It’s almost TIFF time, and for the first of (at least) three festival-related episodes of Someone Else’s Movie I’m delighted to have Denis Côté on the podcast.
Denis is a director I’ve been trying to land for the entire run of the show, and while I was sure we’d be able to record an episode when I programmed his alluring experiment Mademoiselle Kenopsia at TIFF 2023, he had to miss the festival to get a new kidney. Totally understandable, but still.
Three years later, he’s feeling much better and still making the movies he wants to make, once again collaborating with the formidable actor Larissa Corriveau for Nobody’s Violence, a characteristically unquantifiable character study about a woman who performs a very specific service for individuals in need. It has its North American premiere in Toronto on Friday, September 11th, with additional screenings Sunday and next Saturday. Tickets and showtimes are available at the link above. You should see it.
Denis chose Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up for his episode, and I can see how that film’s been an influence not his entire filmography — it’s a movie about voyeurism that makes voyeurs of the audience, drawing us into a photographer’s increasingly frenzied search for meaning as he comes to believe he’s captured evidence of a muder. Has he? Sure seems like it, but the more he tries to prove it the blurrier everything gets. You’ve seen Blow-Up, right? You should see Blow-Up. Vanessa Redgrave is really good in it!
So see Blow-Up, and then join us for the conversation on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice, or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you snap random images in a London park, looking for a truth you’ll never find. Still beats watching mimes play tennis.
After that, you should catch up on last week’s Shiny Things because I crammed a whole bunch of August catalogue releases into two columns.
It’s a lot: 4K editions of Danger: Diabolik, Practical Magic, Auntie Mame, The People vs. Larry Flynt and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, as well as the Blu-ray releases of Viggo Mortensen’s Falling, Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague and James L. Brooks’ nearly-forgotten I’ll Do Anything. And then of course there were my exclusive reviews of Onslaught, Mayday and the new series of Taskmaster in the What’s Worth Watching blast sent out to paid subscribers on Friday. Didn’t you get that? Wouldn’t you like to? All you need to do is upgrade your subscription and you’ll be on the list.
C’mon, be on the list. All the cool people are.