In an effort to recognize every genre and cultural sub-group, Walt Disney Animation Studios has scored again with Moana, a tale recounting how Pacific Islanders traversed the South Seas in search of lands to inhabit. Here, a few archaeological facts are mixed with the Legend of Maui, a demigod/shape-shifter/adventurer who, with his trusty ivory fish…
Parents are beings anonymously bestowed with the responsibility of protecting their children from their own fears. Fear is thus transmitted and embedded into the habits and reflexes that follow all kids till, and if, they grow to parent their own offspring . . . and on and on it goes. That’s all part and parcel…
“With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago; And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason, Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro, Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken, Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent Out naked on the…
“For if the darkness and corruption leave a vestige of the thoughts that once we had. Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad” — Christina Rossetti CalArts Professor and film essayist Thom Andersen, acclaimed for his 2003 documentary “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” has brought his latest…
Post-apocalyptic times call for post-apocalyptic measures. The end of all ends elicits from us a fear that is as primal as it is endless. If it is true that individual death is a fear we all share — and a destiny we all shall fulfill — it is just as true that there is a…
Sometimes blood ties are strong enough to reunite estranged relatives living at opposite sides of the world. ‘Blood calls’, we often hear from close and distant kin. And we can easily attribute such call to the fact that we all have a past and, behind such past, there is almost always a family. However, sometimes…
In To Be Takei, the titular George Takei gives his viewers — and plethora of Facebook fans — a good, hard look at his personal day-to-day life, as an Internet sensation, as a renowned voice-over artist, and as a doting husband. The authorized bio-pic is illuminating and wildly entertaining. We all knew George Takei was…
