the groundhog day project

I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch and write about Highlander another time. I felt I had little to say that wouldn't take me past some breaking point where I might have to obsess, you know, build a blog or a movies-by-minutes podcast around it, dig into each and every detail. I wanted to write more about White Nights the other day, but a) I got to that movie on the 1st of the month and on the 2nd I return to Groundhog Day , 2) it would be awkward (at least in my head) to write about White Nights , step away from it, and then come right back to it after a day away, and d) what I wanted to say about it had to do with the present; I mean, White Nights is okay, but it ain't a great film, but there was something about the dancing, especially some of the stuff Baryshnikov was doing in that cold open, serious strength moves that I was a little envious of because I'm sitting here by my couch, overweight, drinking an adult beverage and lamenting that I can't do th...

The thing is, while I looked up Gregory Widen (the screenwriter) I couldn't find anything connecting him to gay themes or whatnot. Couldn't find much about his life at all. But, Russell Mulcahy (the director)--yeah, he's gay. "No one has ever known we were among you... Until now." Then there's the soundtrack songs by Queen. We open on professional wrestlers, men in tight clothes jumping on each other. CUT TO men in furs tackling each other in the past. And, then MacLeod has to run off to a secret meeting in the parking lot. MacLeod, by the way--Lambert was cast before the director even knew he was only just learning English. Basically, he was cast for his look. It isn't just because it's an 80s action movie that it leans into a homoerotic male gaze. That's kinda the nature of film. If a shot is going to linger, of course it will do so lovingly a great deal of the time. How else do you stare at anything but with strong emotion. ...

It's time to cheat a little. Today I'm watching Highlander which was not really a fixture in my life until my teens, though I did see it in the theater when I had just turned 10 and I loved it. There are numerous movies, surely, that I've skipped because they weren't fixtures. Influence doesn't have to come from repetition. Trying to figure out what some of those movies might be, though, I noticed the first few I thought of were films I had already covered in some context other than this deconstruction of my childhood experience with film. Regarding Highlander , though. Saw the sequel in '91, was amused but did not like it--if you aren't familiar with the Highlander franchise, the second film not only contradicts the post-original reality but also retcons the backstory into a thing that doesn't make sense. And, it shoves it into a near-future dystopia for no particular reason. Third one in '94 was unnecessary but held up far better than the...

Really, it is simple to understand part of it. Just because you're a bankable actor, or a proven director (having graduated from music videos to feature films), doesn't mean that your life is guaranteed, that you will always have money. Sometimes, you have to make bad movies, or at least not so great movies, to stay alive, and for your career to stay alive. Michael Caine, for example, quite famously said of Jaws: The Revenge , "I have never seen it... but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific." Not every actor can make $20 million a film, and even if they can, you cannot live on that forever if you plan to stay in the limelight. You gotta keep making movies to be able to keep making movies. And, they can't all be the greatest film ever, they can't all be Oscar-caliber, they can't all be blockbusters. For example, it's hard to find the original source for this (it's quoted all over the Inte...

The question then: why does something like Highlander II happen? The explanations have been offered of course, stuff like economic collapse in Argentina just as production was underway there, for example. But, that is just an explanation for or why some of the awfulness exists. Obviously, there was some initial script, before there were money problems or investors taking over problems, and that script included aliens from the planet Zeist, and that script ignored a great deal of the original. What kind of cynical Hollywood puts this kind of thing together and ever thinks it's a good idea? Or does it think it's a good idea, at all? Is it just after money? Is it simply Hollywood banking on the familiarity of a name? Regarding that last question, I got curious. For anyone to think you could bank on the Highlander name (for anything beyond a syndicated late night tv series, as Highlander would have a year after the awful sequel), science fiction and fantasy had to be doing part...

I intended to watch enjoyably bad movies this month. Like, aw, how cute that they tried to make a real movie and failed so hilariously. Like Troll 2 ; you watch that and you know the filmmakers thought they were making something good. It's not good. But it is entertaining. I want every movie to be entertaining. Highlander II (which I guess I'm watching the Special Edition, though Amazon does not label it) is not entertaining. Its turns are too maddening, its characters to unbelievable, and its deformation of everything I liked about the original is despicable. I didn't even notice yesterday that Ramirez doesn't mention Zeist by name in this version. I guess my memory of the original cut overshadowed this version so much, I heard something that wasn't there. But leaving it out actually makes Ramirez' vague speech and the resulting failed revolution worse; I mean, what are they fighting for? Are they even the good guys? Did Ramirez just marry himself to Connor?...

And sometimes, I take the bad movie personally. Sometimes, it's not supposed to be a bad movie at all. Sometimes it's a sequel to one of my favorite films as a kid and I'm excited, and then increasingly disappointed as I watch the horrible followup. That followup: Highlander II: The Quickening . Roger Ebert's review begins with a lovely line about the awfulness of this film: "This movie has to be seen to be believed. On the other hand, maybe that's too high a price to pay." I have paid that price twice. I saw this movie in the theater. Second run theater, actually. Didn't see it opening weekend. I cannot remember if I knew ahead of time not to rush out to it, maybe some bad things said about it in Starlog magazine. Maybe I (or my parents, though I could drive by then) was just busy. I also rented the film on VHS once. Imagine, if you will, my confusion, having loved the swordfighting and magic in the original Highlander , coming into this movie wit...