the groundhog day project

Ben wants a big answer. His story here begins with a dream that leads to the design of a new antenna the leads to the space bubble thing, which leads to the Thunder Road spaceship which leads to the alien vessel and Ben wants it all to mean something. Like, there's got to be a reason he and Wolfgang are bullied, when Trisha over at Charles M. Jones Junior High School is just as much a nerd... but maybe not as much of a geek. A reason why Steve Jackson and his friends are assholes. A reason why Darren's father is the way he is. Why Darren's mom died when he was young. Why movies like War of the Worlds and This Island Earth can lift Ben out of his mundane suburban life. Why he can't manage the confidence to talk to Lori Swenson. Ben is still a child. He's got a crush on Lori but when he gets the opportunity to hover outside her bedroom window, he isn't looking for her to be undressing--as Darren points out, it's too early in the evening for that--but is e...

Watching Howl again. Feeling preachy. Feeling political. Tired of so many news stories about refugees, about terrorists, about transgender men and women using the "wrong" bathrooms and scaring all the nice, upstanding, good Christian folk. How dare anyone want to flee a warzone for somewhere safer. How dare anyone lash out at power when they feel impotent. How dare... Actually, those two cover the transgender thing, too. It's all some bullshit war. Christianity being persecuted, of course, because the rest of us (and some of them) don't want them to be allowed to discriminate and hate and hurt and destroy just because "God" says it's okay. And, I'm watching a film. A film about a poem. A poem about a world destroying those who dare to be different, about those who dare to be different trying to destroy the world, or at least to reshape it into something new, something less demanding and restrictive. A film that couldn't exist at the time of i...

Speaking of a repetitive day-to-day, Phil Connors embodies that. I mean, in Pittsburgh, going to the station, repeating the same barely accurate weather information day in and day out, then a little banter with Nan and Kenny, then out on the town to pick up a woman to bring back to his apartment. He's already made his way through the secretarial pool, even has to avoid a few of those women. He's starting to feel as if he will never be able to settle down... at least in the moments that it occurs to him that he should. And, in an earlier incarnation of the script, he has found Stephanie. He didn't mean to treat her badly. He even told her, explicitly, that he didn't have time for a "real relationship." One of these days, a major network is going to call him up and he doesn't want to have to worry about a girlfriend or, worse, a wife, to affect his decision to go. His immediate decision to go, that is. Leave Pittsburgh as far behind him as he did Clevela...

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...

In the past 24 hours, I've watched Toy Story , Toy Story 2 and five Toy Story shorts (don't know the proper order, but they are the three "Toons" Hawaiian Vacation , Small Fry and Partysaurus Rex ; Toy Story of Terror! and Toy Story that Time Forgot ). For the record, I have never seen more than a couple minutes of the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command cartoon. Right now Toy Story 3 is playing. The "end" of the feature story, of course, leads into those shorts; they are all set after the toys become Bonnie's. Still, it is an ending of a sort of the story of these toys. (Those shorts focus more on other characters more than, say, Woody or Buzz (except Small Fry ) or Jessie (though the climax of Toy Story of Terror! does depend on her). Instead (taking the order above), they focus on Barbie and Ken (minor nitpick: Barbie and Ken stay at Sunnyside at the end of Toy Story 3 , so they really shouldn't be with Bonnie's toys), a fast food restau...

EXT. VIEWSITE - NIGHT A black Camaro is parked at the side of the road. The city twinkles beyond. INT. CAR - SAME Two teenagers, engaged in a first-rate makeout session. One of them is Roger Murtaugh's daughter Rianne. The other is MARK, he of the hilarious dimples. They are kissing when Rianne suddenly pulls away: RIANNE Mark, I gotta get home. MARK Would you quit worrying? Your mom thinks you're asleep and your dad's busy shooting crooks. RIANNE He said he'll shoot you if we have sex. MARK Some things are worth dying for. Interrupt this forgotten scene to ROLL EYES. He leans in and kisses her. Passion, horniness. Something. He runs a hand inside her sweater. She starts to resist. Gives in. RIANNE Wait. She takes out her gum and sticks it to the steering wheel. Leans over to kiss him again. FACE comes INTO FRAME. Right outside the window. Crewcut. Shirt and tie. No less than Mr. Joshua himself, as we -- CUT TO: (p. 79-80) I can't decide if it's...

