I’ve been trying to land Bryan Fuller for an episode of Someone Else’s Movie ever since I started the podcast; in addition to being a creator of endlessly fascinating television, he’s a genre fiend whose love of the strange and unusual rivals that of Guillermo Del Toro’s, and I knew he’d bring a wealth of insight to any movie he brought to the show.

So imagine my delight when the arrival of his first feature Dust Bunny gave me the chance to book him, and I found out he’d picked Philip Kaufman’s brilliant 1978 adaptation of Invasion of the Body Snatchers — as rich a text as any film of its era, and one that only grows more complex and prophetic as the decades pass. We’re also about the same age, and the discovery that we had very similar experiences of the film gave us a great starting point.

It’s a good one! Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice, or just download the episode directly from the web and listen while you walk expressionless through your environment, trying very hard not to give yourself away. And if you’re in Brooklyn, think about braving the rush line for Thursday night’s screening of Dust Bunny; it’s a blast with a crowd, and everybody else has to wait until December.

And then, there’s Shiny Things. For some weird reason the first half of the month is the busy part, release-wise, so I’ve spent the last few editions catching up to the new arrivals. Over the last week I reviewed F1, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and Nobody 2, and an edition that tackles Eddington and Weapons is going out later today. Subscribe now and be ahead of the curve!

Also! This weekend, I’ll be down at the Windsor International Film Festival, introducing movies and moderating Q&As and industry panels on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and celebrating the winner of the festival’s $25,000 WIFF Prize in Canadian Film on Sunday. I am debating whether or not to wear a Jays hat for the length of my stay.

It’s my first time at the festival, so if you run into me there feel free to say hi and give me directions to your favorite coffee place. I will definitely need a latte or twelve.

The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has gone dormat of late, and not without reason; it’s kind of a master class in the law of diminishing returns. But the first one, The Curse of the Black Pearl, was an unexpected pleasure, and that’s why writer-director Elliott Hasler chose it for his episode of Someone Else’s Movie.

See, Elliott — whose new movie  Vindication Swim opens in US theaters this Friday, and will be on Canadian screens pretty soon — was three years old when the movie came out, too young to see it in theatres. But it made a massive impression on him when his parents brought the DVD home the following year … to the point that he credits Gore Verbinski’s swashbuckling fantasy adventure with inspiring him to make movies.  And that unconditional love gives this week’s podcast rather a different energy.

You’ll see! Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice, or just download the episode directly from the web and listen as you stand in front of your wardrobe, trying to determine the perfect number of scarves to wear to work.

After that, feel free to catch up on Shiny Things, where I’ve just covered Warner’s seven-disc 4K upgrade of the original Nightmare on Elm Street cycle — which includes the first release of Freddy’s Dead‘s climax in the original 3D format — and Paramount’s 20th anniversary 4K release of Aeon Flux, which I must admit I did not see coming. Plenty more coming this week, assuming the supply chain works as it ought to. Subscribe now so you don’t miss any of it!

Also! My pals at Hollywood Suite just released two new episodes of their Cinema A to Z series, which gathers a couple dozen film folks — myself included — to shuffle through some favorite films, always with a specific theme in mind. This time around it’s Ghosts and Perfect Pairs, exploring what happens when two actors are perfectly matched — or perfect opposites — in a given project. Abbott and Costello, Lemmon and Matthau, Grodin and De Niro, you know the deal.

Check ’em out! And if you’ve missed the other episodes, they’re all right here, free to stream in perpetuity. Watch them out of sequence and see my weight go up and down depending on which job I was working and whether I’d just had COVID! That’s always fun!

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie risks creating a little bit of a paradox, as I’m joined by Daniel Bernhardt — who stars in Steven Kostanski’s endearing Deathstalker reboot, opening everywhere on Friday — to discuss a film that’s near and dear to his heart: The Matrix.

Why is this one spacey-timey? Because Daniel has dozens of action-movie credits, and one of them is The Matrix Reloaded … which let him stomp around in the world the Wachowskis created four years previous. I think that’s cool; Daniel thinks that’s cool. So we talked about it a little. But mostly we talked about The Matrix, because it’s still pretty awesome.

Join in! Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice, or just download the episode directly from the web and listen to it as you eat the best steak of your life.

Also, if you’re curious to hear more from Team Deathstalker, you can and should check out Steven Kostanski’s 2021 SEMcast on Mortal Kombat, and co-star Conor Sweeney’s 2024 episode on Alien; these are people who love weird creatures and strange environments, and they’re very savvy about why they love them. Never a dull moment.

And then you can catch up to the latest edition of Shiny Things, where I dug into Decal’s new Blu-ray release of Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck — which turns out to be a lovely package for one of the best films of the year.

Subscribers to the paid tier also got my reviews of Play Dirty, All of You and V/H/S Halloween on Friday as part of the weekly What’s Worth Watching newsletter; if you want to be among the elite and informed, it’s awfully easy to upgrade that subscription! So maybe do that? I bet you’ll be a lot happier.