the groundhog day project

The past week here tied together around The Magnificent Seven (it's original and it's remake) and A Bug's Life , and I didn't expect it to bring me to the place I am today, to the rant I expect to get into in a moment. See, here's what the last few hours of my life were like. I had A Bug's Life playing while I was working on stone stuff on the computer, figuring on writing a nice casual blog entry later, wondering what I will do tomorrow between Wonder Woman and it being the 2nd, which means I should be watching Groundhog Day . Then, I turned on Trump's speech about pulling out of the Paris Accord (with an introduction by Trump's official MC, Vice President Mike Pence, and followed by today's Trump Cheerleader Scott Pruitt offering up a bunch of rah rah bullshit). Then, I turned on the soundtrack to the Groundhog Day musical and made some tea to improve my mood. The ants (and the grasshoppers) in A Bug's Life were written and performed by ad...

1. The heroes are professionals. The interesting thing, taking A Bug's Life as taking its plot from Seven Samurai or the Magnificent Seven is that Flik (Dave Foley) is both the Old Man/Emma Cullen summoner role but he is also the Kambei/Chris/Sam leader role of what would be the titular group if this were called, say, Nine Circus Bugs . 3. The villains are very strong. The grasshoppers come, of course. Like the bandits in Seven Samurai or the original The Magnificent Seven , or Bogue and his hired guns in the remake. A Bug's Life borrows The Ant and the Grasshopper . Hopper (Kevin Spacey) doesn't kill anyone--this is a family-friendly version of the story--but he does threaten it. 4. The society is ineffective, incapable of defending itself. The best they can do is gather food all over again and send Flik on what they assume is a suicide mission, if he doesn't just give up right away. 7. The heroes form a group for the job. Taken out of order, here, of...

I never really wrote about the original The Magnificent Seven in this blog. (One of a few times that exhaustion at the end of a long day kept me from really putting in an effort here.) Also, it only just occurred to me, as the men from the Mexican town have come to Chris (Yul Brynner) for help, that aside from one detail--Flik being an outcast from his village rather than a stranger-- A Bug's Life is basically this film, or rather Seven Samurai . And, I'm wondering how I never got that before. It's so obvious. Now, I'm wondering what else I have missed in the movies I've seen, what references went over my head because of particular timing or a lack of familiarity? I have seen Seven Samurai but maybe only once all the way through. It's also the plot of many a D&D module. It's such a simple plot hook--a village is in trouble, and a bunch of men (usually men) have the skills to save it from its attackers. Bring your gunslinging, your knife-throwing...