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.

Hey, look! I promised a timely update this week and here it is!

Partially that’s because of the holiday weekend, but also it’s because this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie is very short and didn’t take too much time to put together — once I gave up trying to tweak the background noise.

That’s because this was my one and only recording during TIFF, on the lower floor of a hotel restaurant with actor-turned-filmmaker Charlotte Le Bon — whose new movie Falcon Lake screened at the festival last month, and opens this Friday across Canada! (We’ve got it at the Lightbox, of course.) It’s a delicate little film steeped in atmospheric longing, with a little bit of an otherworldly element floating around in there — I described it in the episode as “boy meets girl, and also there’s something in the lake”. Ultimately it’s just a really good little movie.

And Charlotte wanted to further contextualize it by discussing Call Me By Your Name, another sun-dappled romance on which I am slightly less high but about which I am more than willing to chat for twenty minutes. So that’s what we did!

Want to listen? It’s easy! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever or download it directly from the web like Elio would surely insist on doing because he’s one of those kids.

And then, catch up on your Shiny Things! Last week I wrote about my disappointment with The Shark Is Broken, because what the hell, and then took a deep dive into the pleasures of Imprint Films, a relatively new Blu-ray label launched by Australian distributor Via Vision that’s been doing some excellent work of late. Have you subscribed yet? You really ought to subscribe.

… well, I’ll tell you how: As soon as the festival was over, I was asked to work on another thing that’s turned out to take up a lot of time. It’s okay! It’s a good thing! But it’s had the unfortunate result of pushing the weekly blog update out of my mind every time I sit down at the computer.

Still, better late than never and all, and you don’t want to miss this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie! I talked to Winnipeg filmmaker Deco Dawson, whose excellent first feature Diaspora premieres Saturday evening at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema in Montreal, about his love for Jacques Tati’s 1958 comedy Mon Oncle, and what it says about humanity then and now. (Deco works in a similar vein, as it turns out, and you should really catch Diaspora whenever it’s available to you.)

Want to listen? Of course you do! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever and get the episode right away, or download it directly from the web and have total control over the file like a rebel. (Sorry, I’ve been watching Andor.)

And then you can catch up on last week’s editions of Shiny Things,  featuring my reviews of Bros and Smile and a whole whack of world-cinema restorations from Criterion and Arrow. And because I’m late on blogging, the first of this week’s editions is already out, featuring my review of The Shark is Broken — which I know is a play and therefore in no way a Shiny Thing, but they do use a pretty nifty video projection gimmick so I made an exception.

And that, I think, gets us up to speed. Enjoy the long weekend, and I’ll do my best to have something waiting for you Tuesday morning.

Have you seen God’s Country yet? You should see God’s Country. And not just because this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie features one of its stars, the actor Joris Jarsky … though you know what, that’s as good a reason as any.

Joris picked Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck, the 1987 romantic comedy that became a pop-culture touchstone, won Oscars for Cher, Olympia Dukakis and John Patrick Shanley and somehow played Toronto for New York without insulting both cities. I was surprised that it was Joris’ pick, given the sort of work he does as an actor, but in retrospect it makes a lot of sense … and it ties into his God’s Country character in an unexpected but entirely logical way.

Give it a listen! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever and get the episode right away, or download it directly from the web. And then, y’know, go see God’s Country. It’s rolling into its second week at the Lightbox, and it’s really good.

Also, I implore you once again to check out the Shiny Things newsletter, where the disc reviews are flying fast and furious. Last week I explored the depths of Criterion’s new Blu-ray edition of Exotica and celebrated the 4K arrivals of Friday the 13th, The Funhouse, Poltergeist and The Lost Boys. (One of those movies has held up really well, by the way.)

This week I’ll be looking at new theatrical releases Bros and Smile, and reviewing Arrow Video’s new Blu of the long-unseen Japanese noir epic A Fugitive from the Past, so hurry up and subscribe, dammit! There’s a free trial offer and everything!

It’s over! And though I put in the same 12-to-16-hour days as usual, this was honestly my easiest TIFF in a good twenty years. I got to introduce audiences to old friends and new filmmakers, I got to talk to artists whose work I’ve enjoyed for years, I made friends and I even had a proper sit-down dinner at one point. It was … nice?

