound positive about The Future when everything is on fire all the time.

But I recorded this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie back in October, when things were a little bit brighter, and maybe some of the fun I had with my guest Orson Oblowitz will rub off on you now.

Orson is the director of the new movie Showdown At the Grand, a charming retro thing starring Terrence Howard as a fully committed movie nerd whose refusal to sell his beloved theater to developers puts him in a great deal of danger … and only Dolph Lundgren can save him. Newly available on disc and on digital, it’s like a big warm hug of nostalgia, and also it has ninjas.

There are no ninjas in Orson’s podcast pick, Akira, but there might be some hiding in the elaborate design of Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 anime sensation, a cult movie for the nuclear age that continues to amaze and thrill [checks watch] 36 years after it exploded onto the cultural landscape.

We didn’t have a lot of time, but we talked pretty quickly. Subscribe at the usual locations — Apple PodcastsGoogle PlaySpotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen as you race your tricked-out motorcycle through the ruins of a devastated city.

And then catch up on your reading! I wrote three editions of Shiny Things last week, making lists of the best movies and discs of 2023 and taking a trip to Toronto’s very own Vinegar Syndrome brick-and-mortar store, which was downright therapeutic. You can read that one on the site for free, but why not subscribe? That’s also therapeutic, I bet.

 

 

A Time to Be Nice

Nothing much is going on this week. Maybe you’ll buy something, maybe you’ll treat yourself to a classic film in 70mm, maybe you’ll sit around the house waiting for a negative COVID test. I don’t know your lives.

But I do know that I hate to leave you all without entertainment, and that’s why this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie is all about Road House, the 1989 Patrick Swazye punch-em-up which actor-filmmaker Evan Rissi loves beyond all reason.

So when I heard Evan’s first feature Going In was making its digital debut this month, this felt like the perfect opportunity to have him on and celebrate Swayze’s charisma, Kelly Lynch’s straight-woman charm and Ben Gazzara’s up-for-anything indie spirit. And Sam Elliott’s pubes, of course.

Subscribe at the usual locations — Apple PodcastsGoogle PlaySpotify — or download the episode directly from the web to enjoy while carefully applying your styling products of choice as part of your morning routine.

And then go catch up on your Shiny Things, because I offered some suggestions for Boxing Day bargain-hunters as well as pondering why it’s so difficult to bring Stephen King’s books to the screen without losing their essential spirit. (It would have been a very different essay if that new 4K edition of The Dead Zone had shown up in time, mind you.) You can subscribe right here!

That’s pretty much it for this week, though. Like I said, there’s just not a lot to do. I hope you’re enjoying a similarly calm few days, and if you’re in Toronto I really hope you get to see Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm at the Lightbox, as God intended.

See you next year!

The Old Neighborhood

Call it holiday counterprogramming: Despite previous Christmas episodes, this week’s brand-new Someone Else’s Movie has not a Santa in sight.

That’s because my guests are Rosa Labordé and Anna Hardwick, the co-creators and co-stars of the new Crave series Nesting, and for their episode they wanted to talk about a movie that speaks to them and their show: Joan Micklin Silver’s 1988 romantic dramedy Crossing Delancey, starring Amy Irving as a young Jewish woman trying to break free of her suffocating Orthodox community by contemplating an affair with European author Jeroen Krabbé, only to find herself drawn to Peter Riegert’s humble pickle man.

It’s a lot more textured and considered than that description sounds, because it’s a Joan Micklin Silver picture, and it’s held up remarkably well; if you haven’t seen it, you should definitely check it out before listening to the episode. (And you should also watch Nesting when it drops on Friday, because it’s silly and fun and Allana Harkin directed it!)

Subscribe at the usual locations — Apple PodcastsGoogle PlaySpotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you wait in line at the pickle store. It’ll be worth it.

And then catch up on your Shiny Things reading! Last week I celebrated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, and later today I’m rolling out a look at the new 4K restorations of The Warriors and Clue for those on the paid tier. Are you a subscriber? No? Well, you can fix that!

Speaking of subscription series, a few tickets are still available for tonight’s Secret Movie Club screening, which is a good one and you should come if you can.

Timeless

I’ve got a lot going on today (and tonight), so I made a point of getting this post up on time because I didn’t want anyone to miss out on this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie.

That’s because my guest is Kelly Fremon Craig, writer and director of The Edge of Seventeen and now Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and she chose Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, the films where Ethan Hawke’s Jesse and Julie Delpy’s Celine meet and fall in love in Europe – first in 1996, and then again in 2005. (We also discuss the third one in the series, and even wind up pitching a fourth one, because how can you not.)

And yes, I know Maureen Judge tackled the entire trilogy on the podcast back in 2016  — and that was a really good episode, you should give it a listen — but there was a nice poetry to revisiting these particular films given how much time has passed, and how different the world is now.

So join us, won’t you? Subscribe at the usual locations — Apple PodcastsGoogle PlaySpotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you stand around Vienna waiting for that special person to turn up.

And then go catch up on your Shiny Things reading, because I wrote about the latest physical releases of the streaming series WandaVision, The Mandalorian and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and the new 4K restorations of The Color Purple, Point Break and Titanic, because Spielberg, Bigelow and Cameron will not be ignored. If you’re not a subscriber maybe get on that? The free two-week trial is still going, and I have heard 2000-word newsletters about physical media make great Christmas presents. Just saying,

Fires Within

On this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, I’m joined by filmmaker Jacqueline Castel to explore the roiling depths of the original Cat People.

