the groundhog day project

The thing is, despite some of what I said yesterday, it's a good thing that Alex's college plans are not too specific, that his goals are not too concrete. That the skillset that gets him recruited by aliens for a universe-saving adventure isn't that impressive. Like Centauri's previous recruitment practice on Earth involving a sword called Excalibur. (Note, of course, that the Starfighter logo includes a sword with wings.) All one had to do was be chosen enough to pull it out of a stone and/or have some lady in a lake toss it to you. And, by the way, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. Or from video games. Alex's problems are deliberately pretty universal. (And, really vague. I realize watching the early scenes again now, they don't even specify that it was a college loan that Alex didn't get. ...

So, I'm watching Gringo at the the theater today, and it's not as bad as some reviews had me thinking, but it has some structural issues, too much going on, dragging a bit much for a comedy that in other scenes is quite energetic. And, it wants to be about something, with the pharmaceutical angle and the drug cartel, but it keeps not quite managing. But, the thing I wanted to say about it that is definitely not the case with Romancing the Stone is that Gringo lets characters disappear for too long at times. So, let's compare. Not that any of you have seen (or will see) Gringo , or that a lot of you have even seen Romancing the Stone (but you should see the latter because it's amazing). (Actually, it occurs to me that I just might hashtag Gringo in the tweet link to this entry so maybe some people interested in that film will happen by. Hello Gringo fans. I will probably not be talking about Gringo beyond the next few sentences; I actually had a planned topic ...

My friend Shari mentioned that one of her problems with Rogue One was that lack of character arcs. And, then I went out to see Dunkirk . And, while I'm all for characters getting arcs and getting their own little stories--and I think I've made the point more than a few times in this blog that I can appreciate the arcs of characters beyond what the finite limits of a particular film allow--but sometimes, 1) I think that a certain kind of story doesn't necessarily need characters to really change as such and 2) you really shouldn't look to Star Wars movies for serious character arcs, anyway. (Sure, characters have their plot arcs, but their changes are shallow, more plot-driven than personality-driven.) And, Dunkirk makes fantastic use of its actors, and offers up characters that are easy to follow, relatively easy to care about, and situations that are both simple enough to follow and surprisingly complicated at times, with sequences cut together out of order just as...

I wrote a bit about The Magnificent Seven a few days ago . Talking about character classes (a la Dungeons & Dragons ) and archetypes, how each character needs to have a different personality trait or skill that makes them distinct from the other characters. What The Encylopedia of Fantasy refers to as the "seven samurai" and TV Tropes calls "the magnificent seven samurai". A reminder: I'm watching the latest incarnation of The Magnificent Seven tonight, so the seven are: Denzel Washington as Sam Chisolm, the leader, a warrant officer Chris Pratt as Josh Faraday, a gambler Ethan Hawke as Goodnight Robicheaux, the veteran sharpshooter Vincent D'Onofrio as Jack Horne, the mountain man, who is also religious Byung-hun Lee as Billy Rocks, the knife thrower (and "a mysterious man of the Orient") Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Vasquez, an outlaw Martin Sensmeier as Red Harvest, a Comanche warrior Plus Haley Bennett as Emma Cullen, the woman who gets ...

Permit a sidetrack. Not that there's a clear throughline driving me this month. I wanted to revive this thing and I did, and I've mostly just been winging it. One day at a time. Life is good that way. Make plans, sure. But, it's each day that matters. Do the useful things, the productive things, but also find time for the fun things. Save Buster from choking and light a woman's cigarette... Not that I want to get into Groundhog Day references right now. King Arthur is today's film. And, what TV Tropes calls "Cast Calculus" (or more specifically, depending on how this goes, "The Five Man Band" or The Magnificent Seven Samurai"), and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy labels simply as "Seven Samurai." Specifically, because lately I think about way too much in terms of Dungeons and Dragons references (because D&D takes up far too much of my spare time), I noticed as I watched King Arthur last night that Arthur and his Knights p...

118,089 frames. It's the little details in Anomalisa that really stand out. I don't mean the obvious stuff like the taxi driver not making eye contact (until he does, but only through the mirror) and the guy at the front desk in the hotel not breaking eye contact even as he types into and reads from his computer. Those things are nice touches. Another is the billboard that calls the zoo "zoo sized." Also, the fact that the movie's version of Lakmé and My Man Godfrey involve the same voice as all the people in Michael Stone's world. Or that character's breathe. Safe to assume there will be SPOILERS somewhere in here. They probably won't ruin the film for you, though. And you should watch it if you can. Something that I liked the first time I saw the film--and each time since--is the little movements of, say, Michael's hands and arms. When he's on the phone right now, for example, his right arm swings a little, and he touches his fingers to...