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 […]
Archetypes: Film: Review: ‘Pitch Perfect 2’ (2015)
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 […]
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 death, of two-dozen child and teenage tributes. And now, in Francis Lawrence’s The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, there’s a 12-day […]