the groundhog day project

Being the Groundhog Day enthusiast/obsessive/blogger that I am, it is interesting to me that out of all the characters in Dave Made a Maze , the one who never actually enters the maze is the hobo played by Rick Overton, aka Ralph from Groundhog Day . The one guy--who just might be Ralph all these years later--who has been around this kind of relentless, repetitive, lesson-making fantastical venture before, is the one who never participates now. (Not that he, you know, ever really necessarily knew what Phil was going through in that time loop. The closest he might have come to understanding it may only have been on that night that he and Gus were quite drunk. And, of course, they would not remember it the next day, anyway.) Also, in the opening credits, he gets a "with". The hobo is, of course, the person that, by choice or circumstance, exists outside the normal channels of everyday life. Everyone else is eventually caught up in the cardboard labyrinth in some way. Even t...

No childhood film today. Busy day of kitchen cleaning and map drawing. I did see a movie today-- Coco . Not sure if it was great. It was good, and definitely affecting. And it had an interesting message--combining both the idea that you should follow your dreams and family is important. In context, these feel like two different directions--SPOILERS--for a good portion of the film, but then they pull together and it all gets wrapped in a little bow. And, it got me thinking about family. Now, on the one hand, I haven't spent much time with most of my family in the past year. I'll be honest about that. The likelihood to get into a political argument has made hanging out with them less appealing. I'm talking about my parents, some of my sisters. But, it's worth noting that, for example, in many of the fictional stories I have written over the years, family was something constructed more than inherent. You choose family like you choose friends. Except you don't reall...

Last minute change of plans after a long day of gaming--four hours of D&D, a lunch break, then close to six hours of board games--and I finally got my daughter Saer to watch Sing Street . So, damn the current childhood deconstruction, damn The Villain for today, I'm watching Sing Street . By the way, I've already written a lot about this movie in this blog: day 1072 - now that the niceties are out of the way day 1073 - and everything is more real than life day 1074 - everything beautiful's fiction day 1075 - when you don't know someone day 1076 - it’s a video, robert day 1077 - i think i’m back in the dream day 1078 - you can never do anything by half day 1079 - hitch a ride on a dream day 1080 - what tyranny could stand up to that? day 1081 - start up the time machine day 1082 - you're not happy being sad day 1083 - i often wonder what she's thinking about           And then, I'm just enjoying the...

The thing about Murder by Death is that 1) it offers up a group of intelligent characters, capable of Sherlock Holmes-style deductions out of nowhere-- (For the record, even though I know better, when Dick Charleston asks about Marcel recovering from his accident, I assume he's talking about Marcel getting hit by the gargoyle that was pushed off the roof not ten screen minutes before. But, no, he's talking about some previous injury, and references the sound of Marcel's artificial hip, which WE CANNOT HEAR. Considering the Charlestons were also attacked with a gargoyle, it should be even more obvious that Marcel was injured. But, no, it's a previous "accident" with a car.) --but also just dumb (if that's the word) enough to be so wrong about their guesses about the larger situation, particularly those at the end of the film, after Twain has essentially tried to kill them all in their rooms. 2) They, Sam Diamond especially, are capable of being sexist ...

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...

Less important than making my survey is the reasoning behind it. I've said before that I could write a memoir using movies to tell time, a la Fever Pitch . And, the "thesis" if you will for this whole blog (per Day 579 ) is: Our lives can be measured in movies and movies can be measured in our lives and profound and profane depths can be found in the intersection thereof. That is to say, if I can know your favorite movies, know what it is you look for in a movie, then I can know you. I tweeted (and then retweeted with my personal account over to Facebook) a few posts about what people's favorite movies are--their top five. But, it's more than that. For example, there's a huge difference between how I choose my favorite movies and how I might decide what are the best movies. Hell, I don't really even bother with the latter because movies are so subjective, the experience of watching a movie is subjective, and that version of a movie that is left in each ...

20th Century Women begins with an aerial shot of the ocean, then a subtitle: "Santa Barbara, 1979." Importantly, that subtitle includes the period. Narration immediately connects the present to events in the past, Jamie's father, Dorothea's husband, their marriage, his car, their divorce. Other bits of narration and voiceover later will put various characters into the context of their history but even more, late in the film, we are offered specific facts about the future lives of these characters. That the title references the time period is no mistake, of course. This is about a specific time, a specific place, geographically as well as metaphorically within these lives. This is where Jamie and Dorothea and Abbie and Julie and William are at this moment. This is what their lives are like now . Now being 1979, of course. Summer. The film even begins on Dorothea's birthday. She is turning 55. Jamie tells us about her life so far. Later, Dorothea will tell us abo...

20th Century Women offers up multiple narrators and the convergence of several stories. A mother. A son. Their tenants. His girlfriend (of a sort). The mother, Dorothea (Annette Bening) tells the story of the son, Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) and vice versa. Others tell their own stories, though not in the same kind of voiceover. (Mike Mills trivia note: the family name here, Fields, is the same as in Beginners .) Dorothea has a fairly open-door policy about the house. She invites a fireman over to her birthday dinner, for example, after he helps put out their car fire. The girlfriend, Julie (Elle Fanning) comes and goes as she pleases, even when Jamie is not home. Dorothea asks Julie and Abbie (Greta Gerwig) to help her raise Jamie as a good man. (Then, interestingly, she tells Jamie that she asked them.) Though it's a common theme, it's done especially well--these people form a family even though they are not all related. Jamie tries to spread his wings with friends, but k...

At one point in High Fidelity , Rob says "that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like." On the one hand, I think it's both. On the other hand, yeah, I regularly measure people based on what they like. Do they like the same movies as me? (So many.) Do they watch the same TV shows as me? (Again, so many. The highbrow HBO or Netflix originals and the nerd-friendly CW shows. And, I totally understand if you don't like Banshee because a) you haven't even heard of it or, b) you can't handle the brutality of the violence.) Listen to the same music? (Actually, music isn't such a big deal for me. I'm not a one-type-of-music person, though I do obsess about one type at any given time, for sure. I don't need someone else to like what I like, though if you've got a thing for musicals and the occasional heavy metal, the occasional folk rock, we might get along.) Read the same books? (Again, not the most important thing. I mea...

Following on what I was talking about yesterday , and with inadvertently appropriate timing, I saw the stage version of Once tonight. It may end on a bittersweet note, but it’s the perfect example of a storyline about what I was talking about, people coming into one’s life and having a significant, life-changing effect. Saer asked me afterward why I made her watch that—you know, “bad” ending and whatnot—but I think of Once as almost the perfect love story because the main characters don’t end up together. Love doesn’t have to last to be powerful. Similarly, while Phil’s love for Rita might last, I’m not sure if it is necessarily powerful. While the banquet scene is nice and Rita buying Phil (and their night together afterward) is a Hollywood-appropriate ending, I actually think a more poetic ending—between Phil and Rita—would have been that moment when he asked for a “rain check” on getting a coffee, so he could go run errands. He may have pursued Rita before, he might even love ...