the groundhog day project

Take Anaconda , for example. Arguably the birthplace of more recent crap fare like Sharknado . Except, this was a real movie, meant for the theater, meant to be taken (relatively) seriously. It's inherently ridiculous, but hey, so is Jaws: The Revenge and that was born out of one of the greatest thrillers ever--the original Jaws . There's a thin line and a slippery slope between a movie that should be taken seriously and a movie that exists to entertain the simpler-minded in its audience, and/or to make some quick cash for a very cynical version of Hollywood. The cast alone here suggests something more serious. It's not A-listers. But, it's not all has-beens either. Eric Stoltz, Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight, Ice Cube, Owen Wilson, Kari Wuhrer. And the setup--a documentarian headed into the Amazon--is far more... highbrow isn't the right word, but it's far "better" than an ex surfer saving the world from freak weather. The music is almost too happy and...

I was going to leave today's entry blank. Well, not totally blank. That felt like cheating; I was going to have a single period as a hyperlink to my Twitter account. I was going to livetweet through Sharknado 5 , but I got bored and mostly ignored the movie (though I left it playing on the TV because, well, rules). I was going to watch bad movies this month... Actually, I'm still going to watch bad movies this month. But, I want bad movies that were genuine attempts at good movies. I'm pretty sure Tommy Wiseau thought, and still thinks, though he apparently sometimes claims otherwise, that The Room is good. I'm pretty sure Claudio Fragasso thought that Troll 2 was good. But, some recommendations made for me on Facebook--maybe I should have been clearer than "so bad it's good"--are not movies that are trying to be legitimately good movies. Or maybe I'm just being picky because the last week has been mentally exhausting and my insecurities and anxie...

Allow me to quote myself from like three days ago: ...If I just rented or bought Halloween [5] , you really don’t need to tell me all about the original Halloween before I watch it. Unless I just don’t understand Arabic Numerals, I’m guessing you realize this is a sequel and you got into this one—part 4—on purpose, so you don’t need an ad for the original. At least they didn’t include a trailer for 6 . Anyway, on to Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers . The opening for this film is odd. I get that Michael survived all those bullets—there’s obviously something super- or inhuman about him at this point. But, then he finds some old dude and... CUT TO one year later? Now, if they had planned ahead for the whole thorn cult thing already—I mean, they do have the tattoo, so I guess it was being setup already. If I had more than one day for this movie, I’d look into some behind-the-scenes stuff that I probably knew once upon a time, but I’ve just got today. Let’s assume the thorn t...