the groundhog day project

It occurred to me today that I have never seen a production of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying and I am not even sure what it's about. This thought came to me when I realized I am not entirely sure I can remember the plot to today's movie: The Secret of My Success . I knew it involved Michael J. Fox, and I think there's a boss lady who wants to sleep with him, but I was also conflating the film with For the Love of Money and was excited to see a young Gabrielle Anwar because I had the biggest crush on her for a few years there... after this movie was in theaters, after this movie was something we had on VHS and we watched it more than a few times-- (But, if you're paying attention, you should know that the current theme in this blog is movies that were "fixtures" in my "childhood" but I'm 11 now in 1987, and in retrospect, things keep blurring into my teenage years, my 20s, my 30s, and the present, but who want's to talk

To continue somewhere before I left off, I was not sent off to boarding school like Morgan. I just had private school, which meant very few friends in my neighborhood, and limited interaction with my friends outside of school, which limited my social life, I'm sure. Or maybe my introversion has other sources and it is just easy to blame the religious environment in which I grew up, and which isolated me from the larger world for a while. I definitely blame that upbringing for my attachment to film. I mean, why wouldn't I envelop myself in fiction as much as fucking possible when I'm being told on a regular basis that the world is ending? But then, I'm trying to come up with a comedic way to talk about the differing politics of my parents and me, even my oldest siblings and me. But, there's a pandemic and rioting and I am inclined to get into a serious rant instead... Or to focus entirely on the film today to avoid all that. As if that's possible.

Open on a poster for Zombie , drift down over more horror posters, and we know something about Morgan before we even see him. He has a specific area of interest and he overlaps his fucking posters, which most of the time, I'd say, is wrong, but there was a time in my early 20s, still in a small bedroom in my parents' house, that I had to overlap things on my wall in order to put up everything I wanted up. My room was very small. Not sure if I've shared images before. Well, let me backtrack. As a kid, I had a race car bed that was in the dining room of all places, not because we were particularly poor but because there were a lot of us. I had six older sisters. The oldest two got married in the early 80s and then I got a very small room to myself upstairs. Barely long enough for a twin bed and only a couple feet wider. Third and fourth sister moved out and the remaining two each got larger rooms while I kept the small one. When they both left for college--the same year,

I imagine that Morgan Stewart's Coming Home owes its title, if not it very existence to Ferris Bueller's Day Off . And, it is an Alan Smithee film. Only the second one to be feature in this blog, I'm pretty sure. The other was Hellraiser: Bloodline Starts with the titular boarding school kid (Jon Cryer looking like he's about 12) learning that he will not be going home for Thanksgiving... Or Christmas. But then, a revenge prank gets Morgan in trouble and suddenly he is called home. The immediate implication is he's expelled but it turns out his Republican Senator father and equally as conservative mother need him home so they can appear more like a family. Nice little details early on. Morgan has been in boarding school for so many years, he' snot even sure where home is. The butler Ivan is reading Robert G. Allen's book Nothing Down: How to Buy Real Estate with Little or No Money Down like he's trying to move up in the world, but he barely s

That Ema Hesire just does not want to marry any old guy her mother chooses for here is progressive enough that I think her urge to fly is too much, and unnecessary. But, it makes me realize that the balance of the story is off. We start with Emmy, then we go to Switcher and it is more than 10 minutes into the movie before we see Emmy in the window, and close to half an hour before she comes to life. The movie plays as Jonathan's story but the emotional payoff is Emmy's. I mean, a romantic comedy should have a payoff for both its leads but it feels like Jonathan gets what he wants before Emmy is even in the story. Richards, Felix, B.J., even Roxie--they're obstacles but not significant ones to Jonathan. Ultimately, they endanger Emmy's life (but not really, as I assume she would just be born in some future piece of art and start her cycle again), they don't endanger Jonathan's job. And, thinking about that made me realize something. I never thought of this

Let us get the silly out of the way up front. The setup in Egypt is silly-- and the set builders did not to a great job (except for the fact that they, of course, did not want this set to be taken seriously) as there is some weird thing on the wall that looks more like a... Had to double check, but it's a harpy on the wall between Emmy and the next mummy. And, who wrapped Emmy up like that, anyway? And, what was the point of it? Was she just going to stay in the tomb forever? And, how is it so well lit? And, why do the cracks all look horribly fake? Why are the hieroglyphs scattered instead of spaced uniformly spaced?Why are there some weird repeating shapes even with the tops of the alcoves that look like a deformed pharoah's head with an erection, and why are they not evenly spaced? You had one fucking job, set decorator, art director, production designed, whoever the fuck messed this up. Nevermind the Staff of Aesculapius-looking decorations at the sides of the mummy alcov

1987 will be a far more fun year than 1986 was in this childhood deconstruction-- which, let's be honest, has lately been me complaining about movies that I didn't know enough not to like when I was young, and might get worse with the string of comedies in '87-- and it might also get more serious in the dismantling of 80s cinematic tropes. The casual racism and sexism, homophobia, reliance on stereotypes and simplistic characterization--it ought to be interesting. Beginning with Mannequin . The opening of this film ought to be offensive to anyone from ancient Egypt. At least they didn't play "Walk Like an Egyptian" over the animated titles. Roxie should have been Julia Louis-Dreyfus, coming off of Soul Man , but it looks like Louis-Dreyfus was looking into tv work in '87. She was in the Family Ties spinoff attempt, The Art of Being Nick in August, then an episode of Family Ties (as a different character) in '88 before being a regular on

