the groundhog day project

Scroll down past the parenthetical if you want to get to the movie. (Author's note: I have not committed to doing this film (and its versions) for the entire month, but I have excluded my original plan for the month because I realized that the next movie ( Blade Runner ) I was going to spend a whole bunch of days on wasn't going to leave as much room for discussion because its versions are just alternate cuts, not deliberately separate versions of the story. The movie ( Brazil ) I was going to end the month with fits a little closer to this, but its variations are all about meddling after the fact, not planning. And, both films have been written about so much I don't know if I could offer much in the way of original insight... Oh, I'd give you something. And, it would, at least at some point, be amazing. But, a lot of it would be repeating other sources' takes on the films in question, especially Blade Runner . (The most original thing I could do there is not act...

The second episode of Day Break is called "What If They Run?" The cliffhanger ending, remember, Hopper and Rita were heading out of town, but trucks were waiting. Phil Connors never had to deal with this. Even when he managed to get out of town in the original screenplay--a narrative mistake, I think--there were not men waiting to kill him. (There's a handy intro setting up the repeating day before the second episode, though the opening line is a bit cheesy--"You think you're having a bad day?") Benesh (2011) talks about eating--the digestive metaphor--and makes some good points. I've written before about food (even mentioned Benesh, though at the time I was still avoiding reading her). And, I know these two things don't connect in any obvious way, but it occurs to me Hopper ate nothing in the first episode, just as Phil barely eats anything in Groundhog Day . And, I argued before, of course, that Phil doesn't have to eat, at all. Doesn'...