the groundhog day project

Sometimes Roger Ebert was just wrong. I still enjoy his reviews, and he is often worth citing, but that doesn't mean he is infallible. Regarding Footloose , he writes : "Footloose" is a seriously confused movie that tries to do three things, and does all of them badly. It wants to tell the story of a conflict Ina. Town, it wants to introduce some flashy teenage characters, and part of the time it wants to be a music video. Also, Roger writes: I seriously doubt a town like this exists anywhere outside of standard movie clichés. The town of Henryetta, Oklahoma, has a law--dating back to 1979 but still on the books as of last year --restricting where public dances can happen, and apparently the law "watered down an earlier ruling that banned all public dancing regardless of location." The ordinance forbade "dance halls" from being located within 500 feet of any church or school. And, the film was supposedly inspired by Elmore City, also in Oklahoma...

And, really, I could just leave it at that. That image is all you need to understand how amazingly hilarious and horrendous the dancing can be in Groundhog Day . So long, folks.             Or, I could say more. I could make it all formal. Like, for example, “A History of Social Dance in America” at American Antiquarian tells us that, In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, dance became a forum for purposeful social activity; elaborate balls and private parties offered a means for a gentleman to seek his wife and allowed friends and family to share the new trends in music and dance. Of course, be careful of the wife you might find, for she may dance like this: Debbie doesn’t always dance like that, though. Note this bit from earlier. You can see Fred and Debbie at the bottom right. But, why jump straight to the banquet at the end of the movie. Let’s go back to a group I like to refer to as the “crazies.” They’re at Gobbler’s Knob and we see...

Today will be short, to make up for yesterday’s lengthy response to the IMDb goofs page. Think of it like Phil’s toaster morning (only less suicidal). Ending a month of the Groundhog Day Project I realize I never spelled out explicit rules for what I’m doing. All I really said from the beginning was that “I will watch Groundhog Day every day, and I will explore its aspects and research into its tangents. I will run the film into the ground and, I hope, build it right back up again.” As for that running the film into the ground bit, one of my sisters said I was taking the fun out of the movie. On the one hand, I’m fine with that. I have to take away the fun to deconstruct the film entirely. But, it can still be fun again in the future. Hell, I still enjoy it. A couple mornings ago, I posted the following on the Facebook page : I started today in a bad mood but you know what fixed it? watching Groundhog Day =] On the one hand, that is a very good thing considering what I’m doing...