I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Jennifer Abbott picked John Carpenter’s They Live for her episode of Someone Else’s Movie; she’s spent her career making documentaries about the damage that unchecked capitalism has done to the world, so of course she’d have a soft spot for Carpenter’s gonzo alien-invasion satire, which posited that the human race had been colonized by extraterrestrial venture capitalists — and that the Reagan Revolution was just the latest step in their master plan. (It arrived in theatres on the eve of the 1988 election; it wasn’t hard to see which side Carpenter was on.)

So we talked about that, and about her two films playing (virtually) at Planet in Focus this week, The Magnitude of All Things and The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel.

Wake up and join us! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Stitcher and get the episode immediately, or download it directly from the web. It’s good to have a little fun at the end of the world.

Also fun, as it turns out, are the latest episodes of NOW What: On Friday, we released the audio version of Rad’s Thanksgiving panel with Mary Berg, Ryan Hinkson and Kris Siddiqi, which was a very entertaining conversation about the grim reality of not being able to see one’s family on a holiday weekend, and today I talk to Judy Rebick and Mike Hoolboom about their movie Judy Vs. Capitalism, in which Mike lets Judy tell her own story in a really moving way. It’ll be streaming at Rendevous with Madness on Thursday, and you should see it.

Also, writing! Here’s last Friday’s What to Watch column, and a thing I wrote explaining why the major studios aren’t just rolling out their 2020 release schedules onto VOD. The answer will not surprise you!

Oh, and I talked to Adam Benzine about his plan to drop his COVID documentary The Curve into the runup to the U.S. election, which seems like a pretty good idea. People need to know about the ghouls, after all.