the groundhog day project

In an interview in Vanity Fair , the interviewer started with, “This is the most romantic film I’ve ever seen with this much fighting.” Star Julie Delpy replied, “The most romantic film about fighting!” Amusingly, a piece in Elite Daily says, “No epic love stories were written about complacency from years of living in the doldrums of lame ass bullshit.” Before Midnight , taken on its own, is not particularly romantic. But, it also is not supposed to be. The Celine and Jesse story has moved beyond romance. That does not mean that it has moved beyond love. The present (and near future) of Celine and Jesse’s relationship actually gets wrapped up in the car conversation; Celine announces that she may take a government job and this exchange happens: JESSE No, you don’t want to work for him. CELINE Why not? JESSE For the government? CELINE This is different. We need laws. That’s the only way this is gonna happen. JESSE That’s not the only way. You guys have been getting a lot of good ...

I find I can't--or don't want to--write about the third act of Before Midnight . But, who needs to get that far into everything anyway? Instead, I could talk about punctum, or a series of puncta. If you're new, or you've forgotten, a punctum, by way of Barthes, is the piercing, wounding moment that pulls you in, that forces you to identify with a character perhaps, that puts you fully into the story, the small detail that makes it all real for you in the moment. I can avoid the greater wound by dealing with the lesser. (As Jesse is left behind, Hank gone, music starts up and it feels intrusive. I'm sure there was background music in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset but I really don't remember it. If it was there, it wasn't intrusive. Here, and a few instances later in this film, the music is a bit too noticeable, making this film feel more like a movie than whatever the previous two films were.) The first punctum, I suppose, is in the car. The girls are...

The one who frowned and the lady. (And, if you get that reference, bully to you.) But, who gives a damn about closure? Every story ends in death if you keep telling it--and, if there is a fourth film in this series, rather than the phrasing-appropriate Before Noon , I hope it's called Afternoon and someone's dead. That would be the appropriate thematic end to this story... Hell, already in this driving and talking sequence, there's talk of death--Celine's Cleopatra kitty story is horrible. But, I don't really want to fabricate a fourth story. I've already written recently about how I don't like people thinking the movie needs to match up to their ideals for it. Wood (1998) would agree with me, I think. He writes--in a piece entitled "Rethinking Romantic Love: "Before Sunrise" by the way: I believe in the possibility of a "definitive" reading of a work only in the sense that is is definitive for myself at a certain stage of my e...

Today's blog entry is brought to you by the number four and the words che and pussy , if you'll forgive some crudeness and poetry. A couple not so serious things before I move on to Before Midnight . Except isn't all discussion of film serious, really? I kid (but I don't). Plus, I just livetweeted through two other movies ( Final Girl (sucked) and The Final Girls (awesome)), so I'm 1) maybe running out of words (as if that would happen) and 2) I might be prone to short bursts because, well, Twitter. First an aside: I like Jesse's answer about the end of his book. "It's a good test, right? If you're a romantic or a cynic." There's not supposed to be an answer. At least prior to the existence of Before Sunset . The end of the movie is a note of hope at the tail end of a story that talked remarkably often about death while operating upon our notions about love and romance. But, whether we think that hope means Jesse and/or Celine will s...

I wanted to write a review of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice for my other, far less regular movie blog (the one where I actually review movies sometimes), but kept feeling it would end up being a list of nitpicks about the nitpicks (not that I am above nitpicking ) and I didn't feel like writing that sort of thing-- plus, I already had a movie scheduled for today- Before Sunset --but oddly, or maybe not so oddly, something I wanted to say in that nonexistent review dovetails into something worth saying in regards to this movie, both within its story and without its confines (i.e the way the audience might react to it). That is, what you want out of something or out of someone is a far cry from what you should expect. Or, it should be. I mean, Internet reviews and comic book nerds are harping on Batman v Superman yet the audience (and I realize this is just anecdotal evidence) where I was seemed to love it, applauded at the ending and everything. The thing is, so much of ...

Before Sunrise ends with a montage of shots--locations where Jesse and Celine have been, but now they are not there. It's an empty echo of their story. Before Sunset begins with such an echo, a montage of locations where Jesse and Celine will be. (Just in case you have never seen Before Sunrise , there's also a montage of scenes with Jesse and Celine as he answers questions at his book signing. (His book, This Time is basically the first film. Jesse tells his readers about an idea for a new book, one that will take place within the span of a pop song. He talks about two moments happening simultaneously, and we get one more shot of Celine from the previous film--that moment when Jesse takes her "picture." And, in the present, there is Celine at his book signing. Jesse is supposed to catch a plane in about an hour, but he goes off with Celine anyway. More walking and talking, but this more in real time than the first film. Within minutes, Celine asks if he showed ...