For some artists, inspiration comes in disparate pieces that get magically assembled into a riveting whole. Brian Wilson, the musical genius behind The Beach Boys, welcomed and embraced those random, other-realm visitations. It was the broken pieces of his life he couldn’t glue back together. Directed by Bill Pohlad, the biopic Love & Mercy jumps back […]
Archives for May 2015
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Hungry Hearts’ (2015)
May 31, 2015 by
It’s fitting that the protagonists in Hungry Hearts meet neat in the bowels of a Chinese restaurant in Manhattan. The bathroom door jams and the duo are literally trapped in an area the size of a closet. It’s a signal that plunging into the heart of this movie – food, one’s approach to it, the […]
Archetypes: Television: ‘Aquarius’ Gets Its Neptune On
May 29, 2015 by
It’s a cosmic no-no to mount a television program set during the Summer of Love, in 1967, without a generous dose of atmosphere. In the case of the new drama, “Aquarius,” that backdrop is courtesy of generational Neptune in Libra. The combo’s vibe – Neptunian idealization of Libra’s ruler Venus – is iconic and expansive: […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Mad Men’ Series Finale (2015): Priest, Penance, Confessor, Confessee
May 18, 2015 by
The core of “Mad Men” has always been religious: Advertising man Don Draper’s (Jon Hamm) original sin, akin to Adam and Eve’s act of disobedience, involved his stealing the identity of another man. Neptunian themes of deceit and fuzzy identity merged with other ways to “Neptune out” – through drugs, alcohol, sex, as well as […]
Archetypes: Television: ‘Mad Men’: Don Draper, Addictions and the Priest
May 17, 2015 by
The addiction-centric archetypes associated with “Mad Men”’s Don Draper (Jon Hamm) have been consistent over the series’ seven-season run. In the pilot, viewers learned that Don drank, smoked and was unfaithful. Over several dozen episodes, they realized those habits – booze, cigarettes and sex – were embedded in the man’s sinews. And that these activities […]
Archetypes: Film: ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Brings On the Matriarchy and the Feminine (2015)
May 16, 2015 by
The great balancing act in Mad Max: Fury Road isn’t the circus-like, high-pole-dipping soldiers swooping down onto enemy vehicles like birds of prey, or the astounding center of gravity that keeps racing rigs and trucks from keeling over onto desert sands out of sheer momentum. The real equilibrium here is the propulsive paean director and […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)
May 16, 2015 by
At the beginning of the movie Guardians of the Galaxy, Peter “Star Lord” Quill (Chris Pratt) spots and snatches a lizard, and then uses it to simulate a microphone. In the first moments of Max Max: Fury Road, Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), eyes a two-headed one and gobbles it whole, the creatures’ tail, in a […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Good Kill’ (2015)
May 12, 2015 by
Is military killing easier to rationalize when it’s done with a joystick? That’s the question at the heart of Good Kill, which looks at how drone warfare affects a group of military fighting the Taliban from crate-like structures in the Las Vegas desert. Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, the film, which screened at the […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Pitch Perfect 2’ (2015)
May 11, 2015 by
Although Pitch Perfect 2, like its predecessor, is about the Bellas, a girls-only a cappella college singing group, the franchise’s archetype is not the singer. The archetypal honor goes to the misfit, carried primarily by Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson), whose Aussie roots, larger proportions and clumsiness brand her as unique. She’s a Uranian outlier, despite […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Mad Men’ (2015): ‘The Archetypal Significance of Betty Draper’s Death’
May 11, 2015 by
‘Mad Men’’s penultimate episode was titled “The Milk and Honey Route,” evoking a place or time where the sweetness of creation coalesces into a destination of fragrant bounty. Instead, the x-ray of Betty Draper’s (January Jones) aggressive, terminal lung cancer only suggested piles of gray, foul-smelling cigarette ashes contaminating the notion of paradise. Archetypally, though, […]
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