Did you ever read or watch The Wizard of Oz and wonder what the the Wicked Witch of the North’s story was? In Gregory Maguire’s Oz, Elphaba, better known as the Wicked Witch of the West, is not wicked. Instead she’s an insecure and unfortunately green political radical out to unseat the tyrannical Wizard. Wicked: …
Guillermo del Toro’s latest film Pan’s Labyrinth is a fairy tale as dark, spellbinding, moving, and scary as fairy tales are supposed to be. Set against the postwar repression of Franco’s Spain, the story unfolds through the eyes of Ofelia, a dreamy little girl who is uprooted to a military outpost commanded by her new stepfather, Captain …
Mel Gibson’s next display violent gore takes us to the jungles of Mexico for an exciting chase movie about why the savage Mayan people deserved to be conquered and wiped out. Apocalypto follows Jaguar Paw (aka Country Mouse), a member of one Mayan tribe, whose small ideal village is conquered by a more aggressive tribe (aka …
In American films about a person rising above poverty, hardships are often shown as exceptions to life in America. In many Indian films, it is not startling to be poor or to be in the thrall of 2,000-year-old customs. It’s just life and these matters are taken for granted. The story goes from there. In …
I don’t know what director Neil LaBute was going for with a remake of the 1973 British cult classic The Wicker Man, but it went very, very wrong. In LaBute’s remake, traffic cop Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage) is lured to Summersisle, an island off the coast of Washington state. His former fiancee, Willow Woodward, has …
In The Art of Ritual, Renee Beck and Sydney Barbara Metrick explain the power, relevance, and need for ritual. American society has many rituals. We celebrate birthdays and marriages, have presidential inaugurations, and happily suffer through college rush traditions. These all have special meaning to the honouree, but oftentimes rituals become habitual and lose their …