It’s that time of year when nothing much is happening — except for me continuing to welcome cast and crew members of Women Talking to the Lightbox to introduce their work to audiences at the 6:45 pm show Wednesday (December 28th) and the 7:30 pm show Friday (December 30th), tickets still available for both events — but 2022 has been so generally crappy that I wanted to send us all out on a high.

So here’s this very special episode of Someone Else’s Movie, in which the musician and filmmaker Amanda Kramer (Paris Window, Ladyworld) takes a moment out of her press day for Please Baby Please to celebrate the pre-CG miracle of puppetry and performance that is Little Shop of Horrors. Frank Oz’ 1986 adaptation of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s Off-Broadway smash. It’s one of my favorites, and it turns out Amanda loves it as much as I do, and I’ve been saving this bouncy conversation for just this occasion.

So go get it! Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and/or Spotify, or just wrap your tendrils around it and pull it right off the web. And then go subscribe to Shiny Things and catch up on last week’s review of Women Talking — I’m quite the fan, you know — and brace yourself for my year-end celebrations of the best physical media releases and the best films of 2022. Because I still have opinions. So many opinions.

Also, did you know that Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The Director’s Edition has been held over for a second week at the Lightbox? I can’t believe it either, but it’s screening through Thursday and it’s kind of incredible. Tickets are available right here. It’s the holidays, give yourself a present.

On this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, I welcome one of the youngest stars of Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, actor and soprano Shayla Brown, as a way of teeing up the film’s release this Friday. We’ve got it at the Lightbox, and please do come see it; it’s a work of considerable power from a filmmaker who’s only getting better and better.

Shayla wanted to talk about another film that deals with pressing issues through a very personal lens: Chinonye Chukwu’s Clemency, starring Alfre Woodard as a death-row warden cracking under the strain of her job. It’s not an easy film to watch, but that’s the point — and with Chukwu’s Till opening this fall, it feels like the first salvo in a career focused on putting human faces on the racism and cruelty that runs through American history.  So no, not a happy picture. But one that changed Shayla’s life, as she’ll explain.

You know how this works: Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and/or Spotify, or just grab it directly from the web. I’m cool with whatever.

And then go catch up to the latest editions of Shiny Things! I reviewed a whole whack of stuff last week — Patrick Read Johnson’s 5-25-77 in the free edition, new 4k releases of Silent Running, Coraline, ParaNorman and Smile and Criterion’s Blu-ray boxed set of Michael Haneke’s first three features, just for funsies. Yes, I know it’s the holidays. Something’s in the air just the same.

Also also: If you’re in Toronto on Friday night, come join us at the Lightbox for the 7 pm screening of Women Talking; in addition to seeing one of the year’s best films, as I mentioned above, you’ll also be gifted with a conversation with Sarah, co-star Sheila McCarthy, cinematographer Luc Montpellier and editor Chris MacDonald. Oh, and me, I’ll be there too because I have the best job in the world.

Tickets are available right here. See you there.

For this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, I’m joined by someone  who’s had a standing invitation ever since the show started: Toronto filmmaker Deepa Mehta. Deepa directed “Mr. Song”, which kicked off the second season of the Apple TV+ series Little America last Friday, and that gave us the excuse to set something up.

And just as Elegance Bratton finally brought a Douglas Sirk picture onto the show last week, Deepa opens the door for the legendary Italian director Vittorio Di Sica, choosing The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, his 1970 drama about a privileged Jewish famliy living obliviously in Italy as World War II draws near.

It’s a film that’s sort of faded away in recent years — no Blu-ray has ever been released in North America, nor is the film readily available on VOD — but hoo boy, does it speak to our current moment, and does Deepa know it. It’s a really good conversation, if a little noisy, and I hope you enjoy it.

Subscribe at all the usual spots — Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts — and it’ll drop right into your player. Or just grab it directly from the web, if you prefer. I’m all about accommodation!

Rather read? Two more editions of Shiny Things await: I wrote about Joanna Hogg’s tremendous minor-key drama The Eternal Daughter in the free edition, and Arrow Video’s magnificently obsessive boxed set ShawScope: Volume 2 in the paid edition. Both pretty good, if I do say so myself.

And if you’re reading this on Tuesday, the last few tickets for tonight’s meeting of the Secret Movie Club should be available right here. I can’t tell you what we’re screening, of course, but I can say the feature will be followed by a conversation with an Oscar-nominated actor. So that’ll be cool.

Oh, but if you’re reading it later in the week, here’s something else that’s cool: We’re opening the glorious new upgrade of Star Trek: The Motion Picture — known as The Director’s Edition — at the Lightbox this Friday, for a week’s run at the very least. Tickets are on sale right now, and I’ll be introducing the Friday and Saturday shows because why the hell wouldn’t I. You should come down! Even if you’ve spun it up on disc, I can promise you: You’ve never seen it like this before.

