Cinemaskop
This month's silver screen stars

Aries
With loud and thunderous action-blockbuster “2012” and its spectacular special effects we’re in for constant rushes of adrenaline, but along with the action, which is typical for Aries, comes the motif of a new start, another Aries-analogue: In order not to suffer complete extermination by the catastrophic forces of nature, the leaders of the world decide to secure mankind’s survival after the model of Noah’s Ark. But those who are not part of the program have to fight for survival on their own...

Taurus
An excitingly sensual college-beauty (Megan Fox) is literally transformed into a man-eater possessed by a greedy demon after a Satanist ritual, performed by some rock band she hung out with, went wrong. Thus “Jennifer’s Body” is all about the Taurus-Scorpio-axis. A nice teenager-horror-flick based on the popular motif of “Beauty and the Beast” – who are both sharing here the desired body of a woman that is (not only) the (teenage) incarnation of sex…

Gemini
A group of friends hopes for interesting holidays, a variety of entertainment and fun (all typical Gemini-activities) in a beautiful tropical couples resort. Yet the couple who initiated the trip tricked them – they are at couples paradise in order to save their marriage with the help of some unusual therapeutic methods. Now “Couples Retreat” with sometimes slightly witty humor narrates how the other three couples are forced to confront their own relationship problems by strange encounters with sharks or oversexed yoga-teachers.

Cancer
„Hachiko: A Dog's Story“ is a very touching, Cancer-like story about the deep bond of friendship between a college professor and a puppy he finds and raises. Every evening Hachiko meets the professor (played by Richard Gere with his well known heartwarming presence) at the station – even when he’s not coming any more because he died from a heart attack, the dog waiting for him every day. Hachikos love and loyalty moves the whole town and also us sitting in the theatre. The story borders dangerously close on kitsch, yet it is told with heartwarming sincerity and not too syrupy.

Leo
A wedding usually is a huge feast, a party full of joy and lust for life and thus an event of true Leo-energy. In “Silent Wedding” (“Nunta muta”) a young couple’s wedding in a Romanian village is supposed to be just like that. But unfortunately it’s the year 1953 and the great Stalin had just died. In Romania a time of official mourning is declared and it is not allowed to celebrate at all. How the villagers and wedding guests still have a good time and what the consequences are, testifies to the power but nonetheless also to the repression of Leo-energy (by Saturn and Pluto)…

Virgo
The award-winning documentary film “Alone in Four Walls” (“Allein in vier Wänden”) reports from a reformatory for juvenile delinquents in Ural. In its unspectacular approach the film focuses on the everyday life these boys, aged eleven to sixteen, have to lead there. Many of them – mostly convicted for theft or murder and coming from very low and neglected environments –experience proper care and regular daily routine for the first time in their lives. Accordingly in a very Virgo-typical way the film shows many images of this everyday life, that is shaped by simple duties and useful preoccupations.

Libra
„Love Happens“ is quite your usual romance with a little depth. Three years after his wife died self-help-guru Burke wrote a book about mourning and is quite successful. Yet he still has not confronted his own grief. Then he meets Eloise, who’s working hard to get over her last romantic disappointment. How these two slowly become closer, learn to see each other and feel forced to give up their masks is a Libra-story containing some Scorpio-motifs.

Scorpio
Especially the German title of “Law Abiding Citizen“ (“Gesetz der Rache“ – literally: “law of revenge”) points to the Scorpio- and Capricorn-qualities of this new vigilante-thriller starring Gerald Butler and Jamie Foxx, where a desperate man utterly disappointed by the judicial system, becomes a dangerous killer. The Scorpio-motif of revenge and destruction is addressed against the Capricorn-analogy of state and law – we can also see current Pluto in Capricorn here (“I’m gonna bring the whole system down on your head“!). The question is posed, if the price a society is willing to pay in order to maintain its functionality, is too high, when it means that strong bonds and emotions and intense experiences of loss have to be abandoned. One image struck me as a perfect illustration of the Saturn-Pluto-conflict: the half-naked avenger is lead away by a heavily armored SWAT-Team under the eye of the very correct and business-like district attorney…

Sagittarius
Set in the world of Big Business, with a protagonist, who as a high ranking executive turns informant for the FBI against the illegal price-fixing activities of his company, vigorously making this his mission, “The Informant!” is a real Sagittarian movie. The Sagittarian quality is moreover emphasized in Marc Whitacres (Matt Damon) delusional megalomania, which leads to his own criminal activities as well as to the largest price-fixing case in the US, and it also shows in Whitacres diagnosis with bipolar (manic-depressive) disorder.

Capricorn
Very reduced in form as well as in story, the Finnish film “The Visitor” (Muukalainen) tells the tale of a mute boy, who with his mother lives a hard working, isolated life in the woods, while the father is in jail. When a wounded visitor becomes a part of the boy’s and his mother’s life, circumstances start changing… The reduction in dialogue, color, narration and the motifs of hardship, responsibility and guilt, but also the atmosphere of gloom and hidden menace add to the films Capricorn-quality.

Aquarius
Michael Moore, director of famous documentary movies, likes to present himself as an entertaining yet provocative revolutionary. In “Capitalism: A Love Story“ he again raises uncomfortable questions, this time addressed to the financial world. And as always he is looking for idealistic visions of a better world, Aquarian ideals, which he shows in the real world for example in a house squatting or in a company, where every employee has the same salary (as it seems fit to the Aquarian credo about “freedom, equality, brotherhood”).

Pisces
An extraordinary combination of the Capricorn-theme guilt with motifs of Pisces comes to the screen in “The Door” (“Die Tür”). A man burdened with guilt discovers after several years a door, that leads to the parallel world of his past, where he can get a second chance, the chance to not become guilty. He tries to be a better husband and father than his younger Ego was, but in order to do that, he has to kill himself. This might as well be read as a dissolution of the Ego – which is a Pisces-theme, just as the parallel world, a world of assumed or borrowed identities, where the danger of disclosure is omnipresent, a world where fathers want to be guardian angels. Maybe Saturn wanting to become Neptune?

Vesna Ivkovic

Vesna Ivkovic studied literature and linguistics, sociology, philosophy and history and as well took a profound interest in psychology, mythology and different belief systems. Along the way she also explored various paths of body awareness such as the martial arts of Kung Fu, Dance, Yoga, Qi Gong and several other methods of body work and motion arts. In 1993 she discovered astrology as an instrument of knowledge and graduated in 2004 in Markus Jehle's and Petra Niehaus' master class at the Astrology Center Berlin. You can find out more about the author and her work on her own website www.astrosemiotics.de