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...

I wanted to continue the "survey" today, throw out far too many questions-- (For example, under the banner of Action Films, I has broken the genre down into Adventure, Disaster, Superhero, and Heist movies, and there was a question about your preference between Cars or Parkour?) --but I don't want to. I also thought I'd be watching The Room again tonight, but I am unexpectedly cut down to just the one screen for the next couple hours, and I have time to write. I did see a movie today. Of course. Atomic Blonde . I liked it more than my friend Jared--with whom I saw it--did, but I thought it felt a little long and had that first Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible problem of actively trying to be overcomplicated just for the sake of being overcomplicated. Still, I was entertained, and I rather liked the way most of the violence played out, more brutal and real than most action movies, as if the characters were really getting hurt. For a film that introduces its lead na...

Sing Street --and, I think I'm about done with this film, I swear--begins with Conor playing guitar and making up lyrics on the spot, mostly basing them on the phrases he can hear his parents Robert and Penny yelling from downstairs. Then you get a news report about poor folks from Ireland migrating to England to look for something better. Then, Robert and Penny gather their three kids together to announce that they're having money troubles and Conor has to transfer schools. He was going to a Jesuit school but now he's headed to the Christian Brothers (Catholic) school, Synge Street. In passing, we also learn that Brendan has dropped out of college. In the first three minutes, we know so much about what's to come. It's a great example of how to set up the status quo quickly. Conor is a musician. His parents' marriage is coming apart. Brendan is a slacker. And, Conor is headed to a new school. The plot is in motion. That opening bit with the singing and parents ...

In her review of Sing Street , Sheila O'Malley points out, "There are pitfalls everywhere in a coming-of-age period piece like this one." She argues that director John "Carney avoids them easily, keeping the film on its proper track" And, she explains how this works: "It's extremely confident: It knows what it wants to be, what story it wants to tell." And--coming back to the advice of the the other day--that's what a person needs to be, too. Gotta be confident. Gotta know what you want to be. Gotta know what story you want to tell, the story being you and how you present that self to the world. Easy to fake on the Internet. (I wrote a whole master's thesis about it.) Harder to fake in the real world. And, I mean real confidence, not the pathetic arrogance and ego-centrism that pretends to confidence online or, lately, in politics. Party lines draw people into corners where they're quicker to defend their positions out of the illusio...

I gotta come back to David Fishkind's piece at HTMLGiant . " Frances Ha comes so close to being a movie I needed, my generation needed, this world needed," he writes. The time has never been riper than [now] to cut down any encouragement among our youth to pursue a creative lifestyle." And, I think I might just stop quoting him there, because, why would a movie--a piece of art, mind you, want to tell anyone to stop making art? Sure, a piece of art could do that, I'm sure many pieces of art do do that. But, isn't it so much more enjoyable when it doesn't? For that matter, what feels like a better solution to me is to do more art, be more creative, and get the fucking capitalist sell outs who can't be bothered to be creative to maybe pay for a theater ticket now and again to make themselves better cultured, as it were, and support the artists that are inspired to actually do something with their lives even as the momentum of the modern world presses ...

I've got a theory, one minor part of my master's thesis, that among other things I do in this blog, I reference my knowledge of and experience with other films in order to 1) yeah, increase my credibility when talking about film, 2) obviously, to make my points using basic comparison and contrast, but maybe most importantly, 3) to manipulate the reader into thinking I know what I'm talking about, whether or not I actually do. Admittedly, that's just another way of saying #1, but the thing is, there's a certain clout to just having this blog, maintaining it for hundreds of days, watching movies day in and day out, that suggests to the casual reader that I must know something. #3 is supposed to be a negative version of #1. Like, yeah, I've got plenty of film knowledge, I've seen thousands of films, gotta brag about that from time to time, but I'm still just some blogger, a bit too full of myself sometimes, desperate for attention yet often actively avoidin...

[Rob Gordon's] Top five dream jobs Journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, 1976 to 1979 - Get to meet The Clash, Chrissie Hynde, Sex Pistols, David Byrne, get tons of free records. Producer, Atlantic Records - Get to meet Aretha, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke. More free records and a shitload of money. Any kind of musician. Besides classical or rap. Settle for being one of the Memphis Horns or something. I'm not asking to be Jagger or Hendrix or Otis Redding. Film Director. Any kind except German or silent. Architect Rob of course readily offers, "I'm not sure I even want to be an architect." Laura critiques his choices: "So you've got a list here of five things you'd do if qualifications and time and history and salary were no object? ... One of them you don't really want to do anyway." Rob proffers, "Well, I did put it at number five." And, Laura makes the point that matters. "Wouldn't you rather own your own record...

People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands, of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? - Rob Gordon (John Cusack), High Fidelity More importantly, do I watch too many movies because I have no life or do I have no life because I watch too many movies? Note, of course, I acknowledge there, it's "too many" movies. First, regarding the movie that's on right now-- High Fidelity --there is an excess of voiceover here, but this is one of those movies that knows how to use voiceover, how to use it to actually add to what's happening on screen. Plus, the voiceover is not quite voice over , rather Rob tends to talk to the camera, so it's voiceover plus fourth wall breaking. It shouldn't ...

