Tag Archives: movies

“Agora”: Pagans vs. Christians or Atheists vs. Religious?

Living in the cinematic boonies as I do, I will probably not see Agora until it comes out on DVD.

Here is a long dissection of it, from period-incorrect Roman armor to its avoidance of exactly what Hypatia taught:

But because the film never bothers to make her neo-Platonist asceticism clear – exactly what her philosophical views might be is never explored except in the vaguest terms – this incident doesn’t really make much cultural sense – she comes as a modern career academic “married to her job” rather than a disciple of the school of Plotinus.

Writer Tim O’Neill also notes that the conflict in the movie is not Pagans versus Christians so much as it is non-theistic philosophy (rational) versus religious people (fanatical).

Nevertheless, it is tempting to read Hypatia’s story as (not hostile to science) Pagans versus (book-burning) Christians. I nudged it that way a little bit myself in the entry I wrote on Hypatia years ago in the Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics. I had a little fun with the telling.

But is that how the conflict should be framed?

More Field Work from Miskatonic University

It began with the unprecedented Vermont floods of 1927 . . .and a visiting scholar’s investigation.

Check the blog and trailer of a noir-ish movie in progress based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Whisperer in Darkness. Very well done!

Is Lovecraft the “shadow” of Zecharia Sitchin?

(Via Odious and Peculiar)

That Wicked Man

Aleister and Rose Crowley, 1910

Via Plutonica, a Life magazine  slideshow on Aleister Crowley and his influence on pop culture.

I had not known that Sidney Blackmer played his character, Roman Castevet,  in the occult thriller Rosemary’s Baby, partly on impressions of Crowley.

When the movie came out, I was too young to appreciate the depth of its scariness, let alone know who Crowley was. I should watch it again.

The Horse Boy: See it for the Shamanism

When a psychology professor and a human-rights activist/journalist have an autistic son, their lives become incredibly difficult. Among other things, little Rowan never learns bowel control, and like many autistic children, he is prone to screaming, inconsolable tantrums.

But his parents live in rural Texas, and they discover when Rupert is 2 years old that horseback riding calms him. Some San Bushman healers also seem to help him.

So they make a trip to a land of horses and resurgent shamanism: Mongolia. That is the premise of The Horse Boy, a documentary film now out on DVD, as well as the book of the same title.

See it for the shamanism, at least, even if you know no autistic children.

(Actually, I have horse and donkey-owning friends whose autistic son also improves when riding, but they have not taken him to Mongolian shamans. Perhaps they wonder if they should.)

Mongolian shamanism was officially suppressed when the country was Communist. Even as Rowan’s parents seek the shamans’ help, I could not help but wonder if their coming halfway around the world was also validating the shamans, from the latter’s point of view.

No camera can capture the essence of shamanism, but it is still good to see how the externals are managed. And the final two-day ride to the reindeer people’s shaman is just gorgeous  footage.

One shaman lays part of the problem on a relative of Rowan’s mother, a relative whom she admits was mentally ill. That is a hard description of reality for the psychology professor to hear, you might suspect. Our society does not normally blame any problems on dead ancestors. (I want to come back to this topic in a future post.)

Yet Rowan’s degree of improvement at the end is undeniable.

Roman Britain on the Big Screen

During a recent conversation over margaritas in the old provincial capital, Peculiar mentioned two new forthcoming movies set in Roman Britain.

There is an added resonance to Americans flocking to films set during the rise and fall of ancient empires as they contemplate their own long-dominant place in the world amid economic upheavals at home and protracted wars abroad.

And I told him about how Troy (2004) subtly supported the archaeological theory of diffusionism.

The movies in question are Centurion and The Eagle of the Ninth.

Both should be regarded as “inspired by” rather than as any attempt at accurate history, I reckon. The so-called”disappearance” of the Ninth Legion is something that historians still squabble about—and bloggers too.

Archaeologists have shown that they were happily in garrison in York in AD 108, which is rather a long time after their supposed demise in Caledonia.

(And it’s amazing how many people think “centurion” means “Roman soldier” rather than what we would call a company commander.)

Clash of the Titans has not fared well on blogs that I read, so I am skipping it.

The Roman province of Britain lasted longer than the United States of America has thus far (just for comparison), so there are plenty of movie-making opportunities left.

Ten Worst Movies about Witches and Pagans

Blogger Gus diZerega polled his readers on “The Ten Worst Movies Depicting Witches and Other Pagans.”

Readers differed on The Craft:

“As a movie, I don’t think it was too bad. But their portrayal of witches as goth teenage girls with (somewhat severe) psychological problems just rubs me the wrong way.”

But another suggested, “The three “freaky” witches represented to me what happens when magic is misunderstood and misused by people who are not emotionally and  spiritually prepared for it. Sarah and Lirio, on the other hand, get it right.”

I’ve still got the soundtrack CD somewhere.

Movieland’s Wacky Witches & Pathetic Pagans

Gus diZerega is looking to compile a master list of “the worst portrayals of Pagans and Witches” in the movies.

Go visit him and offer your suggestions.

Our Secret Order Will Rule the Empire

What is it with secret societies and magical orders in the movies these days? The Da Vinci Code. National Treasure: Book of Secrets. . . I could go on.

Now M. and I are back from watching the new Sherlock Holmes, which felt like “screenplay by Dan Brown and Dion Fortune, from the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.”

The villain, Lord Blackwood, is a cross between Aleister Crowley and Benito Mussolini.

Historians of costume, if you are out there: do not Irene Adler’s dresses with the elaborate bustles seem about 15-20 years out of date for the time of the movie? (I date it to the late 1880s, since Tower Bridge is under construction, assuming that is the bridge in the movie.

Good movie though, with lots of little bits of cinematic homage to “the canon,” such as the pocket watch with pawnbrokers’ marks or the steam launch on the Thames.

Spices, Speak to Me

The Mistress of Spices is sort of like the wort-cunning herbalist witch archetype, only with (Asian) Indians and a Bollywood star whose “acting” is very stylized, mostly about eye makeup.

We ordered it from Netflix months ago, and it finally reached the top of our queue.

The whole movie is so stylized that it is more like a music video than a film. Artiness trumps story.

M. says it reminded her of Chocolat.

Will the spices win out over earthly love? Three guesses.

‘True Samhain’ is Friday

Now that the costumes are put away, note that Samhain calculated astrologically (Sun at 15 degrees of Scorpio) falls on Saturday, Nov. 6, at 6:42 a.m. Greenwich time, which would be roughly midnight on Friday here in the Mountain Time Zone.

Last year Peg and I had a little blog-discussion of the two dates.

Scott Monahan’s archaeoastronomy page lets you calculate to the minute.

Check his “In the Movies” link for archaeoastronomical critiques, such as this one of National Treasure.