BY JOHN CAMPBELL
STARS BY LILITH
ARIES: You’ve made a lot of peace with the past recently, and a major metamorphosis is still in progress as relationships undergo a grand transformation and course corrections fall into place. Help the process along by letting go of attachments that bring aggravation or pain. Also take care with travel arrangements, especially insurance. TAURUS: If retrograde aggravations give you the pip, remember everyone’s having love troubles, power struggles, money worries, mechanical malfunctions, creative block, spats and squabbles – not just you. So breathe. Keep coming back to your centre. Patience is one of your astrological skills, and practising it this week is guaranteed to rack up serious karmic fly-buys. GEMINI: This week forces a slowdown. Get used to it, because August has a whopping six planets retrograde, with nowhere to go but where you are. As fellow Gemini Paul McCartney sang: Nothing to say but what a day. Nothing to do it’s up to you… so use this valuable opportunity to regroup and recoup. CANCER: Cancerians are more affected by lunar cycles than other signs, which during this ongoing series of eclipse blitzes in no way means bad, just full on. So expect the unexpected. When it arrives, stay calm. Don’t stress. Tread carefully. Speak cautiously. Be grateful for everything you have. And find things to celebrate. LEO: With Mercury in Leo making a quintet of retrogrades, plans can go awry – but you’re the zodiac’s event organisers, so keep plans B, C and D up your sleeve. Understanding where others are coming from makes this week’s behaviour feel less personal, and sharing the spotlight will win you heaps of assistance. VIRGO: Virgo’s personal power planet Mercury joining a quartet of retrogrades announces a withdrawal and retrospection period while powerful insights download. A great week for a getaway, or if that’s not possible, regular minibreaks and private time. Ban yourself from rushing, taking risks or multitasking, which fractures your focus and could cause accidents.
JULY HOSTED TWO POWERPACKED ECLIPSES, WITH THE THIRD DUE MIDAUGUST. AND WHEN THERE’S INTENSITY ON THE CELESTIAL STAGE, AS ABOVE, SO BELOW… LIBRA: This week’s fine socialising comes accompanied by a minefield of misunderstandings, projections and dramatic reactions. Feelings that have been brewing and stewing erupt suddenly. Serenity could be conspicuous by its absence, and advanced peacekeeping skills needed. Getting bossed by pushy, insistent human bulldozers? Make a graceful retreat into quiet, peaceful you-time. SCORPIO: : Look for the hidden gift in delays and make changing arrangements work for you, because things are moving forward in ways that aren’t visible or at your preferred rate. Retrograde transits offer second chances to reconnect with others, rectify misperceptions, refine game plans. Sound ho-hum? Trust me, this week has no shortage of dramatic entertainment. SAGITTARIUS: With lunar eclipse energies pumping up the volume on lively dialogue and vivid discussions about travel and future moves, you’re firing on all cylinders – and need to pay special attention to what you say, because for better or worse that will definitely be what you get. As usual, this week’s satisfaction is an inside job. CAPRICORN: It’s worthwhile taking the time to explain your motives, intentions and why you did what you did, to save a lot of tiresome bother from this week’s assumptions and judgments. Weigh up the drawback v reward ratio of operating solo as against group dynamics, then choose case by case what makes you happiest. AQUARIUS: Last weekend’s annual Aquarius full moon, second in an eclipse trio, marked a glow moment for your extraordinary selves: think mysterious morphing of butterfly from chrysalis. Make the most of this ongoing reformation, though with retro Mars in your corner forcing anything is contraindicated – so stretch gently, expand gradually, proceed with care. PISCES: Midway through a major eclipse season, this push-pull week fast tracks some things and brakes hard on others, making it essential, though not necessarily easy, to step away from conflicts, confrontational situations and problem friends. Good news is that retrogrades make resurrection, reinvention, revival and renewal all realistically possible.
36 August 1, 2018 The Byron Shire Echo
BEIRUT Some actors struggle to escape their own shadow. Jon Hamm’s imposing presence in TV’s Mad Men might have had him forever identified as Don Draper of the manicured stubble, but if his performance in this oldschool hostage thriller is any indication, he has well and truly moved on. The wife of diplomat Mason Skiles (Hamm) is killed in a 1972 terrorist attack at their residency in Beirut. Jump forward to 1982 and Skiles is an alcoholic running a small-time company dealing with disputes between employers and their workers. When called upon to return to Beirut to negotiate with the abductors of his old CIA buddy Cal Riley (Mark Pellegrino), he finds himself caught up in the opaque
machinations of intelligence, counter-intelligence, political double-speak and murky backroom deals that prevail in the Middle East. Never entirely sure who he can rely on, Skiles must run his own race and hope that the kidnapper Karim (Idir Chender), known to him from his earlier stint in the city, is as good as his word, and that Sandy Crowder (Rosamund Pike) is more than just ‘the skirt driving his car’. This is a fantastic movie – absorbing, unpredictable and true in its assessment and portrayal of the amorality that festers behind the suits we see on the nightly news. Despite it being a particularly blood-stained period in Lebanon’s modern history, director Brad Anderson
indulges in no superfluous violence and because of that the killings that do occur are all the more shocking. Nor does he take sides, with the PLO, Washington, Mossad, the Druse militia and everybody else involved all shown to be as duplicitous as each other. Tony Gilroy, with Michael Clayton and three of the Bourne flicks
on his resume, has written a screenplay that is watertight, cohesive despite the story’s complexities, and paced to build to a chilling denouement and epilogue. It is shot in Tangier, but that in no way detracts from the realism in one of the year’s best. And Hamm is great.
was able to persuade me otherwise. The script does have its moments, notably when Jen visits her parents for dinner and adjourns to the bathroom with her brother and Mel to
snort lines of Ajax, thinking it’s cocaine. Otherwise, the selfconscious determination to be un-PC, with jokes about race (mostly Maori having a dig at White), wears thin and the sex gags are not so much risqué as playground crass. Belatedly, there is a focus on gender expectations, companionship and parenting, whereupon the tone shifts from tryhard funny to gentle but genuine iconoclasm – there’s nothing like an insertion of Debussy into a soundtrack to make you see through the ratbaggery that has been foisted on a character, in this case Jen. A sharp, original idea underpinned this film, but the fact that Sami and van Beek wrote it, directed it and starred in it suggests that not enough input was heard from others. Maybe Waititi could have told the girls to rein it in a bit.
THE BREAKER UPPERERS As the man with the Midas touch in Kiwi cinema, Taika Waititi can do no wrong. His name appears as executive producer of this, but if you go along expecting something halfway near as good as Boy (2010) or Hunt For The Wilderpeople (2016) you will be grievously disappointed. Mel and Jen (Madeleine Sami and Jackie van Beek) run a business that has them facilitating the break up of relationships from which one member wants to be free. We first meet them dressed as police officers who
have informed Anna (Celia Pacquola) that her partner has gone missing. This is followed by a number of examples of the go-betweens doing their shtick, most of them executed with a Benny Hill gaucheness that permeates the whole movie. The through-line comes when teenaged Jordan arrives at the office needing them to concoct a situation that would result in his splitting from his girlfriend. Jordan immediately falls for Mel, who is twice his age. I didn’t believe it to start with, and neither performer
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