the groundhog day project

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more... That's Lord Byron, from "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." Those lines start the film Into the Wild . With those lines, that last one, especially, we get a clear picture of how Jon Krakauer, who wrote the book, (or Sean Penn, who directed the film), if not Chris McCandless himself, saw things with this story--McCandless wasn't necessarily turning away from people--from society maybe, but that's a separate thing. He was turning toward nature. And, I get that. I live in the city, have lived around Los Angeles virtually my entire life. But, I like getting out of here when I can. The recent roadtrip involved far too much time in the car, not enough time outside, but there were still some nice moments, at Willow Canyon, at Meteor Crater, at Acoma... (I shared...

Three years after student filmmakers Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard disappeared in the forests of Maryland's Black Hills, law enforcement authorities finally released all of the evidence they had discovered in the case to the students' families. Among the items returned were several reels of black-and-white film and close to a dozen videocassettes that had never before been made public. (Stern, 1999, p. ix) So goes the premise behind The Blair Witch Project . I've already quoted Segal by way of Martin (2009) before regarding one of the best aspects of The Blair Witch Project --i.e. that it "relies on the mind to conjure its own demons" (p. 41). (I quoted that line regarding Ringu / The Ring , I'm pretty sure.) You don't see the witch or any other killer in the film. Hell, after the first 15 minutes or so, you don't see anybody except for Heather, Mike and Josh. The film is, weirdly, both entirely streamlined because of thi...