Cinemaskop, by Vesna Ivkovic The Cinemascope is meant to give an overview of current movies and their main themes from an astrosemiotical perspective (i.e.: regarding film as semiotic system and translating it into the astrological semiotic system). A well made movie not only has a story and a certain theme, it also provides a special atmosphere, a certain feeling and it draws us into its very own world. This basic quality that is contrived through characters, plot, setting and many other components also translates into one or more astrological principles. Quite simply: a fast-paced action-flick confronts us with plain Aries energy, a horror-movie evokes Scorpio-like abysmal depths and fears etc. We step out of the theatre and – if the film succeeded in sucking us in – find ourselves dwelling on and engaging in that special energetic quality.

Aries
“Fighting” – the title alone makes it unmistakably clear: this is about the Aries-subject par excellence. A young street hawker with a great talent for fighting is discovered by a clever wheeler dealer and introduced to New York's underground world of street fighting – it is the old tale about a fighter, who would not at any price allow himself to lose. This story has often been told in movies, but yet it can still be fun to see incorruptible and pure Aries-energy occupied with its favorite pastime...  

Taurus
It is the particular abilities and talents we are endowed with as well as the things or people we appreciate and love, that ascertain our identity and make us feel secure – one of Taurus' pivotal denotations. In “Julie & Julia” we watch two women discovering their talents and searching for that certainty with great taste and a lot of perseverance. One of them, Julia Child (sensuous and earthy, played by Meryl Streep) in the early sixties brings French cuisine into American homes, in 2002 the other one, Julie Powell, cooks her way through Julia's recipes and reports about it in her blog (thus building a bridge to following Gemini)...

Gemini
“The Taking of Pelham 123” – a wordy title and a movie which along with the popular Aries-motif of a race against time focuses on the criminals' cleverly plotted modus operandi and the mental duel between the two antagonists and thus gets a lot of Gemini-quality. John Travolta as the equally eloquent and brutal gangster with a Wall Street past and Denzel Washington as the quick thinking transit executive negotiate hostages, time and money transfers in a movie that might be a bit superfluous, but has it's strong moments, when the ordinariness of daily life (e.g. a hero's wife's request to bring some milk on his way home) slows down the speeding cinematography.

Cancer
A grumpy old man feels ousted from “his America” and decides to pursue an old dream and go on a trip – without leaving his home, which he converts into a flying object by a myriad of balloons. Involuntarily a little boy scout with a sunny disposition accompanies him as a stowaway, since his search for adventures and good deeds brought him to the flying house. Of course he befriends the misanthrope. The animated film “Up” is a lovable modern fairy tale about dreams, emotional bonds and human strengths and weaknesses.

Leo
Based on Eliot Tiber’s memoirs – he's the man who made the greatest rock festival in the history of music possible – Ang Lee’s latest, humorous film “Taking Woodstock” is dedicated to this extraordinary event’s local background and atmospherically emphasizes joy and high spirits in a story that touches on the Aquarius-topic of oddity as well as on the Leo-motifs of creative self-expression, self-fulfillment and the love for music and happy partying.

Virgo
Margarete von Trotta’s biography of belatedly acknowledged naturopathic healer and mystic, “Vision – Aus dem Leben der Hildegard von Bingen” (no official English title, literal translation: “Vision – From the life of Hildegard von Bingen”) is a film, which with its depiction of the hard-working and humble life in convents expresses the energy of the Virgo-Pisces-axis and thereby includes the ambivalence between individual and revolutionary vision (“it is our divine right to rule and decide for ourselves” – quoted from the trailer) and accustomed, obedient traditionalism, that is mirrored in the recent opposition between Saturn in Virgo and Uranus in Pisces. The character of Hildegard von Bingen also provides a rare cinematic image of the Vesta-archetype with its signature features of autonomy, the inner fire, the bond with nature etc.

Libra
Because of a genetic anomaly Henry De Tamble keeps traveling through time involuntarily. His abrupt and unpredictable appearing and disappearing – corresponding Uranus in Pisces – complicates his relationship with Clare, who was a child, when she met him for the first time and whose life has been determined by his time travels and her love for him ever since. “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is a Libra-typical romantic and charming story of love and relationship with lots of emotion (emphasizing Cancer) and an unusual impediment, which could also be read as a metaphor for running from commitment or the estrangement in love (Uranus in Pisces!).

Scorpio
Lars von Trier’s scandalous new film “Antichrist” is a psychological tour de force. After their baby son had died in a horrible accident, a psychotherapist attempts a kind of vivisection on his wife’s soul by forcing her to confront her greatest fears and thus triggers a furious and bloody fight, which crosses all boundaries and literally cuts to their bones. Along with the internal Scorpio-hell, the outer scenery – an isolated cabin in the woods, with the morbidly humorous name “Eden”, as well as the gloomy and eerie imagery – largely represents Capricorn-quality. A more graphic depiction of the current Pluto in Capricorn hasn’t been in theatres a lot until now…

Sagittarius
With its story about jewish high jumper Gretel Bergmann and her intersexual rival Marie Ketteler the German film “Berlin 36” combines several complex issues that belong to Sagittarius: A critical look on discrimination, intolerance and narrow-mindedness, the overcoming of all that through mental generosity, the physical equivalent of broadening intellectual horizons is also found in the ambitious athletic competition. But there's also the racial megalomania of a “Third Reich” that pursues universal power. Moreover, the beginning and intention of the Olympic Games once was a religious ritual dedicated to godfather Zeus and the quest for sublime knowledge, expressing pure Sagittarius-energy.

Capricorn
The South African drama “Disgrace” focuses on the consequences radical changes in social power relations have and the ways of dealing with them. In an adaptation of J.M. Coetzees award-winning novel John Malkovich portrays the cynical professor of literature David Lurie, an intellectual with an openly egotistical attitude towards women. Malkovich's masterful mannerisms imbue the character with Libra- and Aquarius-qualities. After a scandal about an affair with a student Lurie quits and changes the university campus for his daughter’s farm, where by dramatic events he is forced to deal with the Capricorn-issues of guilt and atonement, moral and responsibility.

Aquarius
Not only because of their technical gimmicks Science-fiction movies mostly belong to Aquarius, but also because they deal with the topic of being alien, being different and highlight the relations between individual and community. “District 9” is about the marginalization and discrimination of Aliens, who were forced to land on earth because of some technical problems in their ship many years ago. Our attitudes toward refugees are not accidentally mirrored in this film. Yet there is also a sentimental father-son-plot and combined with the aliens longing for their home planet - this adds some qualities of the Cancer-Capricorn-axis…

Pisces
The hypnotic rhythms and the often dreamy cinematography of his films made Wong Kar-wei one of the most renowned directors of Hongkong-cinema. Varying the genre of Chinese Martial Arts epos, “Ashes of Time: Redux” (“Dung che sai duk”) in its story covers a range of topics from sword fighting to schizophrenia (Aries to Pisces), yet the meditative atmosphere, the images that sometimes even appear abstract and the emphasis on excessive, ecstatic visuals create the Pisces-like quality of this film, that was shot in 1994 and now revised.

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