Someone Else's Movie

This week, Late Fame director Kent Jones marks his film’s home release with a celebration of The Passenger, Michelangelo Antonioni’s fascinatingly opaque 1975 drama starring Jack Nicholson as a lost man who finds purpose in a new identity – for a while, anyway. Your genial host Norm Wilner invites you to ride along.

As Late Fame arrives on Blu-ray and VOD, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Samy Burch is here to discuss her love for Fred Schepisi’s 1993 adaptation of John Guare’s award-winning play Six Degrees of Separation, a film that’s sort of fallen through the cracks over the decades. Your genial host Norm Wilner is very glad to have her.

With their first feature A Breed Apart launching its theatrical run this Saturday, October 3rd, at Toronto’s Revue Cinema writer-directors Adam Belanger and David Lafontaine stop by to celebrate Ken Loach’s devastating coming-of-age drama Kes. Your genial host Norm Wilner is here to hit the North.

With his new Godspell documentary You Had to Be There rolling across North America, Emmy-winning documentarian Nick Davis is here to share the love for another cultural milestone of the early ‘70s: Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder’s greatest collaboration. Your genial host Norm Wilner is so happy he did.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Severin Films, co-founder and president David Gregory drops in to talk about one of his favorite recent releases: Delicatessen, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro’s charming dystopian comedy about true love and cannibalism. Your genial host Norm Wilner has such fond memories of this one.

One more TIFF episode! This one features Quebec writer-director Alexandre Franchi, whose third feature L’Autre makes its world premiere tonight at the festival. And he’s here to talk about the endless allure of Alain Resnais’ avant-garde breakthrough Hiroshima, Mon Amour. Your genial host Norm Wilner had a very similar experience.

With her first documentary feature Still Night, Burning House making its world premiere at TIFF on Saturday, award-winning filmmaker Carol Nguyen stops by to talk about Tampopo, and how one scene from Juzo Itami’s 1985 "ramen western" introduced her to a whole new world of cinema. Your genial host Norm Wilner regrets not eating before recording this episode.

Before his challenging new film Nobody’s Violence has its North American premiere at TIFF this Friday, September 11th, Quebecois writer-director Denis Cote is here to ponder the unanswerable questions of Michelangelo Antonioni’s first English-language feature, Blow-Up and maybe reflect on his own auterist perspective a little. Your genial host Norm Wilner is really glad he gets to do this.

As she readies her new film Armageddon Road for its Toronto premiere at the Revue Cinema this Thursday and Friday, writer-director Karen Lam pauses to celebrate the power of Martin McDonagh’s first feature In Bruges, in which the Irish auteur first discovered the anti-chemistry of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. Your genial host Norm Wilner has a confession to make about this one.

Screenwriter, producer and now author Aaron Barnett – whose 30th anniversary novelization of Matthew Bright’s cult thriller Freeway is available this Sunday, August 30th, from Echo On Publications – is here to celebrate Phil Joanou’s State of Grace, a magnificent mob thriller that got steamrolled by Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas in September 1990. Your genial host Norm Wilner has room in his heart for both of them.