the groundhog day project

It's remarkable sometimes how the silliest of films can work just as well as the best of them to bring me back to long ago, you know, happier times, when I was a cute little kid without a care in the world except for, well, the second coming of Jesus, Armageddon, the apocalypse, and everything* that I've ever cared about ceasing to be. (* except for my loved ones, of course, but damn it, what about my toys? What about these movies I loved? What about books? Games? The important stuff in life.) No cares but the biggest. And, Top Secret! , in particular, plays on some of that biggest stuff. Late in the Cold War... And then I got to wondering about exactly when this film takes place. I mean, Nick's music is very Elvis. So, I paused on the Billboard Top 40. Nick Rivers has #1 #2, & #4, with "Skeet Surfin'", "Skeetin' USA" and "Skeet City", respectively. He also has #3 in a duet with Tammy Wynette on "You're Skeetin' He...

Women have been a plot device for male entitlement for as far back as stories were being told, as trophies for creepy behaviour, as the spoils of war, as the property of men, as the maiden-in-waiting for her adorable coercive, overly-persistent prince-charming. (Meagher 2015) Vincent Vacarri is not a nice man. He is our protagonist in The Idolmaker but he is not a nice man. In fact, he is at times an awful, awful man. Tommy Dee gets a young girl to accompany him to his car, ostensibly to get a copy of his record before it is officially released, and he tries to get more than that. We don't know how old Tommy Dee is, but he seems to be somewhere close to the age of the actor playing him--Paul Land was 23-24 when The Idolmaker was filmed. However old the actress in the scene is, Vincent says her character is 14. When Tommy Dee demands more than just a thank you, she kisses his cheek. He calls that sisterly, and goes for more. Vincent comes to her rescue. But, does he reprimand...

There's a danger in moving forward with sequels--today, The Final Conflict (aka Omen III ). See, I glanced at the film's entry at IMDb and, while the original has a 7.6, the second film--which is quite well done--has a 6.2, and this third entry in the series has a 5.5. (The fourth, a made-for-TV movie, has a 3.8.) (Not misquoting biblical passages this time. Instead, inventing apocryphal texts to quote.) The earlier entries are more... original. More creative effort goes into them. If we're lucky, there's some novel notion that leads to the first sequel, but then it turns into a studio-driven exercise in cashing in. Writing duties are farmed out. Or worse, unrelated scripts are coopted to fit into an existing franchise. (This is what happened with at least one of the Hellraiser sequels, for example.) Sometimes there can be a resurgence in creativity later--I think, for example that Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is maybe the best of the Friday the 13th fi...

A few notes: 1. I don't know enough about Vatican II to really speak to the (apparent) decline of Catholicism in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Longtime reader of this blog, Mal, offered some insight in the comments on yesterday 's entry--he described the sense of it as "either lots of priests, nuns, theologians and laymen throwing off the shackles of dogma and tradition, or else a mass submission on the part of Catholics to the fashions of the surrounding culture" and there was "a sense of disorientation and anxiety." 2. I do know plenty about the counterculture, especially in America, and the impression it had on the older generations. (Brag: I'm published on the subject.) And, I can attest that many of the changes going on in America at the time--the pill giving a nice jumpstart to the sexual revolution, for example--created that same "sense of disorientation and anxiety." The Los Angeles Times , 24 November 1968, called Middle Class Ameri...

The opening shot of Life as a House is a digital trick (one done much cleaner elsewhere, but not too bad for 2001)--the camera cranes down toward the shack, then through the window into the interior, focusing briefly on the model house that will be built later, then onto George in bed. The visual metaphor is simple: 1. we are being allowed into this man's life in an intimate fashion, 2. George is already being equated to that house and the shack; and 3. that house is inside the shack just as the idea of it, and the potential for its building is inside George. Additionally--and linked to #1 there--the window frame works as a stand-in for the frame of the camera, the frame of the movie screen, the frame of the TV as we watch the story begin. (That this window will soon not exist does not negate the metaphor because by then we're invested or explicitly disinterested.) At the end of the film, George will also see the finished house (looking as small as that model) through the ...

Benesh (2011) is open to page 34, where there's a pink tab labeled "self-cursed." I'm on the floor by the coffee table as usual. Phil just showed up at Gobbler's Knob for the third time. Life on repeat. I had a thought today... but let me set it up. So, in my car, I listen to my iPod by way of a cigarette lighter adapter that broadcasts a weak radio signal. The frequency I use most often happens to be, when I don't have the iPod playing over it, a Christian station. Sometimes, I'll hold off turning on my iPod for a moment or two, listen to what the Christians are saying. I grew up going to church regularly, so it's not like they'll say anything particularly new or insightful. But, it occurred to me that my response to the question, why are you doing this? (this being the Groundhog Day Project ), if the person asking is a regular church attendee is why do you go to church? I've written before about how Groundhog Day and I are in a relationsh...