the groundhog day project

I like to find in-universe reasons for things even if practical behind-the-scenes reasons explain stuff. That's a given. One that caught my attention watching Back to the Future yesterday was Doc Brown's photos of scientists. In 1955, he has four of them on his mantel--Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein. So, it took the second viewing in as many days to notice that in the opening tracking shot, there are just three of these photos hanging by Doc's bed in his 1985 abode--the garage of his old house (which burned down and then he sold off the property-- and which exists (the filming location anyway) next to a Burger King that is still there--and I forgot about heading there after work to get a photo... His 1955 house exterior--the Gamble House--still exists not too far from here as well, but I didn't get over there either. I would love it if I had time to get to every nearby location--and living in LA, there are a lot, for many a film--b...

I have already written about Halloween in this blog. In fact I wrote about every Halloween film but the Rob Zombie remakes: Halloween - day 427 - he came home Halloween II - day 431 - got angry and started beating her Halloween III: Season of the Witch - day 433 - this whole thing is a big joke Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers - day 443 - maybe nobody knows how to stop him Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers - day 446 - uncle. boogeyman Halloween [6]: The Curse of Michael Myers - day 451 - what's the boogeyman? Halloween H20 - day 453 - no musical sleeping bags, no booze, no drugs, no kidding Halloween: Resurrection - day 455 - every murderous impulse we've ever had I covered slasher films for a month, cited Carol Clover's book Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film and Richard Nowell's book Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle , cited numerous published essays, you know, took the genre seriou...

Groundhog Day wasn’t the first exploration of the day-on-repeat phenomena, or its technical term per Star Trek : a temporal causality loop. Though, we shouldn’t confuse this with the causality loop of a “predestination paradox.” And, now that we’ve lost the non sci-fi fans, let’s discuss these loops as represented in a handful of relatively recent (one of these actually predates the release of, though not the writing of, Groundhog Day ) television shows. And, they are all genre shows. And, I watched all seven of these yesterday, declaring on Twitter that it was time loop day. Just to get the list out of the way (and there are more episodes like this left from other shows (and movies) so I may have to do this again sometime ), the seven episodes are: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - “Life Serial” Angel - “Time Bomb” Stargate SG-1 - “Window of Opportunity” Star Trek: The Next Generation - “Cause and Effect” The X-Files - “Monday” Supernatural - “Mystery Spot” Fringe - “White Tulip...