Hansel and Gretel Review

If you’re looking for nothing more than a bit of entertainment and don’t mind spending ten dollars on a movie ticket, then by all means go and see Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. If not, then wait for the DVD. Either way it will be an hour and forty minutes of fun but not excitement. The plot and dialog are predictable. The setting is the standard 21^stinterpretation of midlevel Europe. The same can be said for the costumes. In truth not every woman walked around in a bodice and had heaving cleavage and a full set of pearly white teeth. This was very much a fairy-tale world; more fantasy than magical realism.

The acting was fair. I wouldn’t say that Jeremy Renner (The Avengers) was an amazing actor but he sure is sexy. There was a great opportunity to see some of those rippling muscles at one point in the film but instead we get a good shot of Ingrid Bolsø Berdal’s backside and breasts. This is a wonderful example of how Hollywood is just fine with showing female sexuality but heaven forbid the male is seen as anything but pure machismo and a killing-machine. That’s not to say we need to hyper-sexualize everything. I think the American culture is far too obsessed with compartmentalizing and cutting everything into objectifiable pieces, especially in regards to women/the feminine. American culture objectifies women all the time but when it comes to men, we have a much harder time swallowing the idea that man can be seen as a sexual object.

Now on to what the pagan community is really good at: seeing a witch in the main-stream and crying intolerance.  Yes, the vast number of magic-users/witches in movies are cast as the villain. They eat children or burn down towns or turn people into frogs. This comes from the Judeo-Christian tradition that sees magic and witchcraft as evil. American’s live in a changing culture based around that same Judeo-Christian puritanical ideology. Therefore witches will be the villains just as vampires and werewolves once were the monsters that were sought out and slain. Hollywood loves to take the witch and make it into the bad guy. Simple fact.

I’m not going to yell at the creators of Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. The original story is about a pair of children who almost get eaten by a witch. Of course their adult-selves would become witch hunters, especially if that’s what witches do (eat children and burn down towns)in this particular fantasy world. Fairytales are not real. YES we can learn from them. I treat folktales as scripture and as such I see characters and ideas as universal metaphors. I could deconstruct the tale of Hansel and Gretel and the resent film adaption into bits and pieces and come up with something about how our obsession with youth and acting like children is going to be the end of our civilization and the only way to save ourselves is to accept the past for what it is, forgive our parents for our terrible childhoods and realize our true paths/selves but that might be giving this film to much credit. To claim that Hollywood is calling the modern pagan religions and those who identify as witches as nothing but evil hell-spawn who deserve to executed —burning-times style— is simply not the case.

Of course modern witches i.e. REAL WITCHES do not fly through the air or puck the eyes out of newts for potions. We go to work, buy groceries from the store and farmers market; we put our pants on one leg at a time. That being said, it would be nice, if not fun, to see witches normalized or at least not demonized in film. And it is. The best example of this is Practical Magic (1998). If you’re thinking what about The Craft (1996), well I’m still not sure how I feel about that one. Another is the upcoming movie adaption of Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing. I cannot wait for this to come to the big screen. It will be a few years. It is in the works but because they are creating an ecologically sustainable praxis for the film-industry (of course Starhawk would do that… and that’s why I love her) plus creating sets for the movie that can be used by the city of San Francisco post-production it will be a few years before it will be coming to a screen near you. You can support the

project here.

I would be great if an old fairy tale was adapted to have the witch/magic user not a villain. Even in Hansel and Gretel there were white-witches (though she played the martyr more than she was the mage/holy woman). It would be great if men were portrayed as witches (I know what you’re thinking and a warlock is not a male witch. The world warlock comes from the old English warloghe meaning “breaker of faith”; in other words… a liar). I would be sweet is a movie came out, fantasy or otherwise, that showcased modern witches. I’m not saying it’s needed but it wouldn’t be bad P.R. if it happened. 

It’s true the over-culture is not permeated with ideas of what it means to be a witch in the 21^st century. Most people don’t know what witches and pagans do for rituals. This isn’t the media’s fault.  Let us move on and realize witches in film do not do the things real witches do in the real world. If you talk to a doctor they will say the same thing about shows like House and Gray’s Anatomy. If a film comes out that shows modern witches, using modern rituals, citing modern pagan events, and has those characters doing evil things to good people, then we’ll have something to cry and complain about. Movies that take place in a clearly fictional world should not be used as an argument that modern pagan religions and witches in particular are being persecuted. 

Skyfall Review: Shadows of the Past

As soon as Mr. bond went over the waterfall and is dragged underground in the opening credits, in which we hear Adele’s brassy and classic bond-themed song Skyfall, I thought Oh. This is going to be a katabasis, a descent and a return. But as we kept going underground, through tunnels, London’s subway system, WWII bunkers, over dark waters, and into the desolate misted hills of Scotland, I was waiting for the return, that light at the end of the tunnel. But it never happens. 

The themes of Skyfall come right out of the seventh house in astrology and the sign of Scorpio: death, sex, additions, ageing, and the past. All of these are played to their fullest and are cast in shadows and the color blue. Even the fight scenes are filled with mirrors, sharp over-the-shoulder angles, and shadows. In a Shanghai high-rise the gun shots and smashing of windows is acted through the dark of night and electric blue projections of fiber-optic tendrils and a luminescent jellyfish. James Bond (Daneil Crige) and his foe Patrice, played by Ola Rapace, are silhouettes of themselves fighting in the dark, lending to an almost theatrical display of armed combat.

