Considering a Life of Villainy: Loki in the Avengers
I have serious doubts that even this July’s Dark Knight Rises will get me hooting, clapping, cheering, laughing and hollering as much as The Avengers did when I first saw it in RPX in glorious…
Category: Literary & Media Analysis
On the Mountain Poems of Stonehouse: Assembled and Transcribed by Red Pine
Stonehouse (Shihwu) was born in 1272 in the town of Changshu, in Yushan not far from the mouth of the Yangtze River. The beautiful landscape of Yushan inspired much of Shihwu's work. His poetry was…
Raiders of the Lost Ark: A Look Back At a Film and An Era 40 Years Later
~By Michael Goth Of the ten highest grossing movies of the eighties, two men were responsible for seven of them-George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Spielberg directed E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982), the film that surpassed…
Beauty Found Within: A Reflection on Beauty and the Beast
At exactly which moment are little girls first enthralled with Beauty and the Beast? Is it the iconic library, with its spiral staircases and book-lined floor, cathedral-sized ceiling, and bookshelves wrapped around the walls? Is…
Gods and Goddesses of Wales: Book Review
As a practising Druid, I have always been drawn to the stories, folklore, and history of the Brythonic peoples. As I’ve walked the path, however, I’ve found myself increasingly led towards the Welsh myth cycle…
Queen of the World: Varda as the Image of Our Lady
The image of Varda as a representation of Saint Mary the Virgin, Jesus’ mother, is clear. As Tolkien asserted, her character was “clearly related to Catholic devotion to [Saint] Mary” (Carpenter, 2006, p. 288), who…
The Question of Faith: The Story of The Exorcist
In an era when every Marvel superhero movie is marketed as an event, and movies that gross $300,000,000 lose money, it may be difficult to believe that there was a time when certain movies really…
Movie Review: The Divergent Series
The Divergent Trilogy (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1840309/) is a set of dystopian fiction films, based upon the novels by Veronica Roth. I am not usually one for dystopian films, finding them to be a bit predictable and/or depressing.…
Hitting It Off: A Review of ‘Starstruck’
Jessica Olsen just wants to spend some time with her grandma when she and her family go to Hollywood to visit her, but her older sister Sara is a huge fan of Christopher Wilde, a…
The Evolving Portrayal of Women in Disney
In some of the first Disney movies – such as Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty – women were used to seeing themselves portrayed as damsels in distress, with weak or absent fathers and evil…