This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie is all about the sleaze, as writer-director Jefferson Moneo drops in to talk about his love for Brian De Palma’s Body Double — a seamy, seething mash-up of Rear Window and Vertigo set in the Los Angeles porn demimonde, with Craig Wasson as Jimmy Stewart, Melanie Griffith as Kim Novak and Frankie Goes to Hollywood as themselves, because it was 1984 and that’s how the world worked.

You get it, right? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. And then you can check out my other podcast appearance today, as an expert witness to Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven and Terrence Malick’s The New World on Hollywood Suite’s 2005 episode of A Year in Film. We recorded this back in December, so I’m curious to hear it myself!

And of course the day wouldn’t be complete without my take on the Oscar nominations, which are once again about 75% worthwhile and 25% mind-boggling nonsense. Like, Don’t Look Up for Best Picture? Being the Ricardos for acting nods? Come the fuck on.

Anyway. Just in case I don’t get the chance to post on Friday, I’m hosting the next edition of Secret Movie Club on Sunday morning at the Lightbox. Tickets are still available, if you’re in town and comfortable with a 50% capacity crowd. See you there, maybe?

So, you feeling up to going back to the movies? A lot of people are, and I’m reasonably confident it’ll stick this time. I mean, it’s not like Doug Ford will mandate another lockdown in an election year; if anything, he’ll open everything back up to 100% by March break.

But if you’ve been itching to catch Nightmare Alley now that it’s screening again, I’ve got the ideal opportunity for you: The black-and-white version is playing Sunday at 1 pm at the Varsity, and I’ll be there to talk to producer J. Miles Dale afterward! Masked and everything! That’ll be fun, right? (I think it will, anyway.) You can get tickets here.

And if you’d rather stay in, I certainly understand. Here’s this week’s What to Watch page, which is taken up with streaming stuff — no new openings this weekend, thanks to the no-show of Moonfall — and here’s a longer version of my Pam & Tommy review, which digs a little deeper into my issues with its structure and perspective.

And, it being Friday and all, here’s the latest episode of NOW What, in which I talk to activists Ahmad Jarrar and Mskwaasin Agnew about the demonstrations they held in Toronto last week, and what it says that the local media decided to focus on the white-supremacist tailgate party in Ottawa instead. I’m sure they’ll be just as distracted this weekend when the bozos come to Queen’s Park.

… yeah, things kinda suck right now, don’t they? Stay safe, watch movies.

On this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, I’m joined by Kelly Fyffe-Marshall — whose Black Bodies was one of the most powerful shorts I saw in 2020, and which is now streaming on Crave in Canada and iTunes internationally — to talk about Concrete Cowboys and what it meant to her to see an aspect of Black culture brought to light in a way she’d never encountered before … and also to marvel at the combined charisma of Idris Elba and Method Man. (Give them a franchise, dammit!)

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. And then check out last week’s episode of NOW What, where I talk to Guled, Tim, Vance and Franco of TallBoyz about taking bigger risks in the new season of their show (and landing Paul Sun-Hyung Lee to play a pretty affable Devil), because that’s fun too.

Then, read stuff! There’s last week’s What to Watch page, and my longer stand-alone reviews of The Afterparty (brilliant) and The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window (garbage), as well as February lookaheads for Crave, Amazon and CBC Gem.

Also, the reopening of Ontario’s movie theatres yesterday meant I finally got to catch up to the new Scream. It’s fine!

On this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, I get to chat with actor and activist David Pevsner — whom I interviewed for last month’s issue of Zoomer on the publication of his memoir Damn Shame: Desire, Defiance and Show Tunes — about a favorite film of his: John Hughes’ 1984 directorial debut Sixteen Candles, which made Molly Ringwald a movie star and also defined an entire genre of teen comedy — warts and all.

It’s the very definition of a problematic fave, but that just means there’s a lot to dig into. Join us! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. (And in related news: Hey, look! I finally fixed our DNS issues!)

And then you can go on with the rest of your life, listening to Friday’s NOW What — which is a panel conversation about the end of our Love Your Body series — and catching up to the reviews on last week’s What to Watch page.

The monthly streaming lookaheads have started, too: Our Netflix and Disney+ previews are up, with more to come this week. And what of the movie theatre experience? Why, we’ll be back in theatres next week, according to Cineplex and TIFF. Hope that works out.

Still snowed in? You could do worse than listen to this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie. In fairness, this is my position most weeks, but I stand by it.

That’s because this week’s episode features Patrice Goodman — of Slasher, The Umbrella Academy and the CBC Gem sci-fi sitcom Overlord and the Underwoods — on The Color Purple, and how Steven Spielberg’s risky 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker’s prizewinning novel set her on the path to becoming an actor herself.

Have at it! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web if you’re not into the whole RSS thing.

And then you can listen to last Friday’s NOW What, in which Glenn chats with Toronto comics Tricia Black, Keith Pedro and Matt Wright about how they’re coping with losing live performance all over again. (I’m there too, but I muted myself because I kept laughing over everyone else.)

And here’s last Friday’s What to Watch page, and my longer review of James Gunn’s delirious Peacemaker series, and a little thing on Sunday’s TFCA awards.

