the groundhog day project

Rebecca: "The ocean contains 97% of the world's water and generates over 70% of the Earth's oxygen and replenishes our fresh water through the clouds. If our oceans are failing, then so are we." Just obvious and trite enough as to be passed off as winning. Not profound, though. The camera lingers later on the debate lines from Justin that are supposed to be profound. The thing is, this is a weak ending to an argument. But, all of the debate in Thumbsucker is fairly weak, simplistic to the point of being meaningless. Ashley: "The mark of a secure nation is not that conflicts are resolved quickly, but that conflicts do not arise." Seriously, what does that mean in any practical sense? A nation can only be secure if it has no conflicts ever? Sure, she's likely talking about military conflicts specifically, but the film takes these debate bits out of context and expects them to make sense. Which would be fine, if we were literally just hearing the las...

Thumbsucker does not have the voiceover (and accompanying cutaways) that make Mills' Beginners and 20th Century Women what they are. That necessarily makes the film a little less charming. (I wonder if the original script had that stuff, and Mills didn't have the clout to get away with it yet.) It's good, but it's not as... Yeah, charming was probably the right word. Or maybe the problem is that focusing so much on the teen here means there isn't the more experienced perspective of Beginners or 20th Century Women . Or maybe I just don't buy Keanu Reeves as a dentist.           There is a sort of cutaway, but played more like slightly odd establishing shots. Closeups on name tags, for example. And, maybe it's not fair to judge this film for its focus on the teen. The point of this film seems to be that the adults are just as unsure of things, just as undeveloped, just as incomplete as Justin is. His mother wants to win a date with an actor. H...

Long day. Oscar nominations at 5:30am. Some teacher stuff I had to do on the computer, while setting up an Oscars page on Facebook. Busy, busy, busy, as a Bokononist might say. Caught up on some TV in the afternoon, then Republican Debate. And that went overtime. Finally, just watched and livetweeted Galaxy Quest in honor of Alan Rickman, whose death was announced this morning. Great actor. Don't think I said enough about him when I blogged about Die Hard ( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ) a year ago. I figure I'll get back to Charlie Kaufman soon, maybe tomorrow... or I might watch a few of the Oscar-nominated films I haven't seen yet first. Thoughtful today. But, not feeling too wordy. (Especially after tweeting through the debate and a movie. Go read my tweets if you like.)

At the start of Bulworth , Senator Jay Billington Bulworth (Warren Beatty, also directing and co-writing) is in the middle of a crisis. His vote is expected by a particular lobby--something to do with an insurance bill--but he's... Well, he's over it. He's been up all night watching his campaign ads, and he's... He's depressed. Tired of lying, I suppose. He hasn't eaten or slept in three days. And, he's about to hire someone to kill him after making a $10 million deal with a lobbyist for his daughter. He doesn't get along with his wife (Christine Baranski, playing her coolest) but I suppose he cares about his daughter. We don't meet her, so we must assume. He's off to a junket in Los Angeles, starting with an African-American church, when one of those ads he was watching before was against affirmative action; I don't think we can assume that he has much support among the African-American community. For the record, I've seen this movie...

I was going to talk about wolf stew today. That will wait; I'll save it for later in the week when I've run out of things to say about The Grey . Instead religion... (There is a thing about wolf stew in relation to this film, by the way, a behind-the-scenes controversy. But...) Religion... (First, I spent today at Knott's Berry Farm. It started raining while we were there, and we still managed another couple rides. Point being, it has been a long day. But, I'm not particularly tired--it's well after 10pm as The Grey begins. Rather, I'm a little energized from treading old ground on Facebook . See, I used to debate politics on there all the time, long drawn out arguments with people I knew wouldn't be changed by what I said. But, I did it anyway. I like the idea of speaking up when you think something right. I don't do it enough these days... at least, on Facebook . I link to articles without comment, I offer brief posts about topics that matter fa...

I don't particularly know where this film is going. But, it's opening scene intrigues me. We open on two young people, naked in bed, kissing. But the film doesn't really show us their bodies. So, we know this film won't shy away from human feeling, from sensuality, but we also know this film is probably aiming for a PG-13. Second scene (not counting the guy from the previous scene waking up late and running to get to what turns out to be school) is a philosophy class. Hard to know if this film will succeed in being thoughtful but it certainly wants to be. The movie, by he way, is After the Dark . This philosophy class--it's the last day of the schoolyear--gets underway first by discussing the usefulness of philosophy then covers a few basic philosophical exercises--the infinite monkey idea, the trolley problem, some other one I hadn't heard of involving trying to get your friends to save your life--then they move on to a bigger idea (which I think is going t...

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #423 Love is a Quantum Event We experience love as an emotion, but the feeling of love, the desire to be close to the beloved, is actually an unconscious expression of the dynamic nature of sub-atomic particles eternally trying to regroup into the singularity that was their primordial state before the Big Bang blew them apart. While this knowledge helps to explain almost all human behavior, it is completely useless for writing song lyrics and Hallmark cards. Don’t even think about it for marriage proposals. Despite that titlecard getting my attention last night, I was thinking about not just love but death after yesterday’s entry . And, that—and noting the three times I’ve dealt with obituaries in this blog in my recent recap —got me to thinking about one of my favorite books—a comic book actually— Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá. From the back cover of the collected version: WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT DAYS OF YOUR LIFE? Meet Brás de Oliva Do...