Of course what would a James Bond flick be without the women. Judi Dench once again plays the motherly M. She is first and foremost the head of MI6 and plays her stochastic, emotionless self to the T, making the hard decision for the safety of England and the world with every turn. As the film progresses and the plot keeps its metaphoric and literal downward path, her hard-edged resolve is slowly melted away, as if all the films watery filled scenes attempt to wash away at her steadfastness while remnants of the past are reviled. Her performance is great and for being 77 years old and still captivating the audience, I say You go girl!

Naomie Harris (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest) plays second fiddle to bond throughout the film and I wish she would have had I bigger role. She is a strong, graceful, and quick witted agent who acts as flirt and support for bond in several key scenes. She delivered her lines well and held the audience’s attention through high and low parts. I look forward to see her kick ass and hold her own in future films. The lovely and lithe Sévérine, played by Bérénice Lim Marlohe, is perhaps the stereotypical bond girl: Pretty and doomed play a part in the villain’s plans. Sévérine is more a prop than a character. Even her dresses plays up the fluid nature of the films, skin tight and shadowy evening gowns detailed with black curling designs.  

Javier Bardem (Eat Pray Love, No Country for Old Men), is Silva. He’s smooth like a snake and just as cunning. His blond hair and eyelashes and clay like face lean towards the grotesque. He is one good villain with just the right amount of crazy which makes his one step ahead of MI6 plot that more thrilling. Even in the end, with his final encounter with M, his dialogue rips at everything the film has been digging down towards.

Skyfall is classic James Bond, drawing from the old Bond mythos in every way: cars, women, martinis (shaken), bullets, and exotic locations. But all the tropes don’t bore you with the clichés. There are plenty of explosions, car chases, close calls —sometimes all in the same scene—to keep you on the edge of your seat the whole time. Don’t expect to come out on top with waving Union Jacks. This is a darker side of the bond story. It is a ride through the past, through fog and shadows and I highly recommend the trip.

Cloud Atlas Review: Time for Love

*audio recording here*

Every November 5^th I start off with the intention of watching V for Vendetta. I’ve seen it maybe a dozen times and it never gets old. Perhaps that’s because the films central message is that ideas can never die. That’s a powerful message for sure. It’s true and harsh and beautiful. But I think I might have found a movie for November 6^th: Cloud Atlas.

I went to the theater last night with my dearest friend Kailey Mo Becker. I hadn’t seen her in almost 9 months and it was so wonderful to see her again. Once the movie started it took me a while to figure out what was going on exactly, in fact it took most of the 2 hours and 50 minutes. There are several main plot lines spanning four hundred years of history, many of them overlapping. But it was fun trying to fit all the shifting pieces of the puzzle around and put them together. This movie definitely requires you to use your brain, and for that I am glad. During the first half I was attempting to find the plot line for each of the stories while trying to figured out how they are all connected through time; and ultimately through love.

The acting was superb. Halle Barry plays several prominent roles as is completely redeemed for that whole Cat Woman thing. Tom Hanks (Castway, Lost in Translation, Larry Crowne) stars in just as many roles and displays a wide array of talents as an actor. Timothy Broadbent (Mulan Rouge, Harry Potter), Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe), Ben Whishaw (Skyfall), and the lovely and powerful Susan Sarandon ( Alien, Avatar, Political Animals) all performed so well in there many roles. It was a wonderful experience to see all these amazing actors play so many uniquely different roles throughout the various plot lines.

It is sort of serendipitous that I had a conversation with my parents the other night about reincarnation. My stance is (was?) that it really doesn’t matter. Past lives, eh, you can make that stuff up. You know how it ended. But if you look at the cyclical nature of things i.e. the water cycle, the carbon cycle, bird and fish migrations, the turning of the seasons –that sort of thing- then yes, I’m pretty sure we, our souls if you will, go through some sort of recycling/reincarnation thing. And that’s cool but there isn’t much I can do with a past life. I’m here now, doing my work, living this life. I have different objectives than I did in a previous life, different cells, different genetics, and different experiences. The only thing that truly matters in being the best person I can be today.

So what I loved what most about Cloud Atlas was this idea that those whom we love and those who we hurt get carried with us throughout our lives. Our circumstances change. The time we live in today is different. The technology advances but the essence, the souls of those we impact, get carried with us through time and space. It’s beautiful really. If not real than profoundly poetic to the point that its message can only aid us in our understanding of how we relate to each other. I’d like to think of the people who I’ve met in my 23 years of (this?) life that as people whom I’ve met before (maybe this is why I say “See you later” instead of “Good-bye”). Maybe my best friends were past lovers. Maybe they were family members who I had a grudge against. Bullies I elementary school were once co-workers or bosses. Friends of today and tomorrow might be my brothers and sisters in some distant future.

“From womb to tomb, our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” Sonmi-451.
-David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

It’s nice to think that with all the chaos life can bring and all the transformations around us (environmental, political, economic, temporal and special) that there is a tethering –a bond of love -that we carry with us as we live and move and have our being. That no matter what happens after we pass over, if this reincarnation thing is true, if we get recycled and get to experience the joys and sorrows of an earthly existence once again, that we are still bound to one another indefinitely. In love, in pain, through it all, we will find each other time and time again.

This is most profoundly felt when Sonmi-451 (Donna Bea) is being interviewed by the Archivist, played by James D'Arcy (An American Haunting, Master and Commander) towards the end of the film. This is when all these plot lines and all the threads from all the different stories finally come together, Sonmi-451 is asked if she fell in love with Hae-Joo Chang (Jim Stuggess). She says she is still in love with him, would always love him. We are shown their love does not transcend time but flows through it, with it. We see every incarnation of their love through time. It was beautiful and lovely and yes, I cried a little.

So I think the lesson her is be kind to one another. Love one another unconditionally. Freed or enslaved. Love with all the open space a heart can have, which is, as big as whole of time.