Last September, one of the highlights of my stint at TIFF was landing the world premiere of RT Thorne‘s 40 Acres, and watching his powerhouse dystopian allegory bring the house down for two straight nights. Today, with the movie in theaters across North America, I finally get RT onto Someone Else’s Movie — something I’ve been trying to do for years. He’s really busy, as you can imagine.

RT chose another bravura debut:  Blood Simple, the 1984 neo-noir that introduced the world to a couple of film nerds named Joel and Ethan Coen — along with an actor named Frances McDormand, a DP named Barry Sonnenfeld and a composer named Carter Burwell — and American art-house cinema would never be the same. Also, the movie’s pretty good, you should catch it sometime. (I understand the Criterion edition is pretty cheap at Barnes & Noble right now.)

And then you can enjoy RT’s episode! Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice, or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you’re driving out to that place nobody goes to get rid of an inconvenient corpse.

After that, if you’re still on the fence about seeing 40 Acres on the big screen, I did an episode of CBC’s Day 6 arguing that very point! So listen to that too, and get going.

Once you’re back at home, cozy up with a nice glass of lemonade or whatever and get caught up on Shiny Things! Last week I rounded up the recent releases of Drop, Opus and The Wedding Banquet, and I’ve got a look at Arrow Video’s new 4K editions of Dark City and Swordfish coming up in the next day or so. If you subscribe now you’ll get it as soon as it’s published! Won’t that be fun?