the groundhog day project

I'm looking at the trivia section for Thelma & Louise in IMDb and I notice that it says the trailer presented the movie as a comedy. So, I watch the trailer and two things are immediately necessary to point out: 1. Yes, the trailer presents the film absolutely as a fairly light comedy, two women up to some crazy shenanigans. Police get involved, sure, but we don't really see how much. The trailer even explicitly cuts around the gun that Thelma points at the cop in his car. Shows him getting out with his hands up, but avoids showing the gun. We see an explosion, but there's no context, just more happy screaming and laughter. Like this is just a fun romp. Far more Outrageous Fortune than Kalifornia . Since Stephen Tobolowsky is in this, they should have just thrown in a shot of Ned Ryerson saying "Bing!" (Except, that footage wouldn't exist yet, obviously.) 2. What else were they going to do? 9 to 5 only worked like it did because it was a comedy, and ...

So there I am, watching the trailer for Falling Down and I'm wondering a few things: 1) did every trailer in 1993 have really annoying voiceover? 2) sure, the film has moments that make it a very, very, very, very were people seeing it in the theater expecting an outright comedy about "urban reality"? 3) was this the perfect companion piece for / counterpart to Groundhog Day ? and 4) is this film--or rather the main character of D-FENS (Michael Douglas) just a metaphor for America... 5) I don't mean in an obvious, Americans are angry and fed up with all the bullshit problems in the modern world... 6) hell, I don't even mean that he's a stand-in for Ameri cans at all, but rather 7) he is America itself, and Falling Down can be mapped onto a sort of moral history of America. And, I'm not that impressed with America's morals lately, so this might turn into a rant. (Mal, you can check out now, because the word "patriarchy" might show up.) My...

The opening of Falling Down reminds me of two very different things. (And, no, neither one is Fellini's 8 1/2 because, for some reason, that film has slipped through the cracks of my moviewatching experience... Which seems wrong, now that I think about it. I'm sure both Joel Schumacher and Jake Scott had the opening to 8 1/2 in mind, but I just cannot speak to Fellini's film... yet.) The first thing is the music video to REM's "Everybody Hurts" (directed by the parenthetically aforementioned Jake Scott)--which I just had to doublecheck was out around the same time this film was. All those people stuck in traffic, all the different, sometimes vague, ways that they are hurting. Until they separate themselves from the monotony of that unfortunate part of everyday life in Los Angeles (and Chicago when it's funny), Like D-FENS (Michael Douglas) does in Falling Down . The other thing is the "We'll Follow the Sun" episode of Married... Wit...

In "Gender, ethnicity and cultural crisis in Falling Down and Groundhog Day " ( Screen 36:3 (Autumn 1995), Jude Davies suggests a symbolic importance to the news piece that follows Phil's weather report in the opening scene of the film. The line we get from Nan, AKA Hairdo , is "up next, entertainment reporter Diane Kingman looks at sex and violence in the movies." (If I wanted to look for extra meaning that probably isn't there, I would suggest that the juxtaposition of Diane and Kingman bears further exploration. Diane is a variation of Diana-- --Jude Davies, by the way, published Diana, A Cultural History about Princess Diana-- --perhaps a reference to the goddess of the hunt (surely a feminist icon). The name Diane means "divine," with Kingman, King (masculine) Man (masculine). Perhaps the sex and violence are both male on female, and what the line is really setting up is the battle of the sexes, Phil vs. Rita, no holds barred-- Jude...