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 twist: a free black man suffers the […]
Astrology: Film: ‘All Is Lost’ (2013)
October 18, 2013 by
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 to in the closing credits, is “Our Man,” played by […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Captain Phillips’ (2013)
October 11, 2013 by
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 moving. Clearly an identifiable benevolent father figure, an archetype ruled […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Gravity’ (2013)
October 2, 2013 by
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 weightlessness is its own type of Saturnine confinement. With only half […]
Astrology: Television: ‘Breaking Bad’ Finale: Baby Blue Meth-Child: Walter White’s Fourth Son
October 1, 2013 by
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, light-hearted. But the last few minutes of “Felina,” as […]
Astrology: Television: ‘Breaking Bad’ Finale: Walter White’s ‘My Three Sons’
October 1, 2013 by
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 Flynn, is Walt’s only biological son. A high school student, […]
Astrology: Television: ‘Breaking Bad’: Series Finale: ‘Felina’
September 30, 2013 by
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, merge-energy that makes it impossible to know where things begin and end, Saturn is all […]
Astrology: Television: ‘Breaking Bad’: How It Ends
September 23, 2013 by
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 thinking about a scene in the “Breaking Bad” […]
Astrology: Television: ‘Breaking Bad’: “Granite State”
September 23, 2013 by
“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. From the very first episodes, we saw Walt’s frustration being a high […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Rush’ (2013)
September 19, 2013 by
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 protagonists are Brit James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Austrian Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl), and their over-the-top competitiveness […]
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