a bit unreal

-





































Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

there's a lot of things really wrong with...

-
Image
To err is human. To point out someone else’s errors is, presumably, extra-human. So, let’s look at the errors in Groundhog Day . And, I don’t mean Phil’s errors in judgment or anything like that. I mean filmmaking errors. We’ll work off the IMDb goofs page for the movie and go from there. First category is “Audio/visual unsynchronized” In the last part of the movie, Phil is seen playing the piano on stage at the party. As he finishes up song before going and talking to Rita, the piano in the soundtrack is playing a glissando (running a finger rapidly down the keyboard) while Phil is still playing as he was before. Finally, at the last run, Phil's hands match the sound. Don’t have a screencap for this one (as you’ll see, I’ve got screencaps for a lot of the other “goofs” below), but I’m not seeing it—and I had two different screens going for the movie today, two different copies of the film. Aside from a possibly inaccurate use of “glissando” Phil does run his hand across the ...
Read more

i've seen it over a hundred times

-
Image
As I write this, it’s Day 2 for Phil Connors on the DVD and my daughters are in the kitchen making a cake to celebrate Day 100 for me... photo should be below. The movie Phil had seen over 100 times (or so he tells Laraine) was Heidi II . It’s a “family classic” according to the Alpine Theater’s marquee. But, as I’ve mentioned before, it doesn’t exist. Originally, the movie that Phil could see every day if he wanted to do so was It’s a Wonderful Life . Danny Rubin’s ego—and this is his suggestion, not mine—made him believe Groundhog Day “a timeless quality and had the potential to become a film that could work for audiences for a very long time.” So, he put another such film on the marquee. But, “even believing that Groundhog Day was a potential classic, [Rubin] never was thinking of comparing it to It’s a Wonderful Life “— (I’d say putting that title on the marquee was Rubin deliberately comparing the two, but maybe that’s just me.) . Rubin continues: “But the similarities bet...
Read more

when chekhov saw the long winter...

-
Image
The thing about Phil Connor’s use of Chekhov is, well, who knows if it’s appropriate… and really, who cares? It sounds good, right? In Rubin’s original, we get even less than we get in the film. We just get Rita telling Phil he “did a really nice job today. Really nice… That was great what you did there with Chekhov and the long winter.” (That “really nice” sounds more like movie Larry than Rita, but remember, in Rubin’s original, Phil is the young and inexperienced one, Rita the older producer who’s been around for a while.) What we get in the film is more substantial: When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter. From Punxsutawney, it's Phil Connors. So long. Rubin tells us in his book that he ha...
Read more