I think that’s everything. Back to shovelling snow, I guess …

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie has been sitting for a while, what with one thing and another, but sadly it’s no less relevant than it was when Daniel Grant and I recorded it eleven months ago.

That’s because the movie Daniel picked was Life, the 1999 Eddie Murphy-Martin Lawrence dramedy about, um, systemic racism in America. Only no one knew what to call it at the time; it was just a funny movie about two guys who  get framed for murder in the deep South in the 1930s, and spend 65 years on a prison farm as a result.

Wacky, right? There’s a lot to unpack here, obviously, and the movie plays very differently today. Or does it? Let’s explore!

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web if that’s what you’re into. No judgment here.

And then you can go read me making fun of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for whatever the hell they did on Twitter Sunday night. I needed to blow off some steam, okay?

How long has it been since I wrote a NOW cover all on my own? I honestly don’t remember, which means it’s been a while. But this week, I’m back on there with a look at Andrew Phung’s excellent new sitcom Run the Burbs, and the work that he and his team have put into building an eclectic, eccentric world built around the very specific, distinctly Canadian Pham fam.

In the writing of the piece, I interviewed Andrew, co-star and co-writer Rakhee Morzaria and co-creator Scott Townend — and then Andrew and I went and hung out at the border of East York and Scarborough for extra color, which was more complicated than it should have been (thanks, Omicron) but ended up with the two of us just walking around chatting for an hour or so, accompanied by NOW photographer Nick Lachance,  which turned out to be the heart of the story.

So go read the piece, and then listen to today’s episode of NOW What for most of the conversation with Andrew, Rakhee and Scott, which digs further into their specific choices, the casting of the show and the ambitions they have for the this season and beyond. (If you’re in Canada, the pilot episode is streaming on CBC Gem.)

In non-Burbs coverage, there’s this week’s What to Watch page, where I reviewed The Tender Bar and Criterion’s glorious 4K edition of The Red Shoes, and our January lookaheads for Disney+, Crave and CBC Gem. (Okay, technically I snuck a review of Run the Burbs into the Gem piece. It’s a slow month and I needed content!)

Also, I knocked Doug Ford’s stupid Succession photo op around in an op-ed, because it’s stupid and it deserves as much mockery as can be heaped upon it. That is all.

Hey, it’s 2022! We made it, kind of! Ontario goes back into Stage 2 tomorrow because Omicron spent the last three weeks burning through the population, which means things are currently looking kinda grim.

This is the perfect time, then, for today’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie — in which the absolutely delightful genre maverick Larry Fessenden joins me to talk about Frank Darabont’s 2007 film The Mist, which is the best adaptation of a Stephen King movie right up until the last ninety seconds.

At least, that’s how I feel. Larry — who’s part of the voice cast of the new animated fantasy epic The Spine of Night — has a different take on it, and we explore our differing opinions for about a third of the episode. Trust me, it’s worth tuning in.

You know how it goes: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. Just something to enjoy while the world closes in on you again.

Oh, but come back on Friday for a whole bunch of new stuff, some of it reasonably flashy! That’ll be fun.

Everything I’m doing this week is weighted by the death of Jean-Marc Vallee, just 58 years old, on Sunday night. Let this be the last tragedy we share for a while, because fuck this year, fuck this miserable year so hard.

I thought about mentioning Jean-Marc’s passing at the top of today’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, but ultimately decided that’d be too weird; it’s not germane to the movie (Heather Lenz’ 2018 documentary Kusama Infinity) or the guest (actor and singer Bronagh Gallagher), and since the conversation happened back in May we are all entirely oblivious to his passing.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. Spend half an hour in a world that still has Jean-Marc Vallee in it, and think about how much nicer that world was.

And then you can go on to read the reviews I wrote last week, even though I was technically on vacation. I tackled Being the Ricardos, A Journal For Jordan and Writing with Fire in Friday’s What to Watch page along with The Tragedy of Macbeth, but I’d rather you’d read my longer stand-alone review for that one.

That’s everything! Go do something nice for yourself, if you have the time. Or spend the rest of the week watching C.R.A.Z.Y., The Young Victoria, Cafe de Flore, Demolition and/or Wild, and thinking about who we’ve lost.

‘Twas the Someone Else’s Movie before Christmas, and PJ McCabe was kind enough to pick Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut — a bona fide holiday movie, filtered through the specific unreality of a man who insisted on building two square blocks of Manhattan on a soundstage outside London.

It’s a fascinating film and a very enjoyable episode, with PJ — who co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred in The Beta Test with Jim Cummings — coming at the film from an entirely different direction than I do. I hope you enjoy it before or during whatever limited, socially distanct activity you feel confident doing  this holiday season.

Because for fuck’s sake.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web, why not. And then maybe check out my NOW reviews for The King’s Man and The Matrix Resurrections, two entirely unnecessary attempts to revisit franchises that have already told the stories they needed to tell.

I’ve got more reviews coming towards the end of the week, and I’ll update you about ’em here, but as of today I’m officially on vacation until the new year. Not that I’m going anywhere or doing anything, of course.

Enjoy the break if you can, and please exercise some caution over the holiday. A lot of people are having a really hard time, so don’t be an asshole.