I didn’t get to meet Elegance Bratton in Toronto. When he premiered The Inspection at TIFF I was in another auditorium, and we managed to miss each other a few more times over the course of the festival. That’s how it works more often than not, of course.

I still haven’t met Elegance in person, but we did the Zoom thing for this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, which finds him digging into Douglas Sirk’s 1959 remake of the 1934 melodrama Imitation of Life, its stately racial and societal dynamics updated for the early years of the civil-rights era. And as it turns out, its examination of passing is very relevant to Elegance’s autobiographical first feature — which opens at the Lightbox on Friday, and is very much worth your time. So check that out, and don’t worry; there are no spoilers for it in the podcast.

Where is the podcast? Well, it’s on Spotify now as well as Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, etc. And of course you can also download the episode directly from the web if that’s how you roll.

Rather be reading? The latest editions of Shiny Things await, wherein I tackle the lead balloon of Don’t Worry Darling and four new Paramount catalogue resurrections from the preservationists at Via Vision, who’ve crafted excellent special editions of Save the Tiger, Pretty Baby, Testament and Nobody’s Fool — and if no one was asking for them, maybe that’s the point. Subscribe and catch up on months of writing right here!

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t make all the noise I could about Joanna Hogg’s brilliant, moving new film The Eternal Daughter, which also opens at the Lightbox on Friday. It’s a sort of ghost story about parents and children, and the way the former never really leave the latter, and it’s one of the best films I’ve seen all year. Joanna was even kind enough to record an introduction for this run,  so that’s a nice thing to share. But the movie is the real gift. Trust me on this.

I’ve been making Someone Else’s Movie for nigh on eight years now, and in all that time no one’s ever wanted to tackle The Shawshank Redemption.

Shocked, I am. One of the most beloved movies of the last thirty years, if the internet is to be believed, and yet it’s taken 424 episodes for someone to pick it.

Fortunately, Amanda Brugel has stepped up. I’ve been trying to land Amanda for almost as long as the show’s been around, but she’s so ridiculously busy that she’s impossible to book — seriously, if there’s a television series shooting, she’s likely to be in it. Pastor Nina in Kim’s Convenience, Rita Blue in The Handmaid’s Tale, Sonia in Workin’ Moms, that’s Amanda. And now she’s starring in Jeremy Lalonde’s new drama Ashgrove (in theaters and on digital in Canada this Friday!), so Jeremy was kind enough to line up a recording window for us.

So here it is, finally: A celebration of Frank Darabont’s quintessential VHS sleeper, a Stephen King adaptation that foregrounds all the author’s earnestness and allows Morgan Freeman to gracefully assume the role of quiet authority he’d be playing for the rest of his career. That Tim Robbins kid? He’s not bad either.

Get busy listening by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you find your podcasts, or download the episode directly from the web like a caveman or something. And if you’re not sick of the sound of my voice, click on over to the Comedy Above the Pub feed for my latest appearance on that show, catching up with Todd Van Allen about my career transition and a few other things. It’s always nice to check in.

Oh, and of course there are more editions of Shiny Things in the world. Last week I reviewed Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans and the new 4K releases of Malcolm X, Saturday Night Fever, Wayne’s World and Planes, Trains & Automobiles — the latter of which turns out to be one of the year’s most invaluable special editions, at least if you’re a John Candy fan. And there were giveaways! Subscribe right here and make sure you’re set up for the next one. There’s some good stuff coming.

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie is ostensibly about one film: The Dark Knight, which Tehranto director Faran Moradi saw at exactly the right point in his artistic development. But it’s also about every big-screen incarnation of Batman, using Christopher Nolan’s 2008 colossus as a lever into cinema’s various interpretations of the the comic-book character, and how Nolan’s reasonably realistic take on superhero storytelling has defined an entire genre for almost two decades now.

The podcast is not nearly as serious as its subject, though, so just jump right in! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you find your podcasts, or download the episode directly from the web if you’re worried about the Joker slipping some weird malware into your RSS feed. (He totally wouldn’t know how to do that, of course. But he might know someone who does.)

And then, go catch up on your Shiny Things, because I covered a lot of ground last week, reviewing Warner’s 4K editions of Casablanca and Elf, Elevation’s Blu-rays of Moonage Daydream, Marcel, the Shell with Shoes On and Three Thousand Years of Longing and Arrow’s Gothic Fantastico and Count Yorga Collection boxed sets. And there’s more to come this week, because I am a damn machine  — and also because the legacy discs are really flowing in anticipation of holiday gift guides. Subscribe! You’ll see!

