the groundhog day project

Today is Day 1279, which means that 1278 days ago... No, that's that not true. Day 1000 , I stopped this blog. I had completed (except for a few edits required by faculty later) my master's thesis about blogging and about the presentation of identity on the Internet, and I decided a few days earlier that 1000 was a nice round number and I would finish up this thing and do something else. I tried my hand at YouTube movie reviews for a bit, tried to build a review blog , and eventually made my way back here. So, really, it was 1644 days ago that I sat down to watch Groundhog Day and write about it. Every day. For a year. And, I altered the course of my life. Now, arguably, every little decision does that. One of the points you could take from Groundhog Day . Each little decision has repercussions. I wish the shows around them were better (so I could recommend them), because Joan of Arcadia had a science fair scene and John from Cincinnati had a parking lot barbecue scene th...

Both Brigsby Bear and Dave Made a Maze , about which I have been obsessing a bit of late-- Brigsby Bear Dave Made a Maze day 1229 - dreams and imaginations to help us escape day 1230 - it means something day 1231 - the best version of yourself day 1243 - i wanted to make something day 1244 - it's a little on the nose day 1245 - get the story to come off the page day 1246 - everything we've got to work with day 1247 - people are gonna want to see this shit day 1248 - everyone is assholes --deal in a fundamental need to (1) complete something meaningful (2) with the help of friends (3) in order to move on to some semblance of a normal life. In both cases, (4) the process ends with the destruction of the world... sort of. In Brigsby , in the film within the film, the entire universe has to be reset (reminding me of one of my favorite movies ever, The Fountain ) for Brigsby, and for James, to have a new beginning. In Dave , the labyrinth has to be completed and then d...

I found a clip of Kevin Smith reacting to Brigsby Bear last night. He laughed, he cried. Exclaim called it "awkward as all hell". I thought it was beautiful. But, of course, the Internet is full of outspoken dicks and pickers of nits. Hell, I'm one of them. (By the way, on my original review of Swiss Army Man last year (which has since been transferred from one YouTube channel to another, so the comment is gone), the first comment was a guy pointing out that I looked like I was about to cry near the end of it. No overt criticism, but just pointing it out without extra commentary suggests judgment. Like how dare anyone have an emotional response to a film? Hell, when it comes to how I rate movies on IMDb, an emotional response, regardless of objective quality, usually means I'll at least rate a movie an 8 out of 10. I love an emotional response. I love a movie that makes me think, makes me feel.) I am watching Dave Made a Maze again as I think about this past...

I tend to like weird little movies. A couple of my favorites from last year were The Lobster and Swiss Army Man . A couple of my favorites from this year now would be Brigsby Bear and Dave Made a Maze . I'm gonna watch both of those again tonight because... Well, because I can. The year is coming to an end. It's Oscar season, the Golden Globes are just over a week away, and it's time to start putting it all together, some perspective on 2017 in movies—putting off the perspective of my childhood in movies for a few days from now (but I will get back to that)—and make some recommendations perhaps... First, there's this—when Dave Made a Maze art director Jeff White was asked by Tessa Morrison at Other Worlds , "Knowing everything you learned from this, what would you travel back in time and tell yourself on Day One of fabrication [of the cardboard sets]?": I'm not sure that there was anything I could tell myself at that point that I would have believed. ...

I would especially note the kitchen scene late in the film between Dave (Nick Thune) and Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani). It goes a little something like this... Keep in mind, Annie has bought into the maze (she is the one who hangs the towel over the exit to keep the Minotaur inside). The apartment has been taken over by the maze. They have just come up with the plan to create the chrysalis at the heart of the maze to give the whole a weak spot. Dave didn't make a weak spot originally because, "then someone could destroy it." Harry and Annie don't come right out and say it, exactly, but they frame failure (or the potential for it) as part of life. No matter how much Dave wanted this maze to last, it is supposed to have a weak spot, because everything has a weak spot. That is life itself. Success really matters because to get there you overcome the potential for failure. Dave says, of the maze, "This is the only thing I've ever started that's worth finishi...

One more time: Dave Made a Maze . Because repetition is the heart and soul of this blog, of my life, of life itself. Day in day out, what makes it all interesting and worth bothering are the little things, the moments that make one day unique and different from the next. Dave's incorrect use of "tertiary" for example--when friends of mine make silly mistakes with grammar (or, Phil forbid, I make one) I notice. I don't always correct them. But, I note it and if I had the memory capacity of, say, Santa Claus, I would have a list at the end of every year and I would let people know. Like, Hi Jared, you have made [this many] grammatical errors in public this year . Hi Shari, please repair the grammatical issues and try better next year . And, so on. Eventually ending with myself: Hi Robert, you have made thousands of grammatical errors, and far too many typos to ever be forgiven. You have to do better next year. Clear and civil communication is essential to a peaceful ...

Being the Groundhog Day enthusiast/obsessive/blogger that I am, it is interesting to me that out of all the characters in Dave Made a Maze , the one who never actually enters the maze is the hobo played by Rick Overton, aka Ralph from Groundhog Day . The one guy--who just might be Ralph all these years later--who has been around this kind of relentless, repetitive, lesson-making fantastical venture before, is the one who never participates now. (Not that he, you know, ever really necessarily knew what Phil was going through in that time loop. The closest he might have come to understanding it may only have been on that night that he and Gus were quite drunk. And, of course, they would not remember it the next day, anyway.) Also, in the opening credits, he gets a "with". The hobo is, of course, the person that, by choice or circumstance, exists outside the normal channels of everyday life. Everyone else is eventually caught up in the cardboard labyrinth in some way. Even t...

I saw All the Money in the World today but I have nothing really to say about it. Performances were fine, but it was a bit too plot-driven to really offer any insight into the characters. Solid but nothing special. So, the next movie on my "movie life" childhood deconstruction list is For Your Eyes Only . I watched that once before for this blog when Roger Moore died. I will likely get to it tomorrow. Instead, I am watching Dave Made a Maze . I will save you the jump over to IMDb--though why anyone wouldn't want an excuse to jump over to IMDb, I don't know--and say it is about Dave (Nick Thune), who builds a cardboard box fort in his living room that turns out to be bigger on the inside. His friends go in after him, along with a documentary crew.           Rick Overton (Ralph from Groundhog Day ) plays a hobo that Dave's friend Gordon (Adam Busch) brings in because he says he knows cardboard.           There's a Minotaur...