the groundhog day project

Man, are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon. Watched Primer before Groundhog Day today. It’s a very low budget exploration into time travel and its consequences… except I don’t think it deals too well in actual (morally) bad consequences. It demonstrates a lot of the complexity Phil Connors might have to deal with, though, in repeating the same day if he wants things to seem normal. In Primer , Aaron (played by writer and director Shane Carruth) uses recordings of the original conversations through a certain day, for example, so that when he returns to that day he can keep one earbud in and follow the conversation how it is supposed to go. Tying back to yesterday’s entry about Run Lola Run , the way tiny differences can be a problem (or not) is demonstrated when Aaron has a conversation on a basketball court; he misses a shot in the resumption that he made previously, so the dialogue on the tape differs from the new reality. But, that doesn’t really lea...

This blog entry begins late--1:27 A.M.--because I've been playing games. Played some Tsuro , some Carcassonne , some Munchkin and some Monster Fluxx . Two members of the speech team are here at this point to watch Groundhog Day . Victor has seen the film before, even used it in an Impromptu round (like I have ) at Districts this past March. Tracey has not seen the movie before... so figure most of what follows will be descriptions of her responses, if any. For example, but not a very interesting example, she laughed at Larry's "Home Shopping Network" line. And at Phil imitating Rita in the van. (An aside: I was asked two nights ago what my (current) favorite scene in Groundhog Day was. As I hesitated in answering, Dr. Classen (who taught the class for which I wrote my Christ-figure paper) suggested that maybe that would be like picking a favorite child. Still, I tried to answer. I didn't go with my favorite per se, but a scene that is still consistently ent...