The music to Hoosiers sounds like something else to me, like a bit from a song... Or maybe I've just heard this soundtrack so many times that I recognize it easily. Like the music from The Man from Snowy River ( 1288 1289 1290 ) or... So many others, actually. Friday night was the sabbath growing up, and that often meant some music playing and a card game, or older sisters would come over with their husbands and kids, once they had husbands and kids. Later when I had a wife and kids, we'd drop by my parents' house on a Friday night sometimes, too. A tradition left behind now. Waiting for a new generation, maybe. But... Hoosiers . I have complaints, and I will get to them. One of my complaints I am inclined not to bother much about because it turns out the Myra Fleener/Norman Dale relationship got short shrift in the editing process when the film got streamlined from a much longer first cut. As it is in the end product, Myra plays a vital but entirely manipulativ

The description on STARZ for today's movie begins: "The best sports film ever?" As I tell my Speech 101 students, don't start with a question. It gets me thinking, gets me not paying attention to you speaking and, in the case of this description, has me thinking about other films. I'm not a sports film kind of guy. I mean, I like some of every kind of movie, I'm sure, but if I ranked my genres--and I recently did just that , actually, while running a bracket of my favorite films on my podcast Cock & Bull --sports film is not near the top. My top 380 has so few that would qualify that when I broke down the list for an excel sheet, there wasn't even a column for it. A couple that might qualify: Meatballs ( 1178 1179 1180 1181 1182 ) Better Off Dead... ( 772 773 ) A couple documentaries: Hoop Dreams Free Solo The Wrestler comes pretty close to what makes a "sports film", and that's on the list as well. But, the

Opening music: "Hoochie Coochie Man" by Muddy Waters. Minus a point right off the bat. Mark spent the previous night drinking, and wakes in bed with a woman he does not remember. Not a race problem, but still an immediate negative. This guy should not be going to Harvard. (That woman in his bed is Missy from Bill & Ted and Kim from Summer School . Amy Stoch as girl who doesn't even get a name here.) He also has a bucket of tennis balls to turn off two separate alarms (set for noon). He's a Ferris Bueller-wannabe asshole, is what he is. Minor thing in Mark's favor later: as a lawyer he may be able to sue his father over spending money from what his father specifically calls his "tuition account" on a timeshare in a condo in Barbados. Calling it a "tuition account" sounds like at the least an oral agreement, and based on how banks deal with things like that today, the account itself might have been labeled per its purpose and prob

It feels wrong that I hope Soul Man is horribly offensive. I mean, the premise is offensive enough, but we recognized that even when the movie was new. We. Just looked right on past it because the movie justifies (or tries to justify) itself with a nice romance at the center--and the church I grew up in had until recently been very much against miscegenation--and, of course, deep down, it's a movie about a white guy put upon by the world who just wants to make good. And, that makes it all okay. And, I imagine I will not be able to contain the smartass with this one. Sorry. First, a surprise: Steve Miner directed this thing. He directed Friday the 13th Part II and Part III . He directed House . He'd go on to direct Warlock and Halloween H20 , and Lake Placid , and we'd even see him directing a scene from Forever Young in person one night when we spotted some bright lights in... I think it was San Marino, but I don't recall the exact street. I was 16 and barely

Obviously, Crocodile Dundee has some casual sexism and racism... And, some unfortunate choices regarding the same, nevermind it being the 80s. For example, Sue begins the film several weeks into a stay in Australia, writing for the New York-based Newsday . She goes on her own to find the titular character in the outback, then goes with him out into the wilds. And, just like Willie in Temple of Doom or Joan in Romancing the Stone , she freaks out at animals sure. Eighties woman gotta eighties woman. But, Mick says she couldn't last on her own in the outback and she not only immediately picks up her stuff to leave on her own but also, when he tells her to take the rifle and mocks her by point out the dangerous end, she fires it right next to his toes without even raising it to aim. This is like cinematic code for she's a badass. And, we're set up for Sue being on equal footing with Mick. She even is smart enough to wear a hat and a big ol scarf over her head while she

It feels like, however much I had things to say regarding the last film on the list ( Stand By Me 1381 1382 1383 1383 1385 1386 ), with each further movie on my "movie life" list, it is much more about commenting from the present than remembering from the past, because for some of them--like today's Crocodile Dundee , for example--they were so briefly what I've been calling fixtures, that their influence is negligible beside something bigger and more attractive to my imagination like Dune or Masters of the Universe or Willow ... Actually, Willow might be on the list. But, I'm not sure, say, Batman is, even though I saw that movie 6 times on the big screen, bought the VHS on the day it came out, listened to both soundtracks constantly, and went retro watching reruns of every episode of the 60s tv show and the '66 film, and when I started reading comics regularly a few years later, the Batman comics were on my pull list for more than a decade. But,