That said, I’m still exhausted by all of it, and I do sound a little punchy on today’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie — though that’s also because we recorded it at the very last minute yesterday afternoon. But my guest, director Julian Higgins, was more than up for it, recording from a hotel room in Boston during a quiet moment on the press tour for his simmering thriller God’s Country … which is coming to the Lightbox this Friday, as it happens.

And Julian chose Loveless, the quietly devastating 2017 drama from Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev. Loveless wrecked me when I saw it back in the day, and I was a little worried I might be too fragile to really engage with it after the last couple of weeks, but we got there — and we even managed to explore how Zvyagintsev’s five features amount to a dissection of the decaying Russian soul through excruciatingly specific character studies. So, good for us?

You know what’s coming, right?  Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever and get the episode right away, or download it directly from the web. And maybe think about joining Julian and me — and co-star Joris Jarsky — for a screening of God’s Country down at the Lightbox on Friday at 7:15 pm. We’ll be introducing the film together, and sitting down for a conversation afterward. I’ll add the ticket link as soon as it goes live.

To kill time until then, check out the latest editions of Shiny Things — this week, I reviewed Greg Mottola’s delightful Confess, Fletch and Baz Luhrmann’s confounding Elvis. It’s good to venture back to the mainstream every once in a while, you know? Hell, I might even watch that last Jurassic Park movie this week.

… okay, so I’ve been a little busy. My TIFF duties ramped up over the weekend, and I’ve been offered more intros and Q&As and even an invitation to the odd social event.

It’s still nowhere near as exhausting as covering the festival as a journalist, mind you. Sometime Sunday morning, I realized it was the total absence of the undercurrent of anxiety that comes from racing from one event to the next without any assurance that said event will go as planned, or that I’ll be turned away from a screening I’ve been standing in line to see for an hour. This is the first TIFF in decades that I haven’t experienced that, and honestly? It’s kind of wonderful.

I was still doing the racing-around thing, though, and as a result I fell behind in my blogging duties. So I’m here to catch you up on the two episodes of Someone Else’s Movie I released over the last few days.

On Friday, Sophie Jarvis — the director of the excellent festival drama Until Branches Bend (starring friend of the show Grace Glowicki) — tackled Mike Leigh’s ensemble drama Another Year, a film about a retired couple and their circle of miserable friends that can be interpreted in at least two very different ways.

And earlier this week, I celebrated the TIFF debut of my friend Chandler Levack‘s terrific first feature I Like Movies by pulling her episode on Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont’s Can’t Hardly Wait out of the SEMcast vault, because it turns out she was setting up everything she’d do in her film seven years later. It’s kind of amazing, really.

So obviously, you should check them both out! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever and get the episodes right away, or download them directly from the web. Here’s Sophie’s episode, and here’s Chandler’s.

And of course I’m still plugging away at the Shiny Things newsletter,  Last week I wrote about I Like Movies and Paramount’s new 4K editions of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and the five films that followed, and while this week’s editions might be a little late as well, I think they’ll be worth your time. Have you subscribed yet? Why not? You’re making Elvis sad!

Oh, also my friend Dave Voigt asked me to do an episode of his In the Seats podcast about my transition from journalist to TIFF programmer, and it was a really nice conversation.

We recorded it a couple of weeks ago, so I sound a little more uncertain about what’s coming; honestly, if I’d known how much fun this was going to be, I’d have been bouncing off the walls.

TIFF is upon us, and while I lay out my schedule of intros and interviews — let’s hear it for that transferable skill set! — you can sit back and enjoy the latest episode of Someone Else’s Movie, where I introduce y’all to Toronto filmmaker V.T. Nayani, whose first feature This Place premieres at the festival on Friday, and is quietly devastating.

Nayani’s choice of movie, though? It’s anything but. She picked the delightful teen rom-com 10 Things I Hate About You, the 1998 smash that made instant stars of Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles, introduced Shakespeare to millennials who weren’t quite old enough to see Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and made perfect use of Larry Miller and Allison Janney.

