categories
recent posts
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Gone Girl’ (2022)
Containers abound in Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher and based on the popular novel by Gillian Flynn, who wrote the screenplay. There are envelopes, which hold the clues for the treasure hunt Amy Elliott Dunne (Rosamund Pike) has prepared for her husband Nick...
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Giver’ (2014)
Many people refer to their homeland as the mother country. Those people didn’t know The Chief Elder, a matriarch as stern as they come who’s running the show in the country depicted in The Giver. Directed by Philip Noyce and based on the YA book by Lois Lowry, The...
Archetypes: Business: “‘The Knick’: The Mercurial Bridge between Life and Death” (2022)
Mythological Mercury was the god who, at the behest of the deities, winged his way back and forth from Olympus to the Underworld. In Cinemax’s “The Knick,” directed by Steven Soderbergh, New York City’s Knickerbocker Hospital, at the turn of the 20th century,...
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Get On Up’ (2014)
It’s all there. The riffs, the shoes that swivel maniacally as though greased, the slurrified words, the clipped throaty growls. But Tate Taylor’s Get On Up, the biopic of soul-funk innovator and icon James Brown, ups the ante by letting us see the legend living out...
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘The Congress’ (2014)
Can the veil that separates Saturnine corporeal reality from the transcendent Neptunian realm actually be a cruel trick devised by Hollywood moguls? Yes, indeed, and it’s the premise of Ari Folman’s part live-action, part animated film The Congress, loosely based on...
Archetypes: Wellness: “Emma Stone’s Red Sailor Suit in ‘Magic in the Moonlight’” (2022)
It’s tough to resist a gal in uniform, and that goes for Emma Stone’s character Sophie Baker in Magic in the Moonlight. Although Sophie’s fame is as a mystic – she’s communing with the spirits in France when we meet her – she’s also meant to be seen as a regular gal....
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Calvary’ (2014)
Everyone has a cross to bear. But a parish priest tending his flock in Ireland’s County Sligo has really gotten more than his share in Calvary, a movie that addresses archetypal Pluto issues of power, abandonment and revenge, as well as Neptune themes of sacrifice and...
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Lucy’ (2014)
Luc Besson’s new sci-fi thriller Lucy could easily have been titled Mercury in Hyperdrive, a breathless tale about the archetype that rules thought and communication gone cinematically ballistic. Bigger, faster and stronger describe the new-and-improved mental...
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘A Most Wanted Man’ (2014)
The grim espionage business relies, for its success, on Neptunian deception and Plutonic penetration of secrets. The most clever master spies throw a third archetype into the mix: the Saturnine User, who’ll exploit the captured by making them spy on their own people...
Astrology: Fashion: Emma Stone’s Flowery Straw Hats in ‘Magic in the Moonlight’
How down-to-earth should a mystic be? Emma Stone has some ideas. In Magic in the Moonlight, set in 1928, Stone plays Sophie Baker, a young woman whose talents as a medium have been causing quite a stir on the European continent. In an era when spiritualism and...
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Magic in the Moonlight’ (2014)
If art is the beautiful lie, can love also be ushered into existence by duplicity? That’s the question at the center of Magic in the Moonlight, a movie inspired by early 20th century Europe’s fascination with spiritualism, seances and communicating with the dead....
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘I Origins’ (2014)
The old adage – that the eyes are the gateway to the soul – gets all scienced up in I Origins, a movie that asks whether Saturnine, data-driven science trumps knowledge that bypasses logic. Directed and written by Mike Cahill, the movie’s core question – Can reality...
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ (2014)
In the annals of history, many liberators of the oppressed freed their citizenry only to become tyrants themselves. It’s this age old cycle of restrictive Saturn sidling up to revolutionary Uranus – a rhythm that topples and rebuilds civilizations – that’s at the core...
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Boyhood’ (2014)
For most of us, life is way too busy to allow for keen observations of minute gradations of growth and blossoming of family members, friends and other significant individuals who help grace our time on the planet. Perhaps it’s for this reason – our lack of attention...
