the groundhog day project

Since Blackbeard's Ghost is a kid's film, we won't hear details about the death of Edward Teach--still fighting after his throat was cut, he was felled by at least 5 gunshots and 20 sword cuts--or how he deliberately ran one of his own ships aground so the shares of the loot among the rest of his men would be bigger. Or how he would stick lit fuses in his hat to scare the crap out of people with the cloud of smoke around his head. Instead, we get a pirate who is funny, and an alcoholic. My sister Brooke joked last night that she may have learned to drink from this movie. We also get a kissing booth. And, if this were the romantic comedy it occasionally seems to think it is, that kissing booth offers up the ultimate meet-cute with Steve meeting Jo Anne (Suzanne Pleshette) by kissing her. Incorrectly figuring because she's taking money near the kissing booth that she is working the booth. It's 1968, second-wave feminism in full swing, so after Steve proceeds to als...

Watching Rambo: First Blood Part II for the last time--I like to toy with the idea that after watching any of these movies for multiple days I will retire them from my viewing repertoire--it strikes me that I haven't had much that was actually negative to say about this film. Sure, it represents an attempt to rebuild American hegemony symbolically, and a manipulation to reconstruct the myth of Vietnam, but it's just so damn fun. So, I figured I'd end this week of Rambo by looking backward, see where Rambo came from. I've mentioned David Morrell, author of the novel First Blood . I've even talked here and there about differences between book Rambo and movie Rambo. But, why does Rambo even exist? Wilder (1990) presents us with a story--I'll just provide the beginning of it: A young boy is raised in a patriotic Christian culture to love god and country; to believe "Thou shalt not kill." At the age of 18, not yet old enough to drink or vote, he is giv...