Come join the fun! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever and get the episode instantly, or download it directly from the web like Kat Stratford probably would, the better to enjoy it on your own terms. However you listen, mark your calendar for next Saturday night’s free open-air screening of the movie, with Nayani and me on hand to introduce it, at 10 pm at TIFF’s Cinema Park in David Pecaut Square. Did I mention it was free? Because it is.

And then you can go check out the new editions of Shiny Things, where I share my copious thoughts on the Prime Video reboot of A League of their Own, the new Criterion editions of Faya Dayi and Hotel du Nord and Shout! Factory’s gorgeous 4K box of Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle. There’s more coming this week, somehow,  so you’ll want to subscribe if you haven’t already. 

Also, I did another episode of Jeremy LaLonde’s Black Hole Films … where it turned out I was the only person defending the pure, sweet heart of Steve Martin’s Roxanne from  the jaded souls of Jeremy and Ian MacIntyre. You think you know people. Jeez.

Also also: I’ll be dropping a bonus episode of Someone Else’s Movie this Friday, because it’s TIFF and there are lots of cool people to talk to. Stand by!

Hey, guess what? I finally got Valerie Buhagiar to do an episode of Someone Else’s Movie!

Not because she was dodging my offers, mind you — she’s just been awfully busy over the last few years, both as an actor and a director, and our schedules didn’t align until last week, when the release of her new drama Carmen gave me a chance to book her.

So here she is, and she wanted to talk about Ida, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Oscar-winning 2013 drama starring Agata Trzebuchowska as a Polish novitiate in the early ’60s whose path to the convent is interrupted by the revelation that she’s not who she thinks she is … and neither is her country.

Would you like to know more? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever and get the episode instantly, or download it directly from the web. God will judge you either way, I guess.

And then you should catch up to this week’s Shiny Things newsletter, where I wrote about George Miller’s marvelous Three Thousand Years of Longing and Shout! Factory’s new 4K releases of Cat People and Dog Soldiers. (Living together! On my shelf! Mass hysterial!) Subscribe already, willya?

And in other podcasting news, my friend and former NOW colleague Jonathan Goldsbie invited me to co-host Canadaland’s Short Cuts podcast and discuss the slow, awful death of the alt-weekly that meant so much to both of us once upon a time. It’s a rough listen, but I’m glad to have got it on the record.

And things really are better now. Next week, you’ll see just how much better they are.

It’s a beautiful day out, and this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie is here to ruin it.

Not that the episode is a bummer or anything, but my guest — genre filmmaker Perry Blackshear, whose moody new thriller When I Consume You just slithered out on VOD — picked Mike Flanagan’s extremely grim 2011 breakout Absentia, a horror movie rooted in despair, isolation and misery. Perry saw it at a key stage in his own evolution as a storyteller, to the point that When I Consume You plays almost as an answer film to it, and we get pretty deep into both heavy emotions Flanagan’s work brings out of Perry and the compassion for emotionally damaged characters that connects their cinematic realms.

And that makes for a dark but worthwhile conversation, even if my mic was somehow miscalibrated throughout, resulting in a weird mechanical growl that runs through most of my side of the conversation. I did my best to minimize it, but it’s there, like a gnawing awareness of mortality or something. Try to tune it out.

Wanna listen? Subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever and get the episode instantly,  or download it directly from the web if you’re afraid of a podcast player suddenly becoming sentient and snatching you into the ether. I hear that happens.

And then you should check out the latest editions of Shiny Things, in which I have thoughts on the finale of Better Call Saul and the end of the Breaking Bad cinematic universe, take a look at the Blu-ray release of David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future and celebrate the pure uncut joy of watching Tatiana Maslany in Marvel’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. Have you subscribed? You can do that here!

Oh, and if you were wondering how things at TIFF are going? Pretty great! Both of my programming projects — the Festival @ Home digital slate and the Industry Selects market screening series — were announced over the last few days, and I’m very happy with the way they worked out. You’ll be hearing more about them both in the weeks to come, I’m sure.

… oh, you want tips? Subscribe to the damn newsletter! Jeez!