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Tammy’ (2014)
Mention the word “Tammy” and “movies” in the same breath and, with any luck, the visuals that come to mind center on Debbie Reynolds’ vocal rendition of the song “Tammy,” put to exquisite use by Terence Davies in his The Long Day Closes (1992). Reynolds’ tune is that...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Happy Christmas’ (2014)
As an exploration of the gifts and curses of creative vision, nothing beats the short, snappy Happy Christmas. Written and directed by Joe Swanberg, the movie takes a hard look at what happens when archetypal Neptune – whose bailiwick is artistic inspiration, music,...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Venus in Fur’ (2014)
If you couldn’t get enough of Jack Baker’s (Jeff Bridges) cinematic jaw-drop in The Fabulous Baker Boys, as soon as seemingly tone-deaf loser and gum-snapping chanteuse Suzie Diamond (Michelle Pfeiffer) starts to soulfully warble her heart out and blow him away,...
Astrology: Television: ‘Fargo’: Season 1 Finale: ‘Morton’s Fork’
The question that haunts Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) at the beginning of “Fargo”’s Season 1 finale, “Morton’s Fork,” is Lorne Malvo’s (Billy Bob Thornton) Las Vegas elevator query. “Is this what you want?” Malvo taunts. So what’s the “this” that Malvo tosses out...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’ (2014)
Is every critter, human or otherwise, trainable? And, because training elevates the game and aptitude of the instructed, does the core essence of tutored trainees remain the same? Those questions – as well as Saturnine boundary issues about whether to label entities...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Rover’ (2014)
Set in a post-apocalyptic world in the Australian Outback, The Rover is a Saturnine story about two archetypal loners, each having suffered a huge personal loss that needs to be rectified in a land where procedural justice is a thing of the past. Written and directed...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘22 Jump Street’ (2014)
Sequels are a dicey business, where a flavor too similar to the original can breed audience contempt. But in 22 Jump Street, co-directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller playfully make replication their creative launching pad. Lovable cops Jenko (Channing Tatum) and...
Television: ‘Fargo’: The Slender Man, Seduction and Lorne Malvo
Last month, two 12-year-old girls from Wisconsin were accused of subduing and stabbing a classmate. They reportedly explained their actions by referring to Slender Man, a tall, reed-thin, dark-suited and faceless character that has fueled online interest. The duo...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ (2014)
The teen protagonists who fall in love in The Fault in Our Stars, based on John Green’s megahit book, are just like most adolescents, except for one huge difference. They’re cancer survivors, who somehow opt to weather their days with as much normalcy as they can...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘We Are the Best!’ (2014)
Punk angst – often expressed in music through stripped-down political, anti-mainstream rants – always starts somewhere. In We Are the Best!, an innocent yet voluminously raucous film about three young punk-obsessed girls, that origination point is Stockholm, in 1982....
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Night Moves’ (2014)
You cannot, as the saying goes, make a profit off a dead planet, and the three radical environmentalists who are the key players in Night Moves intend to ensure the earth’s survival in any manner possible. Directed and co-written by Kelly Reichardt, Night Moves revels...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Filth’ (2014)
The Mars archetype works overtime in Filth, directed and written by Jon S. Baird, and based on Irvine Welsh’s book. While over the top aggression, anger, abuse, sexual addiction and the infliction of pain of every sort dominate the life of Scottish detective sergeant...
Astrology: Television: Review: ‘Mad Men’ Season 7 Mid-Finale: Lunar Mentoring
Much has been written about CEOs who simply don’t want to leave their perch atop the corporate ladder. Professionally speaking, they’ve captured the Moon and damn if they’ll release the prize to someone else. Which explains why mentoring is so tricky. If a CEO mentors...
Astrology: Television: Review: ‘The Americans’ Season 2 Finale: ‘Echo,’ Greek Myth and Who’ll Get the Last Word
To call a television episode “Echo” all but begs rabid fans to hit the mythology books. In the spy business, the work is all about digging deep for secrets useful and necessary to the government who hired you. And in last night’s Season 2 finale of “The Americans,”...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Cold in July’ (2014)
Watching Cold in July is like getting on a bus and quickly realizing the increasingly sweaty and foreboding ride isn’t remotely heading for the destination named on your ticket. In this East Texas tale set in 1989, director and co-writer Jim Mickle sure dishes out...
