the groundhog day project

Seriously, though , fuck the rules. I could probably spread out discussion of Fight Club over several days. I don't know that I need to, however. I would like to begin the discussion with my usual go to -- Roger Ebert . His review ranges from insightful--"eroticism between the sexes is replaced by all-guy locker-room fights"--to the... well, not quite getting it, I think--"the movie stops being smart and savage and witty, and turns to some of the most brutal, unremitting, nonstop violence ever filmed." Regarding the first quotation there, I get it. It's like the homoeroticism that sat right under the surface of so many manly 80s movies grew up to become this. Damn the women--except Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), but we'll get to her later--you don't need to include every gender to explore every gender... or to explore gender at all. I know, I've said numerous times in this blog that every film offers commentary on (or at least insight into) ...

So, right at the top, the Sherman Oaks Mall featured as the Ridgemont Mall is the same mall featured briefly in Commando . In other Groundhog Day Project news, a guy emailed me today for my help in identifying Sandy Maschmeyer (Laraine, aka the French Maid date) and Angela Paton (Florence "Mrs" Lancaster) from their high school yearbook photos. I kind of like being a guy people can ask about Groundhog Day related stuff. But anyway, Fast Times at Ridgemont High . Seven minutes in and we've already got two montage bits with songs playing over them. There's already talk of underage sex, brief nudity (albeit just in some locker photos), and a whole lot of coupling and mating-type displays going on. And, like Porky's , the main cast is older than their characters. They have to be, of course, because of some of the subject matter; it just makes production easier. It's been a while since I've watched this movie. And, I think I mentioned yesterday that I did ...

[EDIT: If anyone is coming to this blog from the Believer article, welcome. To find the daily pieces on Groundhog Day you've got to look at August 2013 to August 2014. And, I will be watching Groundhog Day and writing an entry related to it later today--today being February 2. The piece below was posted late last night for February 1st. For the month of January, I watched 5 action movies from the 1980s. Enjoy.] Let us get the most important item out of the way first off on this last day with Top Gun : There’s a question on Quora — In Top Gun , why was Jester allowed to fly below the “hard deck,” but Maverick and Goose were reprimanded for it? But, I’ve got a better question—if the “hard deck” was 10,000 feet and Maverick gets in trouble for flying below said altitude, what were both jets doing flying so low well before the moment in question? I mean, look at this: Does that look like they are above 10,000 feet? (It’s so low, it reminds me of the opening titles sequ...

The opening shot of Top Gun —after that somewhat superfluous text—is the deck of the USS Enterprise. (Seen in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home later the same year). There’s fog, or I guess it’s exhaust, blowing across the deck. We see men, but not in detail. We see fighter jets, but also not in detail. The music is low energy, and when it transitions into “Danger Zone” the light comes up a little; the planes are a little more visible, the men a little more visible. Then, we’re introduced to the leads as they come up, inexplicably, against two MiG 28s. This—in the Indian Ocean, where everything should be fine and dandy. An exchange of fire and this would be like Tonkin all over again. But, this time for real. And, involving planes instead of boats. The reference is important because, like the other movies this past month, Vietnam hangs like a shadow over the whole thing. It’s not as obvious as Rambo or Commando or even Lethal Weapon . It’s not as deliberately left behind as Die Hard —r...

I really wanted to have some fun and write about the homoerotic subtext in Commando for Day 7, but as I was readying to start the movie, I turned on that Siskel and Ebert special I mentioned the other day . (You can watch it in four parts on YouTube starting here .) And, I was reminded of my research for my Rambo speeches a few years back... (fall 2010, I think). One of the things I watched while putting together my two speeches on Rambo was an episode or two of Rambo: The Force of Freedom , Rambo's cartoon that aired in 1986--between Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rambo III . I'll get into Rambo more in the next week (i.e. I'm watching Rambo next for this month of 80s action movies), so I won't get into too much detail there (yet). But, as I'm looking into some information about this special--I do scholarly writing so I like to know the specific citation for my sources (even if, for this blog at least, I sometimes let a hyperlink suffice)--and I find reference ...

I don't know how long before Commando was released in October 1985 it was that the protagonist was not an ex- special forces soldier but an ex- Israeli Mossad agent and played not by Arnold Schwarzenegger but Gene Simmons, but, that, indeed, was how it was. Yes, that Gene Simmons. I've read that the idea may have even come from Gene Simmons, but at some point he passed on it. Some version of the script was offered to Nick Nolte and eventually it went to Arnold Schwarzenegger. I've written before about how what was supposed to be adapted into Commando 2 instead turned into Die Hard , so it should be no surprise how many changes a movie goes through when it's being developed. Just like life, going through unexpected changes... Kidding. One deliberately personal entry at a time is just fine. Still, it is interesting to think about what might have been if the basic plot here--ex- whatever has to return to the violence when his daughter is kidnapped--had been...

