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 Holmes), her family’s designated eldest-child screw-up – drugs, […]
Archives for November 2013
Astrology: Film: ‘Frozen’ (2013)
November 27, 2013 by
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 to the bottom of what tore them apart as children. […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom’ (2013)
November 26, 2013 by
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 geography and free movement, is not what’s about to face […]
Astrology: Film: ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’ (2013)
November 22, 2013 by
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 death, of two-dozen child and teenage tributes. And now, in Francis Lawrence’s The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, there’s a 12-day […]
Astrology: Fashion: Katniss Everdeen’s Gray Shawl-Vest-Cowl
November 22, 2013 by
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 multi-hyphenate woolly item I mean. Thick gray yarn. Hybrid cowl-wide […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Philomena’ (2013)
November 20, 2013 by
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, delivers an out-of-wedlock child she names Anthony. The birthing place is […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Nebraska’ (2013)
November 11, 2013 by
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 those who don’t. The catalyst fueling what ensues is a sweepstakes letter, informing Woody, who lives in […]
Astrology: Film: ‘The Book Thief’ (2013)
November 7, 2013 by
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) experiences tragedy early. In 1938, while on a train with her mother who’s […]
Astrology: Fashion: Floral Headbands
November 5, 2013 by
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 her various headbands of rose-like blooms during her father’s political campaign. […]
Astrology: Film: ‘About Time’ (2013)
November 1, 2013 by
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 Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson) learns about this magical family power on his […]
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