Astrology: Film: ‘The Immigrant’ (2013)
The song “What I Did for Love” would make a great backdrop as the final credits roll for The Immigrant. Directed by James Gray, the movie describes one woman’s nightmare of becoming a prisoner in New York, the city guarded by Lady Liberty herself. Directed and...
Astrology: Fashion and Yoga Clothing: A Contradiction?
Is “yoga fashion” a contradictory term? As people own their yoga practices – whether as part of a group at an outside venue, or alone in the privacy of their homes – their focus should be a connection. This means a link with their deepest being, whether the goal is...
Astrology: Television: Review: ‘Mad Men’: Motherhood and the Battered Moon
In a sly move, “Mad Men” broadcast its “Runaways” episode on Mother’s Day, a holiday which, as far back as the 1960s, began to give women pause. Turns out, “Runaways” was full of mother references, evoking the archetypal Moon – Luna – and its derived word, “lunacy.”...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Chinese Puzzle’ (2014)
Embracing and developing the Libran qualities of fairness, cooperation and balance are essential to a successful relationship. And in Chinese Puzzle, directed and written by Cédric Klapisch, Xavier Rousseau (Romain Duris) – a recurring character in Klapisch’s The...
Astrology: Fashion: Mia Wasikowska’s Eyelet Dress in ‘The Double’
In The Double, Mia Wasikowska, who plays Hannah, wears a glorious, white eyelet dress, its brightness like a shaft of light against the drab shades of the city’s work and living decor. Her dress also ties in with the movie’s two key male characters. Her co-worker...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Chef’ (2014)
Every so often a movie comes along that gives a perfectly good archetype a complete overhaul. Chef, directed and written by actor Jon Favreau, who also stars, is one of those gems. At the beginning of the movie, while walking through an upscale California farmer’s...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Neighbors’ (2014)
Wordsworth is no doubt turning over in his grave, knowing that his staid, elegant adage – “the child is father of the man” – has just gotten a 21st-century, frat-boy comedy makeover. Directed by Nicholas Stoller, Neighbors sledgehammers home the point that people’s...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Double’ (2014)
There’s nothing like being at odds with how one projects oneself into the world, and then, as a final blow, having fate drop in a doppelgänger who’s so much more charismatic than you. Bummer. Twice. That’s exactly the situation facing a shy, lonely young office clerk...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ (2014)
Spider-Man may soar through the air but what gives The Amazing Spider-Man 2 its lifeblood is the Underworld, a realm ruled by Pluto, the archetype that rules not only death but also healing, as well as the incisive, fearless research that set this mythic story rolling...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Belle’ (2014)
Take away the mid-18th century periodicity of Belle, and you’ve got a movie about social justice that’s as contemporary as they come. Directed by Amma Asante and loosely based on a true story, Belle is the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, the illegitimate daughter of a...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Ida’ (2014)
Can a sacrificial offering really count if the person making the gesture has no clear idea of the value of what’s she’s giving up? That’s the question at the heart – literally – of Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida, a Polish-language movie whose breathtakingly austere black...
Astrology: Fashion: Pocket Squares on ‘Mad Men’
Don Draper has always prided himself on running the show, even when his baser drives have been the instruments steering his car. So the final moments of last night’s episode of “Mad Men,” as SC&P’s partners deliver to Don the terms of employment he must accept to...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Locke’ (2014)
There’s no end to the drama that can place in the confines of an automobile. Drag racing, sudden death and frisky mayhem in the back seat are only a partial vehicular legacy. But if you’re looking for the “Mother of Car Movies,” it’s Locke, a riveting piece of cinema...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Transcendence’ (2014)
It’s a safe bet, judging from its title alone, that Transcendence will sharply contrast the density of matter with the non-corporeal energy that exists beyond the realm of the physical. Directed by Wally Pfister, the movie does explore archetypal Neptunian themes...