No recap as we get into Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth . The plot just gets going. A note as it starts, though: I was surprised to see talk of this film in Shadows in Eden ; I hadn't thought that Clive Barker really had anything to do with this film. I have always thought of the first two as a British... thing, and this one the first... American entry in the series. We're introduced first to JP Monroe (Kevin Burnhardt), who buys a redesigned... the movies never call it this, but apparently, it's called the pillar of souls. That thing with all the faces on it seen at the very end of Hellbound . Anyway, JP buys it for a small bit of cash from an updated version of the creepy homeless guy--who actually isn't all that creepy. Kind of has a Kris Kristofferson vibe. Then, our lead--Joey Summers (Terry Farrell)--a reporter stuck with a hospital with nothing happening. Boring night, cameraman Doc (Ken Carpenter) leaves to cover a better story and then the Hellraiser bit arriv...

Clive Barker talks with Lisa Tuttle in 1991* about creating good gods and bad gods in fiction and he says, I think that is so much more interesting than the division into the white hats and the blacks, between human and non-human, where anything that is defined as "non-human," whether it be slug, shark, crab, Woman, is presented as this terrible threat. It's grotesque, and funny, and simple, and what bothers me is its simplicity. I mind it not because it's grotesque, but because it's simple-minded, and that's boring. You know what I mean? If you turn all of nature into something to be repulsed by, you ignore the fact that whatever is read one way as grotesque or frightening can also be read another way, as something beautiful, as a celebration of variegation and paradox. * original source unknown, but it's reproduced in Clive Barker's Shadows in Eden . I was thinking about why the producers did not want this film to be named, like its source materi...

As A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master begins, I realize I don’t really remember this movie. I know I’ve seen it, because I watched all of these movies on video in the 90s. It seems to begin with shared nightmares continuing without Freddy, which is an interesting idea. Joey, Kincaid and Kristen from the previous film in the series are back. Kristen is no longer played by Patricia Arquette... Speaking of which, I haven’t mentioned the big names that are in all of these slasher films. Kevin Bacon in Friday the 13th , Dennis Hopper in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 , Patricia Arquette and Laurence (billed as Larry) Fishburne in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors . (Ha, dog’s name is Jason. Wrong series.) Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street , Corey Feldman in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter . And of course Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween . All who went on to more mainstream success. Nice shot when Kristen’s mother drugged her so she’d sleep. The camera spins ...

That’s from The Sandman —Morpheus sentences the guy who imprisoned him to recurring awakening. Basically, he’s constantly under the impression he has just woken from a nightmare only to find himself in a new one. It’s like Jungian false awakening (Celia Green’s version thereof, especially) taken in a very dark direction. I’ve linked Groundhog Day to dreams before , of course. I’ve had a note since working through Benesh’s (2011) dissertation on Groundhog Day to get into false awakening as a topic, but in the modern parlance, I just wasn’t feeling it. Then, today, I was watching the latest episodes of Louie and there’s this surreal quality of late, with bizarre news reports— (For example: “Ten people died in the Bronx last night due to a fire that killed ten people in the Bronx last night during a fire.”) —and just as Louie’s new relationship is about to come to an end, there’s a hurricane coming into New York City. And then, suddenly, the hurricane, and the woman, are gone. ...

Benesh (2011) describes her approach as using "hermeneutics and a specific method of dream interpretation to amplify images as symbols of transformation" (p. ii). I don't know about you, but I need a break from Benesh and serious stuff. But, I like this dream thing she's got going on, so let's jump on that bandwagon instead. Assume that Groundhog Day is just a dream, that you have but slumbered here watching it and all that Shakespearean jazz. DOG ALERT: about 8 minutes in, a Scottie dog lamp in Phil's little half bath nook. DOG ALERT: another Scottie dog on the dresser. Dogs. Man's best friend, symbolic of loyalty to be sure. But, what else? In dreams, Dream Moods tells us that they also symbolize "intuition... generosity, protection, and fidelity... The dream suggests that your strong values and good intentions will enable you to go forward in the world and bring you success. The dream dog may also represent someone in your life who exhibit...

I'm not going to write about dreams again today, but I had to share one thing: my daughter had a dream involving Groundhog Day . She doesn't watch the movie every day like I do, of course, but she sees parts of it at least pretty regularly. Anyway, she's in a high school production of To Kill a Mockingbird as Scout--that's all the setup you need. In her dream, she discovers they're also doing a stage version of Groundhog Day and wants to try out for that. The role of Phil Connors, of course. But, then it turns out her rehearsal schedule for To Kill a Mockingbird is going to interfere with Groundhog Day so she can't play Phil. Instead, she's offered the consolation role (my phrasing) of Rita. In other news, my recent trip to Utah allowed me to watch the movie (or part of it anyway) in three states beside California. Watched about half the movie in Nevada, the first third or so in Arizona, all of it in Utah. My upcoming trip to Woodstock will add Illinois...

Benesh (2011) relies on John Izod’s (2000) Journal of Analytical Psychology essay, “Active imagination and the analysis of film” in linking the viewing of film to the process of dreaming. Izod’s original piece is interesting in that he argues, “Screened fiction has… the potential to help the individual grow in self-awareness” because “Experiencing affects aroused by fictions can resemble being drawn into a rehearsal for a possible, imagined future that just might (but more likely never will) occur in the individual’s life in the real world” (p. 267). The interesting thing here is that Izod’s description here implies that dreams lead to self-awareness. I like the idea of that… and maybe it seems obvious, but, of course, there’s still the possibility that dreams are simply the random firing of synapses as the body shuts down and lets the mind have some fun… But, even if—and I’d wager that as a big if —dreams are random, the specific contents still have to come from the material we’ve g...