The Self-Sabotaging Hero: What I Learned from Rewatching Top Gun after 32 years

Top Gun is arguably the most iconic movie of the 1980’s and still one of the coolest movies ever produced up to date. F-14 Tomcat fighter jets taking off from aircraft carriers; an inspring soundtrack with invigorating guitar tunes; fast motorbikes and fancy sunglasses; sweating, muscle-packed bodies playing beach volleyball, and – last but not least – a young, shiny, and cocky Tom Cruise. It … Continue reading The Self-Sabotaging Hero: What I Learned from Rewatching Top Gun after 32 years

Struggling Between Order and Chaos: Beth Harmon’s 7 Moves in “The Queen’s Gambit”

The success of Allan Scott’s Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit has been a surprise in many aspects. It took the Scottish TV-producer 30 years and 9 rewrites to finally find a company willing to produce the show. The most frequent reason given when studios rejected the project, was that “nobody would be interested in chess.” Before The Queen’s Gambit came out on Netflix, nobody could … Continue reading Struggling Between Order and Chaos: Beth Harmon’s 7 Moves in “The Queen’s Gambit”

Between Chaos and Order: a symbolic perspective on Dr. Zhivago

Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak’s great novel and the thereon based movie, is much more than just a love story. Although being an undoubtetly principal aspect of the plot, the love story has more to it than meets the eye. Set in the turmoils of Russia’s 1910’s, it shows us the uprise of Bolshevikism during WWI and its pursuit to create a perfect political state, to … Continue reading Between Chaos and Order: a symbolic perspective on Dr. Zhivago