Astrology: Fashion: Peggy Olson’s Beret in ‘Mad Men’
Just about anyone who’s ever worn a beret – okay, berét for you purists – has all but marked their foreheads with the words “I Am An Artist.” It’s head gear quirkily worn at an angle, as if proclaiming that one’s thought processes and self-expression are delightfully...
Astrology: Fashion: Bucket Bags
They’re called bucket bags for good reason. Like pails, they’ve got a broad base that nicely balances your hoard for easy transport. If you jam-pack them in well organized fashion, these babies evoke the mythic Cornucopia or Horn of Plenty. One account of the legend...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ (2014)
There’s a tasty question posed in the title Only Lovers Left Alive. Are the film’s two protagonists the only two very long term lovers allowed to endure another day, until they’ve racked up centuries’ worth of togetherness? Or are “lovers” – those passionate, caring,...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Joe’ (2014)
Fighting for and protecting another person usually mean one thing. You’re already pretty good at wielding your fists on your own behalf. That’s an apt description of Joe Ransom (Nicolas Cage), the titular character of the movie Joe, directed by David Gordon Green and...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Cuban Fury’ (2014)
Bullies will stop at nothing to brutalize their victims. But making a male teen eat the sequins from his salsa dance costume is one for the books. It’s also a critical plot point in Cuban Fury, an appealing tale of a sad sack who pulls himself up by his bootstraps –...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Under the Skin’ (2014)
Before extraterrestrials became pop culture’s ultimate “other” – entities whose plasma, motivations and origins were defined by their mystery – a predecessor “alien” hogged the limelight. The more primitive version of the terrifyingly enigmatic was the female. And, in...
Astrology: Television: Review: ‘True Detective’ Finale Goes into the Void with Neptune
It’s not always just the hero and the villain whose morals and world views are diametrically opposed. “Buddy” protagonists, whether male or female, are typically at loggerheads. And in the eight-episode series “True Detective,” whose finale aired last night, the...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Grand Piano’ (2014)
A person whose promising career is suddenly sidelined invariably winds up wallowing in self-doubt and embracing cautionary, risk-free measures. In Grand Piano, directed by Eugenio Mira, Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) knows that feeling well. A young pianist, who once...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ (2014)
In The Grand Budapest Hotel, the movie’s titular edifice is seen perched atop an Alps-like mountain looking like a birthday cake smothered in icing you can almost taste. It's an old-world, pretty-in-pink picture, and the movie’s writer and director Wes Anderson wants...
Astrology: Fashion: Haute Lunch Tiffins and Stackable Stainless Steel Containers
With bucket bags huge this season – and voluminously huge always – there’s no better time for gals to become fashion-forward with unique lunch receptacles that easily fit into their nice bottomless sacks. We’re taking our cue from The Lunchbox, a magical foodie movie...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Lunchbox’ (2014)
Neither Mumbai’s human congestion nor vehicular gridlock hinders the dedicated guys – the dabbawallahs – who transport thousands of wives’ lovingly cooked hot lunches to their office-worker husbands. These delivery mens’ blemish-free accuracy – documented by a Harvard...
Astrology: Film: Review ‘In Secret’ (2014)
The Underworld energy of Pluto is alive and kicking in In Secret, which blurs the line between physical and moral disintegration in mid-1860s France. Based on Émile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin, the movie, written and directed by Charlie Stratton, lays out...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Child’s Pose’ (2014)
The stunningly self-involved central figure in the Romanian movie Child’s Pose is Cornelia Keneres (Luminita Gheorghiu), the latest in a long line of cinematic devouring mothers who operate from terrifying, chthonic depths when unable to control offspring who’ve had...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘RoboCop’ (2014)
For movie goers with a penchant for archetypes, the original RoboCop (1987), directed by Paul Verhoeven, was the ultimate Aquarian-Age piece of celluloid. The preceding Age of Pisces was all about connecting with the Son of God (Pisces) through his mother (Virgo). The...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Monuments Men’ (2014)
A war movie, The Monuments Men uses the Martian warrior archetype not to machine-gun soldiers to their deaths but rather to save, recover and ultimately return to their rightful owners a staggering amount of art work stolen by the Nazis during World War II. And,...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Gloria’ (2014)
In the opening moments of the Chilean movie Gloria, the titular character, divorced for a decade and who’s pushing the older side of middle-age, is at an demographically appropriate nightclub in Santiago. With drink in hand, she’s unashamedly fishing for a man. But...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Stranger by the Lake’ (2014)
There’s something extraordinarily self-contained about the non-descript, scrawny-pined beach and parking lot in Alain Guiraudie's Stranger by the Lake. The area’s caché – it’s an enclave for gay-cruising – is revealed quickly. However, this French lakeside enclosure...
