one of those what-does-it-all-mean kind of things

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The last recap was Day 942 - what we got here is a little game of show and tell. Today is Day 1000. So, how about a quick reminder of where we've been lately.

Day 943 - the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth took Murder in the First as its jumping off point, ended the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon month and was maybe the thematic end to this blog because that's where every movie was every other movie and the message was on repeat.

Day 944 - i'm going out to punxsutawney was a thing I wrote for class about my pilgrimage to Woodstock, Illinois and meeting Danny Rubin, and Danny Rubin later sent me a lovely message about it on Facebook.

Then I drifted.

  • The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them 945 946 947
  • The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him 948 949 950
  • The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her 951 952 953
  • The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them 954 955

  • Antichrist 956

  • Everybody Wants Some 988

  • Punch-Drunk Love 989 990
  • Lars and the Real Girl 991

And, I've been stuck on High Fidelity (992 993 994 995 996 997 998 999) every since.

And, the daily thing has gotten... Not old exactly. But repetitive. And sure, that was the point. But, I want something new. I want the time loop to end.

I've done great things here. I was reading through my six entries (836 837 838 839 840 841) about Ex Machina this evening, for example, and those are some surprisingly complex and complicated pieces about that film, about gender, about society's programming. I'm toying with submitting one or two of those, reworked a little, as a paper for a conference about film. I would love, especially to do that breakdown of the dressing scenes as a presentation with slideshow... Like Roger Ebert's thing he used to do at the Conference on World Affairs, taking a single film and breaking it down with an audience, scene by scene, frame by frame if necessary.

(Wondering if I could do something like that on YouTube [I eventually did that with a different scene--

--]or if that would necessitate too much of the movie and thus violate copyright. [It did, but not so much that it got taken down.])

High Fidelity is playing one more time, by the way. Not Groundhog Day, though I had considered it; Day 1000 is a big deal, especially when it means the end of phase three, the end of the Groundhog Day Project. I thought it actually made more sense not to watch Groundhog Day today, to leave this month incomplete, to end on an almost aimless resumption of High Fidelity. Nine days of this movie, which means it becomes second in this blog next to Groundhog Day. Phase two was all about seven days with a given film. I liked the idea of ending on this weird note, taking this film too far...

Especially when I have very little to say about High Fidelity itself today. Just two things, in fact, something like punctum. Two moments I love. 1) When Rob gets off the phone with Laura and tells Barry that Laura's dad died, Barry has this amazingly heartless response--"Oh, drag." Then, not much later, Laura has just asked Rob to have sex with her, because she wants to feel something. The alternative is that he put cigarettes out on her, and Rob says no to that option because he doesn't have that many cigarettes left and he's saving them. Real moments in the lives of assholes and smartasses.

(That's a good title for... something. A reality TV show? A YouTube channel? A podcast? I don't know.)

 

 

 

 

 

Where was I?

The great things. I like my Best Picture/#OscarsSoWhite/Oscars Voting octalogy (900 901 902 903 904 905 906 907). I like my review of The Danish Girl. I thought I made some great posts last July (I won't link to all of them). My deconstruction of the Western last June (again, I won't link to all of them [ but this entry has all those links (including the July stuff].) was pretty fun. So much of this blog has been fun, offering up excuses to rant about whatever, to talk about movies, to use movies as reasons to rant about whatever, and sometimes just to vent because some days, this was the only outlet I had.

According to my master's thesis--draft submitted to my committee today--I have manipulated my presentation of self on this blog to create a public persona. That public persona was kind of a dick sometimes. I mean, look at how I picked apart Benesh (2011) back in phase one (I'll put Benesh as a label at the bottom of this post so you can click and see how I picked apart her dissertation, literally, page by page).

So, I am going to stop. This particular format has served its purpose. I may still livetweet movies. I will definitely review movies over at my other blog from time to time. And, with this out of my system, I intend to move forward on something else--I've got some ideas and now I will have to turn them into something. When something new begins, I will post here about it. [Actually, I didn't like the idea of a post 1001, so there is this edit to link to what I'm trying now: a YouTube thing called After the Film.] A bookend.

For now, I don't feel like offering up great quotes like I did on Day 365. If you want to read about identity, look through last May. If you want to read about musicals, look at last February. If you want to know about the Cold War and American hegemony, look at last January.

Slasher films? October 2014.

These entries are labeled so they can be found easily enough. Just google it. (Include "groundhog day project".) Or find me on Twitter or Facebook and ask.

In the meantime, there's this bit in Julie & Julia (the book, not the movie)--Julie's husband tells her she can "just decide to stop" cooking the recipes from Julia Child's book and blogging about it.

(Note for those who haven't been paying attention, my own year of Groundhog Day was partly inspired by Lawrence Dai's Lawrence/Julie & Julia which was partly inspired by Julie & Julia.)

Julie's response to her husband? "No! Don't you get it? This is all I've got. There are people out there, reading. I can't just fucking STOP!" Later she insists, " My readers need me!"

The thing is, you don't need me. But, if you miss me, I'm available. This is the internet, after all. I'll be around.

For now, though...

 

 

 

 

 

Once again, it is time to wrap this production. I wish you all well. I thank you for stopping by and reading the things I had to say. I am proud of what I have done here.

Today’s reason to repeat a day forever: to not watch any movies, to not write any words, to just be.

Comments

  1. robert e g blackMay 25, 2016 at 11:43 PM

    thank you for reading along, michael. I hope I offered entertainment, inspiration and insight.

    ReplyDelete

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