Afro-Cuban
The Orishas of “Guava Island”
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Manny Tejeda-Moreno reviews the role of the Orisha and Afro-Cuban spirituality in the new film starring Donald Glover and Rihanna, “Guava Island.”
Paganism
Witches and the “The Woodland Alchemy”
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TWH’s Jake Leibowitz looks at the relevance of a new movie about Witches that was written by an actual Witch who also co-stars in the movie.
Paganism
The Living and the Dead: A Review
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Our guest reviewer Noelle K. Bowles reviews BBC’s The Living and the Dead (2016) now available on streaming services.
Culture
Review: it’s Druids vs. Romans — and history — in TV series Britannia
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TWH — In the new TV series Britannia, a Celtic sorceress in ancient Britain draws a large pentacle on stone and casts a spell, saying, “Dark mother, send me a demon to do my will!”
Early in the series, top-dog Druid Veranm and his Druid tribe, who live in a rocky, mountainous hollow apart from the warring native tribes they serve, capture an invading Roman soldier. Veran performs some sort of ritualistic soul-sucking thing which causes the soldier to reanimate as a zombie under Veran’s control, after being tossed over a waterfall to his death. The zombie soldier shows back up in the Roman camp and delivers a verbal get-the-hell-out-of-our-land message to the general, Aulus Plautis. The general and Veran then trade notes back and forth by placing messages in the mouth of the dead Roman soldier’s severed head. Later Veran, who looks like a cross between Skeletor of He-Man fame and Richard O’Brien’s characters Gulnar (in the Robin of Sherwood TV series) and Riff Raff (in the Rocky Horror Picture Show), has a Vulcan mind-meld with Aulus Plautius, who has decided to seek the Druid’s help to go on a vision quest to the underworld..
David Lynch
The esoteric journey of Twin Peaks with ZB
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TWH – Twin Peaks was originally a surreal crime drama airing for two seasons in the early 1990s. Created by Mark Frost and David Lynch, the show first received rave reviews for its unique blend of storytelling and visuals. In 1991, New York Times reviewer William Grimes wrote, “For an intoxicating few months, ‘Twin Peaks’ seemed to be crackling away on every synapse in the collective American brain. The massively promoted two-hour pilot that kicked off the series just over a year ago lured nearly 35 million viewers, a third of the nation’s television audience.” Those numbers fell sharply over the season and into the second season, forcing the seemingly cultural tour de force to close up shop in June 1991 after only 30 episodes.