ENTERTAINMENT
WITH LILITH
ARIES:The next three weeks will benefit immeasurably from tidying up, tying off, attending to unfinished business like paperwork or taxes and taking care of behind the scenes affairs before end-of-year speediness gets into gear. The more you can delete from your pending file, the fresher, lighter and readier you’ll feel for celebrating. TAURUS: With your ruling planet Venus in the sign of beauty and affection, you get to channel maximum Venusian artistry for the greater joy of all. So ask the question this week: what would Venus do? If it concerns health, introduce more rest and recreation. Work: more creative interaction. Socializing: more humourous playfulness – like that. GEMINI: Wanting to get out and take risks – but also stay where you are and play it safe? Wondering how to make change work for you, and not sure what to do? Offering support and assistance to others who are feeling the same way is the best recipe for attracting answers. CANCER: As planetary percolations predict less stress and a lot more enjoyment for Cancerians, if you’re in a serene and stable place this week, excellent. For bonus points, share this good fortune with someone in need, because with change so fast and relentless, there’s no question that six degrees of separation affects us all. LEO: Should the home zone suddenly require adjustments on your part that you weren’t expecting and aren’t delighted by, tantrum yoga isn’t the answer. Nor is using that worst of all words, the should word. Let me offer instead this ancient blessing: May you be liberated from all expectations… VIRGO: With Virgo’s ruler Mercury in Scorpio honing your skills as precision analyst, diagnostician and prescriber, it’s important to avoid expressing yourself in any kind of cutting, clinical vernacular. Explore ways of refining this week’s narrative so your words are in synch with the tender kindness of your generous heart..
THIS WEEK’S BLESSED WITH THE RARE WEDDING OF MARS AND VENUS IN LIBRA. IN MYTHOLOGY, THE FRUIT OF THIS UNION IS THE CHILD HARMONIA… LIBRA: You Libran peaceweavers might be justified in thinking the world’s run by those who don’t know how to make love – though there’s probably no-one we couldn’t love if we truly knew their story. Your story is Mars and Venus ensemble in your sign adding secret sauce to this week’s relationship matrix. Lucky you… SCORPIO: Happy birthday Scorps for your month in the sun, your year of Jupiter’s generous presence and Mercury in Scorpio artfully animating your language into words painted from a palette of empathetic understanding: your gift to this week’s world. If emotions erupt, remember energies tend to explode in direct relation to the force of their suppression. SAGITTARIUS: Being a fire sign, your spirit’s activated by the winds of change, so best bid them welcome even summon them up, if you’re game. This week’s energetic flux responds well to Sagittarian intuition: that natural ability to rapidly perceive patterns and the potential for wild new possibilities inherent therein. Bravo! CAPRICORN: The current planetary courtship of Mars and Venus asks what you want to court this week - what you might like to attract and ignite? Good to get clear about that with Saturn approaching its thirty month stay in your sign, Mars animating desired potential, Venus attracting complicity and Mercury downloading the relevant info. AQUARIUS: This week encourages promoting personal and business interests. Having a plan and following through, even if you don’t particularly feel like it. Networking the connections that will hook you up to influential support heading your way in the coming weeks. Only no-no? Making decisions involving others without consulting them.
CINEMA REVIEWS BY JOHN CAMPBELL
INGRID GOES WEST
I cannot find a bad word to write about this bittersweet and abrasively topical movie. First, and not least of all, it provided me with the blessed opportunity to avoid having to sit through Thor, but much more than that, it was about what is happening to millions of young people now and is genuinely confronting. We first meet Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) when she storms into the reception of a friend’s wedding to which she has not been invited to spray the bride with mace. From the outset, it is hard to feel sympathy for Ingrid, for she is mindlessly addicted to her phone and social media. Her self-worth, her whole sense of who she is, is dependent on likes, comments and followers. Obsessed with Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), a glamorous superstar on Instagram, after receiving an inheritance she moves to Los Angeles and hangs out at Taylor’s fave spots, hoping to meet her idol (why is Venice Beach so famous? It looks horribly tacky). Coincidence lands her in Taylor’s world and Ingrid, as a limpet clings to a shark, ingratiates herself into her idol’s orbit of cyber-fame to which she has so slavishly wanted to belong. Director Matt Spicer is scathing of the shallowness of the cult of celebrity that celebrates names and faces who are famous only for being famous, but he does allow them to speak for themselves while saving his ire – and grudging pity – for Ingrid, who is both stupid and inconsiderate of others. The selfie generation is too easy to ridicule for those of us who, as teenagers, were not hammered by its omnipotence, so we should not be too hasty in dismissing Ingrid as simply
foolish (even if she is). She is devoured by envy and driven to the point where she loses touch with her own identity. Only her landlord, Dan (O’Shea Jackson – a beautifully natural performance) can see who she really is. The last scene is unbearably but unavoidably truthful. Try and catch it, it’s one of the year’s best.
SUBURBICON
The prevailing tone in screenplays written by Joel and Ethan Coen can grate if you prefer a story that is less inclined to archness in its presentation. George Clooney’s latest movie as director, co-written by the pair, gilds the lily in dealing with its themes and is loaded with the brothers’ sneering mockery of the hand that fed them in their privileged, sheltered youth – but that doesn’t mean that it’s not pretty good. Suburbicon is an all-white, pleasant-valley community into which a black family has moved. The locals are outraged by the presence of coloured folks in their midst and their hostility, at first merely simmering, eventually explodes into riotous aggression. But this is only background to the main drama surrounding Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) and the strife he has got himself
into with debt collectors from the Mob. In cinematic terms, Lodge is a first cousin of William H. Macy’s hapless car salesman in Fargo (1996) – another film in which character is determined by postcode. As the ‘little man’ who digs a hole for himself as a result of his own scamming and lying, Lodge personifies the hypocrisy that lies not far below society’s façade of respectability. We might have worked that out for ourselves without Clooney and the Coens’ heavy-handed approach, but nuance and subtlety rarely get a start in this type of flick – the opening sequence, featuring a smiley chubby mailman making his personalised deliveries borders on the undergraduate in its silly stereotyping of middle-class suburbia. Things go from bad to worse for Lodge, and the body count rises with each unforeseen twist. The vivid cinematography of Robert Elswit combined with Alexandre Desplat’s at times overwrought score create an operatic atmosphere perfectly suited to the tragedy unfolding, but Julianne Moore playing both Lodge’s wife and her sister in the same room (like Armie Hammer in The Social Network) is needlessly indulgent. Noah Jupe is terrific as Lodge’s little boy, witnessing it all, but Oscar Isaac nearly steals the show as the sleazy insurance investigator.
PISCES: This week’s plentiful pokes from your inner knowing (as distinct from what you want, or how you think things should be) are reliable and timely reminders about being authentic - because hiding your real feelings just doesn’t work. Others see through the mask anyway, so may as well brave up. The relief might surprise you..
North Coast news daily: www.echonetdaily.net.au
The Byron Shire Echo November 1, 2017 43