the groundhog day project

I don't know why The Great Outdoors starts with "Yakety Yak", but it does. And it reminds me of my recent watching of Stand By Me . A far better film, but they are so different that it's hardly worth comparing. But, comparisons are inevitable when movies come and movies go time and time again. Like, John Candy was was in--what?--two of these childhood fixture movies of mine: Vacation and Splash . He was also in Planes, Trains & Automobiles , which I spent a week on in this blog back in November 2014, except that movies was not a fixture with my family. I'm not even sure we saw it on the big screen. If any Thanksgiving movie made the list, it would be Dutch , which came out in '91 so might be early enough to qualify, or Home for the Holidays , but that didn't come out until '95, far too late for the list, thought we did watch it probably every year for a while there. ( Dutch and Home for the Holidays also each got a week in that November of T...

It's interesting watching Stand By Me these past few days things I notice that I didn't notice (or couldn't have noticed) before. When I watched this as a kid, I had no idea what card game they were playing in the treehouse. I've since played 31 a bunch of times, but only just a handful of years ago. Some background extras reflected in the glass behind Gordie right after he fires Chris' gun accidentally, walk the same bit of block twice--two different takes, I assume. But, also--and this one has an interesting meaning for me--the music that plays when Gordie goes into his brother Denny's bedroom to get his canteen (pretty sure it's just called "Denny's Theme" but I don't think the score was ever released properly, just the soundtrack with all the old songs) sounds a lot--to my untrained ear at least--like a part of the score for a far more recent film Never Look Away . But, then that connection has me thinking about Never Look Away and al...

Taxi guy gets sees a woman hit by a car, takes the time to set down his stuff before he casually checks on her. Jogging Lady says they should call the police but makes no effort to do so. Taxi guy casually steals hit-and-run victim's purse and walks away. New guy drives up and, when it seems like he isn't needed, hits on Jogging Lady as the camera drifts down the street, eventually happening upon the driver who just hit that woman, his mother, as he arrives home and goes inside to light some candles at an altar of some sort and then (possibly even more evil than running down his own mother with a car or performing satanic rituals) cuts photos out of a book. He arbitrarily sets a filmstrip to running as the police arrive and we're left wondering, what are we watching? And, is that filmstrip of his mother pushing him in his toy car? Is this poetry? Is that image supposed to rhyme with him hitting her with his car? But then we wander off with a passerby, whose on his way to d...

True Romance is Tarantino by way of Tony Scott. Almost immediately, the dialogue plays like straight Tarantino. And Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) almost feels like a slightly more grown up Mark Hunter from Pump Up the Volume . Almost. (Meanwhile, I’m here because of Brad Pitt. Or, by way of Brad Pitt. The poetry of these many degrees is almost at its inevitable end.) Alabama (Patricia Arquette) gives us some (probably) pointless Exporration... Does that work? Exporration ? Exposition crossed with narration. I wanted to get either introduction or opening into the compound word but neither one really fits with exposition or narration without just sounding like the two words mashed up next to each other instead of into each other. Anyway, it’s the usual bullshit opening stuff, life’s about to change and I didn’t expect it and all that. (Meanwhile, I want to explain. The short version is that it was a suggestion/dare from my friend Lane, current president of our speech team—to...

August: Osage County offers us pseudo-voiceover to start. Bev (Sam Shepard) is talking to, as it turns out, Johna (Misty Upham) who is hiring to help him out--he's getting old. But, she's offscreen until he's stopped talking, until Violet (Meryl Streep) interrupts. It's a cheat. There will, of course, be no voiceover for the rest of the film. Then Bev leaves and the play gets going. And, it is a play, or was. Only a few scenes early on are really staged differently than they would have to be on stage. This is a talky film, the kind of movie that brings a big ol' family together and lets the sparks fly. Give us a family, throw in a funeral or a wedding or a holiday and the drama writes itself. I saw this two years ago, of course, when Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep were nominated for Oscars, but I actually don't remember much of the specifics anymore. In my head, it's filed away with the likes of The Celebration or Rachel Getting Married , or even Home for...

Watched six of the Time Loop TV episodes again today: Xena: Warrior Princess - "Been There, Done That" Haven - "Audrey Parker's Day Off" Eureka - "I Do Over" Supernatural - "Mystery Spot" Charmed - "Deja Vu All Over Again" Fringe - "White Tulip" I will not be writing about them specifically today. If you want to read about them, have a look at the original Time Loop TV Day entries: Day 25 – it’s like yesterday never happened Day 54 – another reason why today is especially exciting Day 144 – and we’re clear I also mostly finished my LEGO Gobbler's Knob today. Here's a blurry shot (I'll post clearer ones when it is done): It needs some more people, I think, to get a better crowded feel. I could get into a whole narrative on the building of that thing, but that might be boring. Today, for example, I took apart 193 collectible minifigures (to be sure I had the right parts available for the c...