You know the one, right? It’s a masterpiece of sublimated tension, with moral and psychosexual  underpinnings producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur could only hint at given the realities of American film production in 1942. It’s been a key genre text for eighty years now, and I was delighted to find it holds up very well — and given that Jacqueline’s first feature My Animal has some obvious resonances with it … well, we had a lot to talk about.

Want to join us? Of course you do! Subscribe at the usual locations — Apple PodcastsGoogle PlaySpotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it the next time you take a lonely swim in your building’s basement pool.

And after that, you can catch up on the latest editions of Shiny Things. Last week I spun up Arrow Video’s new 4K editions of BarbarellaBlackhat and Tremors 2: Aftershocks, and wrote about the gutting loss of Canadian writer and director Charles Officer, whose death leaves a chasm in Toronto’s film community. You can find that right here, but if you subscribed you’d have already read it.

Also, because I don’t always get these posted on Tuesdays (obviously), here’s a heads-up that TIFF’s next free See the North screening is happening this coming Tuesday, December 12th, and  it’s a holiday special: We’re showing Coopers’ Christmas, the raunchy 2008 found-footage comedy from writer-stars Jason Jones and Mike Beaver and director Warren P. Sonoda, who’d previously collaborated on the really silly showbiz satire called Ham & Cheese and who achieved a demented sort of greatness with this  one.

We’re screening it on 35mm for added perversity, and Warren and producer Sean Buckley will be joining me for a Q&A. So if you’re in Toronto, come on down and share the holiday spirit. Tickets are free, and the show starts at 6:30pm. See you there?

Acting Out

Lars Von Trier: Genius or jerkoff? It’s a question I’ve struggled to answer for decades now, and on this week’s Someone Else’s Movie I get just a little closer, since director Kristoffer Borgli chose Von Trier’s 1998 Dogme project The Idiots for the podcast.

The Idiots was, at the time, seen as Von Trier’s most provocative work — though it’d later be surpassed by Antichrist and The House That Jack Built — and I have never been all that fond of it. But Kristoffer saw it at just the right time, I guess, and it’s certainly influenced his work as a filmmaker, which is provocative and weird in its own specific way. (Have you seen Dream Scenario? You should really see Dream Scenario.)

Give it a listen! Subscribe at the usual locations — Apple PodcastsGoogle PlaySpotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while annoying people in the public space of your choice.

And then you should get caught up on your Shiny Things, since last week I went deep on Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and the new Criterion edition of Claude Chabrol’s La Ceremonie, as well as the label’s new Janus Contemporaries imprint. Subscribe already!

Oh, Yorgos

Yorgos Lanthimos never steps in the same river twice. Or he never casts the same spell. Or — well, you get it. The guy mixes it up, shuffling tones and genres as the mood strikes him to interrogate social structures and find humanity in the most absurd situations; his latest, Poor Things, up-ends the Frankenstein archetype by making the monster the smartest person in the room, and letting both her and the audience understand that the scientists trying to control and possess her are, well, dipshits.

This week on Someone Else’s Movie, actor and filmmaker Liz Whitmere — whose new short Cold makes its world premiere this Saturday at the Blood in the Snow film festival — joins me to dig into what’s still Lanthimos’ strangest film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, the 2017 drama where Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan face off on an almost mythological level over guilt and culpability, with Farrell’s family hanging in the balance.

Is it a post-Haneke wallow in arch misery porn, or an Ostlundian comedy so bleak no one dares to laugh? Maybe it’s both! I don’t know! But Liz has ideas, and they’re good ones. Give her a listen! Just make sure you’ve already seen the movie, because we spoil the crap out of this one.

Subscribe at the usual locations — Apple PodcastsGoogle PlaySpotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you sit at home waiting for your eyes to stop weeping blood.

And then you can catch up on your Shiny Thingses! Last week I reviewed Imprint’s new special editions of The Orphanage and Bug — both great — and Warner’s excellent 4K restoration of The Fugitive, which really holds up thirty years on. Julianne Moore being even more self-righteous than Harrison Ford is kind of amazing, honestly. Why haven’t you subscribed yet? You’ve already missed the Oppenheimer giveaway, you know.

Males, Bonded

This week on Someone Else’s Movie, my guest is documentary filmmaker and impact producer Chrisann Hessing — whose new feature We Will Be Brave just had its Toronto premiere at Reel Asian, and screens again next Friday, November 24th, in the Regent Park Film Festival.

Chrisann’s film takes a look at the efforts of the Good Guise, a group of Toronto men dedicated to forging a better path in their communities for themselves and others, rejecting the pull of toxic masculinity.

And the film she picked for the podcast is also about toxic behavior, sort of: It’s What We Do in the Shadows, Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s goofball mockumentary about vampire flatmates crabbing at each other in Wellington, New Zealand. And it was an absolute pleasure to bounce around the movie and its spinoff TV series with her … even if we had to do it in the middle of a November thunderstorm.

Join us, won’t you? Subscribe at the usual locations — Apple PodcastsGoogle PlaySpotify — or download the episode directly from the web to enjoy as you wait with your pals outside that high-end club that’s never going to let you in.

And then you can catch up on your Shiny Thingses! Last week, I wrote about the joy of seeing Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up get a boutique UHD release from A24, and checked out the new 4K restorations of Fargo and Scrooged from Shout Studios and Paramount, respectively. Have you subscribed? Why won’t you subscribe? It’s good for you, dammit!

My other other gig.