On this week’s episode of Someone Else’s Movie, I’m joined by documentary filmmaker and generally incredible artist Lisa Jackson — whose new film Wilfred Buck is now making its way onto screens across Canada,
Lisa’s film is a study of the eponymous Cree elder, who credits his interest in Indigenous cosmology with giving him a purpose after a lifetime of trauma. (It’s very good, and you should see it.)
Perhaps not by coincidence, Lisa chose another story that relies on understanding an elaborate, mysterious mythology: Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, the 2001 fable that won Studio Ghibli its first Oscar and further entrenched Miyazaki as a global legend in animation and world-building … though I still can’t get over that time he was a dick to his translator.
We get that out of the way in the first few minutes, and the rest of the episode is a fun stroll through impossible worlds and the challenges of making movies in Canada — you know, the usual sort of thing that comes up when discussing enchanted buffets and hungry goblins.
You can find the podcast at the usual locations — Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify — or download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you’re cleaning up the ghost spa. So go do that!
And then catch up to the latest editions of Shiny Things, in which I run through recent horror titles Night Swim, Lisa Frankenstein and Monolith and tackle the appeal of Mean Girls — both versions! — now that Paramount’s released both the 2004 original and the 2024 musical adaptation in spiffy 4K editions. Will “fetch” finally happen? Subscribe and find out!