Linda Stirling Unmasked: The Black Whip




AGORA
: Dragged from her chariot by a mob of fanatical vigilante Christian monks, the revered astronomer was stripped naked, skinned to her bones with sharp oyster shells, stoned and burned alive as possibly the first executed witch in history. A kind of purge that was apparently big business back then.


CRITICAL WOMEN HEADLINES

8/12/08

Fly Me To The Moon: Ben Stassen

Starring: Christopher Lloyd, Tim Curry, Nicollette Sheridan, Robert Patrick Benedict, Robert Patrick

Screenwriter: Domonic Paris



While I sat in anticipatory expectation of a fun filled film, a state of the animation art which is extraordinary, I hummed to myself the tune "fly me to the moon" made famous by the one and only Frank Sinatra with the full awareness that his voice is not a household sound for the generation that will be coming to theaters to see this extravaganza projected onto the huge AMC 42nd. street screen.


The sound, the site of the right-in-the-face 3D animation, replete with 3D glasses, was well worth the price of admission. The bugs(fly) coming into their own as members of a family and a community of friends where going to the moon is deemed an act of defiant plunge into the realm of imagination and adventure.


I don't know how children will react to a fly-mother who faints more than once as she watches/hears of her child's adventures. I thought this was a very prejudicial rendition of lack of emotional strength of mothers. I, a single mother of two sons who were not shy in their search for adventure and imagination, never fainted because of anything they did or failed to do. And I don't think I am alone. If this projection was an example of "humor" I suggest the Director be more in touch with what he projects on screen and why.

This film could have been so good, so strong, but it wasn't.


The story is weak, the plot, however, is interesting; flies going to the moon hidden by their small size in the rocket ship. It portrayed the historical event with real footage from the past that children might want to embrace particularly in this time of such great shame brought to our country with the American thirst for war and unending honor roll known but rarely spoken of.


I recommend this film with reservation, great reservation, as it does nothing to help women and girls achieve an equal footing, emotionally with the other gender. But it does wonders for our appreciation of flies. I will never swat at a fly again, without thinking of the footage in 'Fly Me To The Moon".


In theaters Friday August 15,2008


Linda Z
WBAI Women's Collective
RT Vine: witches brew

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