All the Young Dudes

This week on Someone Else’s Movie, film editor Anna Catley — who cut Karen Knox’ We Forgot to Break Up and Sook-Yin Lee’s Paying for It, which is currently rolling through Canadian theaters –dives into Todd Haynes’ 1998 glam-rock fantasia Velvet Goldmine, and I am delighted to jump in alongside her.

Is it a great movie? Not necessarily; the mystery aspect of the narrative feels tacked-on, and the fact that Haynes originally wanted to make a David Bowie biopic but had to pivot to a fictional stand-in when Bowie refused to participate means the film can’t help but feel like a pale copy of the real thing.

That said, Velvet Goldmine is an endlessly fascinating watch on its own terms, because Todd Haynes is incapable of making a movie that isn’t interesting or artful, and because Ewan McGregor’s Not Iggy Pop seems deliberately styled to resemble the late Kurt Cobain, which opens up a whole other meta level within the storytelling. Also, we fold in The Phantom Menace somehow. You should listen!

The show is available at all the usual places:  AppleSpotifyYouTube Podcasts, your podcatcher of choice … and of course you can download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you do your makeup and think about your next stage persona.

And then, of course, you can catch up on your Shiny Things. Last week I wrote about the new releases of My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock and Heretic (from Cohen Media Group and A24, respectively), and there’s some very flashy stuff coming up, including a giveaway! Subscribe now so you don’t miss anything.

And speaking of not missing stuff, don’t forget to check out my latest piece for Toronto Today about how Sook-Yin Lee re-created the Toronto of the late ’90s to make Paying for It … and how making the movie inevitably led her to think about her own history, too. That was a fun one.

Right! Back to not thinking about the collapse of humanity for another week. Hope you’re doing well.

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