Astrology: Fashion: The High-Waisted Trousers in ‘Her’
Nothing says from-another-generation faster than trousers that climb to the height of one’s armpits. Although they don’t quite reach the torso, the trousers worn by Joaquin Phoenix’s character Theodore Twombly in Her do reveal a lot about him. Like those...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Her’ (2013)
As mobile technological devices and their owners increasingly spend every waking minute together, they both eventually seem to exude a certain mated-for-life aura. So, exactly how far-fetched is the likelihood of genuinely falling in love with one’s companion-gadget?...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘August: Osage County’ (2013)
At the heart of August: Osage County, directed by John Wells, is an ugly metaphor for what ails the Weston family. We learn soon enough that Violet (Meryl Streep), the clan’s matriarch and Lunar symbol, is terminally ill with cancer of the mouth, the body part which...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ (2013)
For many people, daydreams are the most grandiose source of faux reality they’ll ever experience. In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, starring and directed by Ben Stiller, Walter has garnered considerable expertise in the art of Neptunian, zoned-out escapism which...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013)
Based on the true story of crooked broker Jordan Belfort, Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is a three-hour evocation of the revelry-filled Roman festival known as the Saturnalia. At some point during that ancient manic carnival, the head reveler was put to...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Saving Mr. Banks’ (2013)
The title Saving Mr. Banks tells us this man will be saved. The person in charge of delivering the fellow from harm is another matter entirely. Learning the identity of that individual is at the weepy core of John Lee Hancock’s movie. Mention the word “save” and,...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ (2013)
As the Smaug of the title indicates, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug promises a confrontation with dragon flesh. The creature is worth the wait: it’s a massive, meaty and terrifying specimen (threateningly yet seductively voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) that...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘American Hustle’ (2013)
David O. Russell’s American Hustle is a massive con-artist romp whose every moment bursts with its characters’ desperation, greed and lies. A period piece set in New York and New Jersey during the late 1970s, the movie is loosely based on the Abscam scandal, tied to...
Astrology: Fashion: Katniss Everdeen’s Epaulets
They look feathery feminine and flower-petal sleek. But make no mistake about it. Those shoulder-level adornments worn by Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire are epaulets. Also known as epaulettes – the singular means “little...
Astrology: Film: Review: ‘Out of the Furnace’ (2013)
The testosterone-suffused Out of the Furnace, written and co-directed by Scott Cooper, is a grim take on archetypal Mars gone berserk. The red planet, which oversees the business of how one goes about getting what one wants, bleeds its crimson in every frame,...
Astrology: Film: ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ (2013)
The fictional Llewyn Davis, a struggling early-’60s folk singer eager to achieve success gigging in New York City’s halo’d Greenwich Village, may have developed his musical and vocal talents. However, his Saturnine self-mastery skills are utterly abysmal. To watch...
Astrology: Film: ‘Pieces of April’ (2003)
Love Actually may rule the Christmas season but the cinematic queen of Thanksgiving is arguably Pieces of April, written and directed by Peter Hedges and released in 2003, a year after his About a Boy. Pieces of April, though, is about a girl. She’s April Burns (Katie...
Astrology: Film: ‘Frozen’ (2013)
In genuine stories of sisterhood, blood or otherwise, men tread lightly until the gals sort things out. That’s the basis of Disney’s 3-D animated movie Frozen, in which older sis Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel) and younger sibling Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell) must get...
