This week on Someone Else’s Movie, I welcome Arnaud Desplechin to the podcast — direct from Brussels, where he’s shooting his next movie. And this one was a fun one, partly because he’s a filmmaker I’ve long admired (and his new film, Two Pianos, is very good), and partly because the film he chose was absolutely not what I expected.

That’s because Arnaud picked Funny People — and not the Soviet drama from 1976, but Judd Apatow’s deeply personal and dare I say wildly misunderstood 2009 dramedy. The one where Apatow pivoted from scabrous comedy to something more introspective, putting himself into both Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler’s characters and confronting ideas of creativity, fragility and mortality. The one that critics and audiences rejected as too long and too lumpy, though in retrospect that’s obviously deliberate. And the one that hit Arnaud at just the right moment in his life. (He’s also a massive fan of Superbad, if you were wondering.)

So here it is! We only had half an hour and the connection wasn’t the best, but I think it turned out pretty well. 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 wait for your test results to arrive.

… sorry, that was a little dark. But so is the movie!

Also, I covered a lot of ground at Shiny Things last week, reviewing the new 4K editions of Highest 2 Lowest and Dust Bunny, checking in on Warner’s 4K upgrade of Sleepers and Imprint’s releases of The Fabulous Baker Boys, Wrong Is Right and The Magnificent Seven Collection. All good stuff, and paid subscribers also got Friday’s exclusive What’s Worth Watching newsletter, featuring my reviews of Widow’s Bay, This Is a Gardening Show and the new series of Taskmaster. Want to read that? Upgrade your sub or help yourself to the 14-day free trial! Five bucks a month gets you all this extra goodness, why wouldn’t you go for it?

Seriously! Go for it!