The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has gone dormat of late, and not without reason; it’s kind of a master class in the law of diminishing returns. But the first one, The Curse of the Black Pearl, was an unexpected pleasure, and that’s why writer-director Elliott Hasler chose it for his episode of Someone Else’s Movie.

See, Elliott — whose new movie  Vindication Swim opens in US theaters this Friday, and will be on Canadian screens pretty soon — was three years old when the movie came out, too young to see it in theatres. But it made a massive impression on him when his parents brought the DVD home the following year … to the point that he credits Gore Verbinski’s swashbuckling fantasy adventure with inspiring him to make movies.  And that unconditional love gives this week’s podcast rather a different energy.

You’ll see! Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice, or just download the episode directly from the web and listen as you stand in front of your wardrobe, trying to determine the perfect number of scarves to wear to work.

After that, feel free to catch up on Shiny Things, where I’ve just covered Warner’s seven-disc 4K upgrade of the original Nightmare on Elm Street cycle — which includes the first release of Freddy’s Dead‘s climax in the original 3D format — and Paramount’s 20th anniversary 4K release of Aeon Flux, which I must admit I did not see coming. Plenty more coming this week, assuming the supply chain works as it ought to. Subscribe now so you don’t miss any of it!

Also! My pals at Hollywood Suite just released two new episodes of their Cinema A to Z series, which gathers a couple dozen film folks — myself included — to shuffle through some favorite films, always with a specific theme in mind. This time around it’s Ghosts and Perfect Pairs, exploring what happens when two actors are perfectly matched — or perfect opposites — in a given project. Abbott and Costello, Lemmon and Matthau, Grodin and De Niro, you know the deal.

Check ’em out! And if you’ve missed the other episodes, they’re all right here, free to stream in perpetuity. Watch them out of sequence and see my weight go up and down depending on which job I was working and whether I’d just had COVID! That’s always fun!