Astrology: Film: ‘Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom’ (2013)
The opening scene of Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom centers on a young male black child, gleefully racing through field in rural South Africa. No barriers lay in the boy’s path. Fast forward to Johannesburg in 1942 and the movie’s initial image, heralding a boundless...
Astrology: Film: ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’ (2013)
The Hunger Games franchise likes to quantify. Twelve subjugated districts of the fractured country called Panem paying obeisance to the Capitol. Seventy-four (and counting) annual fight-to-the-death competitions, each one involving the forced participation, to the...
Astrology: Fashion: Katniss Everdeen’s Gray Shawl-Vest-Cowl
She steals every scene she’s in up on the big screen in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. And we don’t mean Jennifer Lawrence. It’s that gorgeous, gray, gotta-have-it thingie Jen’s Katniss wears over a leather jacket in the beginning of the movie. You know the...
Astrology: Film: ‘Philomena’ (2013)
The heartfelt story of a mother’s love over a period of decades, Stephen Frears’ Philomena is a haunting riff on the maternal and emotional Lunar archetype. The total Moon-package here is real-life Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) who, as a teen in 1950s’ Northern Ireland,...
Astrology: Film: ‘Nebraska’ (2013)
People are quick to spit out old-people adjectives. Stubborn. Demanding. Irrational. In Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) wears those descriptives proudly and even defiantly. His senior traits ignite, generating mayhem among those who love him and...
Astrology: Film: ‘The Book Thief’ (2013)
Books, storytelling and theft are the perfect Mercurial trifecta that’s the heart of The Book Thief, a movie directed by Brian Percival and based on the global best-selling novel about a little girl growing up in Nazi Germany. Little Liesel (Sophie Nelisse)...
Astrology: Fashion: Floral Headbands
An item that might once have been categorized as a prom-night hair accessory has now taken center stage as all-around feel-good, girly headgear, largely through the fashion spark of Chiara de Blasio, daughter of New York City’s new mayor Bill de Blasio. Chiara rocked...
Astrology: Film: ‘About Time’ (2013)
Who hasn’t ever wanted a do-over to rectify a mistake, poor decision or hurt? In About Time, directed by Richard Curtis, the lucky men in the Lake family can indeed go cosmically back into their personal pasts for life-redirecting fixer-uppers. Young British lawyer...
Astrology: Film: ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ (2013)
When we first set eyes on Ron Woodroof during the opening moments of Dallas Buyers Club, a film directed by Jean-Marc Vallée that was inspired by Woodroof’s true story, he’s immediately recognizable as a freedom-loving and non-mainstream figure who’s Uranian to the...
Astrology: Film: ‘The Counselor’ (2013)
Directed by Ridley Scott, with a screenplay by novelist Cormac McCarthy, The Counselor is populated by one innocent and a bunch of other characters stretching between El Paso and Juarez who, on the morality scale, range from common baddies to outright demons. The...
Astrology: Film: ‘12 Years a Slave’ (2013)
When slavery is the subject of a film or other media, the assumption is black men and women have been held captive by a master and that freedom is an imagined, longed-for taste which they may never experience. In Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, there’s an ugly...
Astrology: Film: ‘All Is Lost’ (2013)
You won’t find a more graceful Saturn archetype than the one expressed in J. C. Chandor’s All Is Lost, a movie – more like a cinematic meditation – about Saturnine wisdom, solitude, old age, endurance, survival and mortality. The carrier of these traits, as referred...
Astrology: Film: ‘Captain Phillips’ (2013)
On the way to his assignment to commandeer the massive U.S. cargo ship Maersk Alabama on a transport run in 2009, Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks) and his wife (Catherine Keener) discuss the futures of their almost grown children and how quickly the world is...
Astrology: Film: ‘Gravity’ (2013)
In Alfonso Cuarón’s thriller Gravity, the title is a loaded word. In outer space, you’re free of that force of attraction between masses, that sense of grounding represented by Saturn. And yet in the case of NASA medical engineer Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), maybe...
