the groundhog day project

Maybe it is because I am old, or because this apartment is often quite noisy, or just because, but I like having subtitles turned on when I watch movies, especially when I'm writing this blog. The Private Eyes ' DVD has no subtitles. And, tonight, I've got a commentary track playing--costar and cowriter Tim Conway and director Lang Elliott--and can barely hear the dialogue from the movie. Fortunately, I have seen this movie so many times that I know the dialogue anyway. Lots of talk about the Biltmore House to start. Then, some talk about the car--I'm fairly sure Conway is kidding, but he implies that they didn't tell the car's owner they intended to crash it into the water. A bunch of things right away that are in the IMDb trivia section--stunt guy nearly drowned when that car was stuck in the mud, a valuable book went missing from the library and the FBI got involved. Perhaps once we're past the opening credits, there will be more interesting insights. C...

(Note: in the chronological order of this childhood deconstruction, The Private Eyes should have been several movies ago. I borrowed the DVD from my sister, set it aside and forgot to put it in its place. So, I will end my 1980 movies with this one from April of that year. A movie I have seen far too many times. And, not enough.) I have often heard that the most accurate medical tv shows were comedies like Scrubs , the most accurate cop shows comedies like Barney Miller . Is it any wonder that The Private Eyes actually has as good a mystery at its center as many dramatic mysteries, and despite its bumbling heroes, makes pretty good sense along the way? It opens with a murder, of course. And, despite the bickering between Lord and Lady Morley (Fred Stuthman and Mary Nell Santacroce), there isn't any immediate hint that this is a comedy. Then there is the overly long animated sequence with the opening credits that makes it clear this isn't a serious film (but I wish t...

I've read in more than one place that Barney Miller was the most realistic cop show and Scrubs was the most realistic medical show. So, I come into the comedy The Shakiest Gun in the West with high hopes, looking for a deconstruction of the genre, touching on common tropes and putting a light on them by making fun of them. I hope. (Haywood (Don Knotts) offers up a graduation speech--he's graduated from a dentistry school and is going to head into the west to practice there--and reminds me that I should share this: Nothing to do with this month of Westerns, of course, but as you should know if you're here this blog was all about Groundhog Day for the first year, and I still come back to that film once a month. That right there was my cap today for graduation. Technically, I won't have my Master's degree until I defend my thesis in the fall but I participated in the ceremony now rather than wait until next June. All my coursework is done. So, there's no...