I We start Dutch in the parking outside the mansion where the party’s going on. We’re out with the attendants. Then, we rise up over the action and CUT TO inside, we’re still hovering. Like spies, like we shouldn’t be there, and we shouldn’t. The people who should be at a party like this just won’t be watching this movie. And, that’s ok. As long as we like class division to perpetuate itself... I’m reminded of Levine’s (1992) piece about the “Folklore of Industrial Society.” Popular cinema divided the masses. Levine cites Gans’ (1962) research into the television-viewing habits of 1950s Italian working-class families in Boston’s West End; Gans found that, “Although the television was on constantly, actual viewing was highly selective and was structured to filter out themes inimical to the life of the peer group and to accept those characters and situations that confirmed the group’s values” (p. 1380). We don’t just accept whatever culture throws at us. We are selective, often to re...

There are two things that need be covered today, and they will connect at least in part, but mostly they may up tangentially passing each other in the night. They are an old standby—feminism, sexism , gender roles , whatever you want to label it for simplicity’s sake—and something relatively (I covered, somewhat, the same area two weeks ago, while writing about The Ring Two ) new—the sequel and what it does to the original. I watched Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 last night after finishing yesterday’s entry . As it got going, I actually thought it was interesting and I wondered why I had horrible memories of watching it before. Then, it got further in, and I knew why. The movie is a mess. GoodBadFlicks makes a pretty good argument that the film should have been far better than it is; you can see his video here: (Or click here because that video embedding doesn't seem to be working.) The movie was supposed to be something... else, for sure. But, it probably still wo...

1. I am currently "watching" Stargate SG-1 - "Window of Opportunity" and playing Carcassonne . I watched Groundhog Day this morning. 2. Yesterday's blog entry was not good. It was so not good that I don't even want to link to it here like I usually would. I do not want that trash just one click away... even though it's right over there in the list of links on the right. 3. Time has passed, so forget #1 and Tru Calling - "The Last Good Day" is on now. Role switch for Tru and Jack, and Tru's father says to Jack some crap about how his role has always been to make sure the day ended just like it did last time. Except, as I have complained before, until Jack showed up in town part way through season one, there was no one making the day change to counter Jack... unless there are rewindy people in every major city. Hell, maybe that's why Phil Connors was repeating his day. He was there to make sure the Old Man died. So, other than the ...

Briefly in class tonight we were talking about the "mean-world syndrome"—a part of George Gerbner's Cultivation Theory that tells us basically that the more we watch television, the gloomier our view of the world tends to be. Essentially, we watch TV shows or the news that includes say violence and murder and, while it's entirely unlikely for a lot of us to actually be exposed to such things in real life, we start to think it's more likely because, well, that's what we know . TV becomes reality. That got me to thinking about Groundhog Day because, well, everything gets me thinking about Groundhog Day . And, I wanted to say, basically, that Phil Connors, even pre-loop, is not a bad guy. I tend to think that fundamentally none of us are bad people. But, sometimes only certain actions of ours get a response, so those actions get repeated. And, we don't even need responses to be positive, we just need them to be . Phil's insults get more immediate resul...

Daughton (1996) argues that by the time of Groundhog Day , the world no longer supported the "traditional masculine belief system" that Phil Connors represents. She calls it "the masculinity of the 19th century" and "no longer functional for men today" (p. 141). She cites Rapping (1994) in assessing the 'juvenilized' version of American manhood [as] Hollywood's answer to a real political crisis in the meaning of masculinity... We live in a world that has made old-fashioned heroism hard to believe in... (p. 141, quoting Rapping, p. 118-9) Daughton suggests the Groundhog Day answer as follows: "In fact, the rhetorical point of Groundhog Day has more to do with its protagonist coming to appreciate the stereotypically feminine focus on connection with others, than with reinscribing the stereotypically masculine individuation and domination glorified in films.... (p. 141) (And, I believe I've quoted that passage before, but I will ...