Astrology: Television: ‘Breaking Bad’ Finale: Baby Blue Meth-Child: Walter White’s Fourth Son
In a previous “Breaking Bad” post, I wrote about Walter White’s three sons – one biological and two metaphoric – as well as an illegitimate fourth. That would be his meth-child Baby Blue. My taking liberties with the heirs of the White name is, of course,...
Astrology: Television: ‘Breaking Bad’ Finale: Walter White’s ‘My Three Sons’
With a nod to television’s iconic “My Three Sons” – Fred MacMurray played an engineer and widower with three biological male offspring to raise – “Breaking Bad” gave Walter White three different young men in need of a father figure. Walt Jr., who renamed himself...
Astrology: Television: ‘Breaking Bad’: Series Finale: ‘Felina’
If culminations ideally revert back to beginnings, “Breaking Bad”’s series’ closer did real good. We finally got to hear Walter White, in true Saturnine fashion, define himself. Saturn is all about boundaries. Unlike Neptune, whose hallmark is one massive, fuzzed-out,...
Astrology: Television: ‘Breaking Bad’: How It Ends
Jesse’s futile escape attempts in last night’s “Granite State” – using a paper clip as makeshift key to uncuff himself, hoisting himself up to make it out of his underground prison, and just almost climbing over what seemed to be a mile-high wire fence – set me...
Astrology: Television: ‘Breaking Bad’: “Granite State”
“Breaking Bad” has always been about the compartmentalization of Walter White’s motives. Caring for his family, so he says, propels him. But so does rising professionally, based on how he uses his chemist’s skill sets, no matter how many people's lives he destroys....
Astrology: Film: ‘Rush’ (2013)
It’s the ultimate guys’ movie. Ron Howard’s Rush, which chronicles the professional and personal rivalry between two Formula One drivers in 1976, is jam-packed with testosterone and just about every traditional Mars-fueled behavior in the book. The real-life...
Astrology: Film: ‘Prisoners’ (2013)
Do you remember the prophetic scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark in which Dr. Marcus Brody tells Indiana Jones not to mess with the Ark of the Covenant? Jones saw no reason to respect spiritual order or the Ark’s energy to take care of itself, and he paid dearly. A...
Astrology: Film: ‘A Single Shot’ (2013)
At the beginning of the novel The Road, Cormac McCarthy writes, “Nights dark beyond darkness and days more gray each one than what had gone before.” David M. Rosenthal’s A Single Shot is spectacularly gray – a gorgeously shot moody hue of a sky, replete with a...
Astrology: Film: ‘Enough Said’ (2013)
Under the guise of a middle-age romance, Enough Said is really a movie about broad-based boundary issues poorly handled by adults who should know better. Sharply written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, Enough Said centers on Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a single mom...
Astrology: Television: ‘Breaking Bad’: ‘Ozymandias’: What’s in a Name?
The title of last night’s “Breaking Bad” episode, “Ozymandias,” comes from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s short poem about an ancient ruler commemorated in a sculpture which, like his kingdom, has disintegrated. The pedestal, still intact, reads, “My name is Ozymandias, king...
Astrology: Film: ‘Blue Caprice’ (2013)
A son’s being taught by his dad how to drive a car is one of those seminal steps to manhood. This celebrated ritual becomes a deadly foreboding in Blue Caprice, a film that tracks a murderous sniper spree conducted from inside that titular vehicle by a man and the...
Astrology: Film: ‘Mother of George’ (2013)
When cultural values and expectations are slavishly upheld but not adhered to, there’s a good chance, out of desperation, that deceit will worm its way into the proceedings. That’s the situation Adenike (Danai Gurira) must maneuver in Mother of George, directed by...
Television: ‘Breaking Bad’: Episode 13: Unbreakable Contracts
Although last night's “To’hajiilee” ended in a Mars-fueled gun duel, the episode was a Mercurial feast, involving just about every activity connected with the planetary messenger of the gods. It’s a long list: written, spoken and visual communication, devices that...