Musician Lou Reed, in his “Walk on the Wild Side,” paid tribute to the gals who trilled rock-and-roll’s historic doo-do-doo’s. Now, thanks to director Morgan Neville, there’s a cinematic tribute to those legendary and predominantly African-American female background singers in his documentary 20 Feet From Stardom. The part of the body associated with the Venus-ruled […]
Astrology: Television: ‘Orphan Black’: Uranian Sisters
“Orphan Black” started out when a gal with a drug debt, desperately in need of cash, stole a look-alike suicide’s ID. That’s when this dramatic thriller, broadcast in the U.S. through BBCAmerica, changed its identity. Make that identities. And after the program’s Season 1 finale, the audience learned the full ramifications of that theft. As […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ (2013)
It turns out, even in the 16th century, that mischievous friends were setting up unlikely and often unlikeable members of their circle to become romantic partners. And in Joss Whedon’s modern-day-SoCal version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing – Whedon also adapted the Bard’s words – Mercury the Trickster plays center stage in the romance […]
Astrology: Film: ‘The East’: Director Zal Batmanglij Talks ‘Food’ Archetype
There’s a scene, relatively early on in The East, in which Brit Marling’s character Sarah, a corporate spy working for a high-end consultancy, has her loyalty tested by the members of the eco-terrorist group she’s infiltrated. The proceedings look like a conduit for torture: Sarah’s at the communal dining table, bound in a straightjacket, unable […]
Astrology: Film: ‘The East’ (2013)
Eco-terrorists are still terrorists. But when they’re as earnest and nice as the ones in Zal Batmanglij’s The East, it will make life a lot more murky for the infiltrator who’s been assigned to find them, become one of them, and take them down. The woman assigned to crack the case – the group’s name […]
Astrology: Film: ‘The Kings of Summer’ (2013)
In the coming-of-age movie The Kings of Summer, Patrick’s (Gabriel Basso) parents are prickly hoverers. Joe’s (Nick Robinson) widowed dad Frank (Nick Offerman), on the other hand, is simply a prick. Throw a third kid into the mix – a scythe-carrying weirdo named Biaggio (Moises Arias) – and you have a trio of teens who […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Shadow Dancer’ (2013)
During the time of The Troubles in 1970s Belfast – marked by ongoing warfare between British and Irish Republican Army forces – a person’s allegiance to Northern Ireland carried the same weight as commitment to one’s own flesh and blood. The Moon – with its connections to family and, especially, Mother – is an ominous […]
Astrology: Film: ‘Now You See Me’ (2013)
Mercury the Trickster does a massive sleight of hand in Louis Leterrier’s crime caper Now You See Me, given there are not one but four magicians, all at the top of their mischievous games, creating enthralling mayhem. Befuddled detective Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is looking increasingly incompetent as he tries to keep one step ahead […]
Astrology: Film: ‘After Earth’ (2013)
Director M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth is less the sci-fi action story it purports to be, and more a meditation on the prickly nature of the father-son relationship. After Earth is set far into the future, a thousand years after earth has become uninhabitable. The planet to which humans had been evacuated relies on the […]










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