On this week’s edition of Someone Else’s Movie, I do a very good job of editing a conversation with Gail Maurice and Melanie Bray, respectively the writer-director and star of the charming new film Rosie (opening in theatres across Canada on Friday, tell your friends), into something approaching coherence.

Not because Gail and Melanie themselves were incoherent, mind you; we had the misfortune to record it on Labour Day, when fighter jets were screaming around overhead about every six minutes. So I’ve had to massage a lot of the audio, and then stitch it all back together. But it sounds pretty good now, actually, and it’s well worth the work; Gail and Melanie wanted to tackle Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit, a complex and touching look at hero worship and celebrity culture through the lens of a German kid in WWII that proved divisive for … well, the Hitler of it all.

I think it worked, and so do Gail and Melanie, so join us as we talk it over! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you find your podcasts, or download it directly from the web. And check out Rosie if it’s playing near you. It’s nice to see a movie built on pure optimism every now and then, you know?

Elsewhere, I’ve fallen a little behind on Shiny Things, for obvious reasons, but I reviewed Aftersun and The Banshees of Inisherin last week, and am about to publish an edition on the home editions of Top Gun: Maverick and Nope; there’s a much bigger thing coming up on the paid tier this week, tackling several boxed sets that have been staring at me from the shelf for a while.  Go subscribe so you don’t miss anything; I’m currently offering a 14-day free trial for the paid edition, that should be helpful.

And that’s everything, I think. Enjoy the unseasonal warmth, for the chill will be back soon enough …

On this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, I welcome the actor, writer and producer Kate Hewlett — who, in her other capacity as a playwright, wrote a clever stage show called The Swearing Jar back in 2008 for the Toronto Fringe Festival.

It’s a movie now, starring Adelaide Clemens, Douglas Booth and Patrick J. Adams and directed by the very gifted Lindsay MacKay; we premiered it at TIFF and everything! And now that The Swearing Jar is out on VOD in the US and set to open in Toronto on November 2nd and Vancouver on November 9th, it felt like a good time to invite Kate to tackle a film that’s very close to her heart: Sofia Coppola’s Oscar-winning 2003 drama Lost in Translation, the one where Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson play lost souls who make a life-changing connection when they meet in a Tokyo hotel.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts and you’ll receive the episode instantly, or download it directly from the web if you want to be all old-school about it.

And then get caught up on Shiny Things, willya? I wrote about Universal’s 40th anniversary edition of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and Elevation’s new 4K releases of A24’s folk-horror trinity The Witch, Hereditary and Midsommar; if you’re not a paid subscriber, you’re missing out on all this knowledge! Actually, if you subscribe by noon ET on Wednesday October 26th, you can enter the contest to win your own A24 set! (Canadian residents only, sorry about that.)

Oh, and if you need more of me on podcasts, check out the latest episode of Podcast Like it’s 1999, where I join Phil Iscove and Kenny Neibart to explain the strange cultural circumstances that produced the CanCon tentpole The Red Violin.

I am not proud that I know all of this. But I do.

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie feels like an echo in a couple of ways: My guest, the actor and filmmaker Katie Boland, was one of the very first people to do the show all the way back in 2015, when she chose Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; thanks to a server issue, that episode is no longer available in the SEMcast feed … but you can still grab it in the SEMcast: Year One bundle on our Payhip store, along with 51 other episodes of the podcast, 45 of which aren’t available to stream anywhere else. (Maybe do that? It’s a good set.)

And in a moment that threatens to collapse the podcast in on itself, Katie picked Stories We Tell, the excellent 2012 documentary by another friend of the show, Sarah Polley. (You may remember her from her appearance on the podcast, discussing Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, or from other projects she’s done over the last several decades. I think she’s won some awards and stuff.

Stories We Tell is an exceptional film and Katie is, as always, both engaged and insightful, and it was great to catch up to her. Also, her appearance is in service of promoting her directorial debut, We’re All in This Together, which is on screens in Toronto and Vancouver right now. She plays twins! And quite well!

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher (or wherever you get your podcasts, I’m not the boss of you), or just download it directly from the web.

And then get all caught up on Shiny Things! This week I wrote about the sudden, shocking loss of Jeff Barnaby, Shout! Factory’s Blu-ray of A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon and Criterion’s lovely 4K edition of Night of the Living Dead. And if you’re not a subscriber, you missed all that! Sign up for a 14-day free trial right here and get to reading.

Also, if you’ve forgotten what I sound like on other people’s podcasts, I’m on this week’s episode of Hollywood Suite’s A Year in Film talking about Brendan Fraser’s glorious contributions to the cinema of 1999: Blast from the Past and The Mummy. You can find the episode here, along with hours of other fun conversations that mostly don’t include me. A couple of them do, though, so that’s nice.