In 1985, Siskel and Ebert did a special episode about how Hollywod was "selling war" to children. This was in response to movies like Rambo and Commando , which gave us a very different view of war and violence than older films like, say, The Deer Hunter . War was a commodity to be sold and enjoyed. The last big commercial product of the Cold War was large scale violence as spectacle... Except, that wasn't really something new, was it? The tone had changed (again), but war and violence had been spectacles to be sold for a long time. In the 1980s, though, it seems like that spectacle was quite mundane and almost common. Not just the R-rated action movies or slasher films, but also more "family-friendly" films like Iron Eagle or Russkies . But, I don't really feel like reiterating the same point again today. Simply put, Americans love violent films and in the 1980s we loved them a little extra. And, Commando is so obviously built around the idea of the Un...

Commando begins with an execution in a suburban neighborhood. Cooke--AKA the black guy--and... the other guy gun down (presumably Lawson) from Matrix's old unit. Before we cut away, the dialogue from the car dealership scene starts. The dealer says today's title. He's talking about the car, but the timing suggests otherwise. Another thing this movie shows us, but only so very briefly, as far as American workmanship goes, is home video pornography. Now, if you've seen the movie only once long ago, you might be wondering what I'm talking about. Picture it. Sunspot Motel. Matrix and Cindy are looking through Sully's stuff when Cooke arrives. Matrix tells Cindy to mess up the bed, which she immediately does even though he offers no explanation. He disappears momentarily to turn on the shower then returns to rip open Cindy's blouse. Not too sexist there, using her as a pawn to open the door. Then, Cooke comes in and fighting ensues. A little way into the fight,...

Maolsheachlann raises an interesting point as comment to yesterday 's blog entry: "You could be a pacifist and a rugged individualist, though... Radical libertarians tend to be very distrustful of armies and wars." My response (and it leads into today's topic or I would just put it in the comments section): 1) I don't think--and I'm risking a True Scotsman logical fallacy here, but I'm going to go for it anyway--a true pacifist could ever be a rugged individualist. To me, pacifism comes hand in hand with collectivism. There is no point to peace without other people. 2) While I suggested--and still do suggest--that rugged individualism favors the use of force, that force does not have to come from a State's army, nor does it have to come in the form of war. Maolsheachlann continues: My problem with the standard critique of masculinity and femininity in movies is that movies show us ideals. They inevitably (and desirably, in my view) simplify every...

Before I get into Commando tonight, I must share something. My class schedule for the winter quarter includes a performance studies class (from which I hope to find a few new sources for my thesis since it involves the presentation of self and whatnot) and a media theory class. I missed the first night of the media theory class last week because of the Utah trip but made it tonight and the class consisted basically of a watching a movie and then discussing it afterward, picking it apart in different ways. I'm sitting there like, I was going to do that anyway . Next week, we're supposed to bring a clip from a movie of our choice and then talk about that movie using the criteria we used tonight. We're talking about what constitutes "Classic Hollywood Cinema." (Going by the 8 criteria we used tonight, Commando qualifies except for what seems to be a lot of handheld camera.) One of the things that got mentioned was rugged individualism . That term became a thing...

(No, I'm not watching The Terminator .) Three guys dead in the first four minutes, cut to a mysterious guy walking through the woods with a chainsaw. It's like a horror film until we see the comforting sight of Arnold Schwarzenegger's face. Then it gets really scary. I mean, what had he been at this point, anyway? (Strange I-camera bit going on as his daughter sneaks up on him. He should've just turned the axe on her and saved himself a lot of trouble later... Was that callous? I can't tell. The Terminator was just feeding a deer on my screen. Nothing seems real right now. So, who cares about the life of Samantha Micelli?) Hercules in New York --dubbed. The Villain , Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer , in which he can barely say some lines or emote properly, and The Terminator , in which he doesn't have to. Being Conan certainly made him hero material, but coming into this movie, I think I probably was hoping for something like The Terminator , ...

John McClane was born in 1966 and his name was Joe Leland. He was born in the pages of a novel called The Detective by Roderick Thorp. In 1968 he would be played by Frank Sinatra in a film adpatation. In 1979, Thorp would publish a sequel called Nothing Lasts Forever in which Joe Leland was trapped in a building taken over by terrorists. Supposedly, Sinatra had a clause in his contract for The Detective that made him the mandatory first offer to play the character in a sequel. I'm not sure when that happened, but at some point, Sinatra turned down the role. The script was reworked as a sequel to Commando but Arnold didn't like it... I should mention, since I probably will not have cause to cite specific passages that I am going by information from Ryan Lambie's Den of Geek piece, "The strange history of the Die Hard movies," 24 November 2011; Andrew Barloq's I Choose To Stand blog entry, "Retrospective: Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)," 10 De...

This isn't really part two to yesterday's bit about therapy. But, it does follow in its way, and I just had to use the rest of the psychiatrist's line as a title. Having dealt with Daughton and Bacha again yesterday, I wanted to get back to gender. In particular, I'd reference the following from Daughton: Connors must embark on what is traditionally a feminine rather than a masculine quest, journeying inward in order to encounter and submit to the power of the dark goddess, rather than outward in order to master and claim some object in the external world. I don't know about the dark goddess bit--I'll get to more on that in a moment--but I appreciate that, in this instance at least, Daughton calls it "traditionally feminine " instead of simply "feminine." I've said before, dividing the quest into two based on gender seems, in the present, inappropriate. But, looking backward, it makes sense to look at stories in terms of gender-divid...