Okay, so here’s the best thing about doing Someone Else’s Movie: Sometimes, on a perfectly ordinary Monday afternoon, a rock star comes to your house.

Thus did Natalie Merchant end up in the basement talking about Joseph L. Mankiewicz’ All About Eve just yesterday, and thanks to the Internet you can play that very conversation in your ears right now. So do that. Because she’s awesome. And maybe pick up her new CD, Paradise Is There: The New Tigerllily Recordings, when it comes out on Friday. The deluxe version includes a documentary that’s pretty good too.

Usual procedure applies. You can find it on iTunes or Stitcher, or make with the direct downloading. And enjoy it!

This week’s Someone Else’s Movie is a very special holiday episode, because I am led to understand that people enjoy very special holiday episodes and Halloween is the very specialest holiday of them all, being  the only one with chocolate-covered marshmallow pumpkins.

My guest this week is Steven Hoban, a veteran producer of Canadian horror films whose latest picture, A Christmas Horror Story, marks his first co-directorial venture as well. He chose The Cabin in the Woods, Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s marvelous deconstruction of ’80s horror iconography, and the result is a reasonably wide-ranging conversation. I think it’s worth a listen.

You know what to do: Seek it out on iTunes or Stitcher, or go straight to the source. And keep a couple of pieces of candy nearby. It’s that kind of week.

This week on Someone Else’s Movie, writer-director Gabriel Carrer brings Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 action classic Point Break into the basement.

It is a movie which I respect more than admire, which I think you’ll notice not long into the episode – but Gabe’s love for the film is genuine, and the resulting conversation is a good one … if undermined somewhat by Dexter snoring throughout.

You can find it on iTunes and  Stitcher,  or download it straight from the source. And if anyone knows an algorithm that can pull hound breath out of a WAV recording, please let me know in the comments. This is bound to happen again.

In other news, Canada reclaimed its sanity last night. Feels pretty good.

This week on Someone Else’s Movie, Toronto writer-director Ingrid Veninger tackles John Cassavetes’ masterpiece A Woman Under the Influence.

I’ve been waiting for someone to pick this film; in fact, I half-expected a couple of other guests to have picked it. But Ingrid got there first, and the result is a really good episode. You should listen to it — either via iTunes,  Stitcher or direct download — and if you’re in town on Sunday you should come to the Toronto premiere of Ingrid’s new movie, He Hated Pigeons, at the Bloor. 3 pm, pay what you can.

And if you’re in town right now, maybe check out the Toronto premiere of Queen of Earth down at the Royal tonight? It’s the new film from last week’s SEMcast guest, Alex Ross Perry. I wrote about it here. It’s very good.

This week on Someone Else’s Movie, I finally get to tell everyone who else I talked to on the New York recording trip last summer: It was Alex Ross Perry, writer-director of last year’s terrific Listen Up Philip and this year’s entirely unknown quantity Queen of Earth, which is getting its Canadian premiere in Toronto next Tuesday night at The Royal.

Alex picked Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, which is a terrific choice both for his own sensibility and for the show; this is a movie that, just five years after its release, is already at risk of being forgotten despite being kind of excellent.

When I pitch people on the podcast, I tell them it’s a vehicle for illumination and advocacy — and going forward, I’ll be using this episode as an example.

It’s available right now from all the usual sources: iTunes,  Stitcher, direct download. Please do enjoy it.

This week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie features a guest I consider a friend: Nimisha Mukerji, whose career I’ve been tracking since she arrived in 2009 with the devastating 65_Red Roses. And she picked the show’s first documentary: Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein’s documentary An Honest Liar, about  the life and secrets of conjurer-turned-crusader James Randi.

It’s a great movie and a very good episode, if I do say so myself. You can find it on  iTunes and Stitcher, or download it directly. I think you’ll enjoy it.

It’s been six months since I launched Someone Else’s Movie, and I’m really happy with what the show has become. People seem to be responding to it, I’ve met some terrific people and have booked some really great guests for the rest of the year.

In fact, one of them is on this week’s show. Alan Zweig is a filmmaker I’ve admired for a really long time, and when the opportunity came along to snag him for a TIFF-timed episode … well, you’d best believe I jumped at it.

He picked The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which is one of those little, perfect movies I’d been expecting to come up in the course of the podcast — though I didn’t expect a documentarian  to select it. In retrospect it makes perfect sense, of course; shot entirely on location and immersing us completely in the story of Robert Mitchum’s broken-down bagman, Peter Yates’ minimalist drama is the crime picture is as cinema verite, and it was a pleasure to let Alan pull on that thread.

It’s up now on  iTunes and Stitcher, or you can get it straight from the site. It’s a good listen.

Oh, and also I talked to Patrick Stewart over the weekend, and he was a delight. But then he always is.

The next few episodes of Someone Else’s Movie will be TIFF-oriented, on account of I am clever, and this week’s is one I’ve been looking forward to posting for a while: Katie Boland, who’ll be at the festival as a producer of Boxing and an actor in Born to Be Blue, tackles Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

My love of this film is not a secret; it made my Top Ten of the last decade and continues to destroy me whenever I think about it. It turns out Katie feels the same way about it, so I’m just proud we didn’t collapse into blubbering tears at any point in the recording.

You can find it on iTunes and Stitcher, or pull it straight off the website. It doesn’t really matter how you listen to it, though. Just listen, and enjoy it.

It’s the first September episode of Someone Else’s Movie, and for your listening pleasure we have Cara Gee, star of Strange Empire and Empire of Dirt, discussing Norman Jewison’s 1973 adaptation of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar.

Hey, people like what they like. But Cara has some very good reasons for loving this very strange creation, so just have faith and hear her out.

You can find it on iTunes and Stitcher, or straight from the website. Hallelujah. Praise be.

Oh, and I also wrote some words about Wes Craven for NOW. Probably should have blogged that yesterday, but I was insanely busy …