the groundhog day project

A good chunk of what I am about to write, I figure, goes out to near-future me, writing away on his master's thesis. Don't fret. Don't be discouraged. This writing thing, after all, is what you do. My week with Across the Universe and my month with movie musicals comes to an end tonight. And, a part of me kinda wants to stay here, tucked away in the fantasy of it all. In the world of the musical, anything is possible and even heartbreak comes with a nice song and dance number. Well, maybe not dance. Three of the four musicals this month were built on existing songs, existing thoughts and feelings, existing emotional experiences... well, really, all four were built on existing thoughts and feelings and emotional experiences. Every movie is, musical or not. We can live vicariously in a film best when more parts of it are just close enough to be relatable to our realities. And when it's a musical we get to relate ourselves into, to commit a sort of method participation...

From A Christmas Story From our apartment this morning. One of those truthful scenes in A Christmas Story that I was talking about yesterday is the Christmas morning unwrapping and the chaotic mess that remains afterward. I don’t much like such messes, even though as a kid, once I had my own bedroom, it was often a mess—the room was small enough that I didn’t need the floor anyway, so I would leave books and things all over the floor. Because I don’t like such messes I have made a habit since my first Christmas (2007, I believe) to take the discarded wrapping paper as it falls and ball it up, tuck it all away in a discarded box. Like the Anal Retentive Chef from Saturday Night Live , I clean up as it goes. But, really, you can’t keep up with all of it. Excitement delays attentiveness. Like Daryl Zero leaving that receipt behind in one of my favorite movies (which I do intend to watch for this blog at some point), Zero Effect . Emotion gets in the way of, well, the attachment to...

Subtitle this one “When I grow up and get married, I’m living alone” because I might as well be writing about Home Alone again for as much as I’ve got to say, which isn’t much. It’s one of those days... sort of. The day actually started well, started early. Starbucks and some gridlock on the 5 and then work. Administered a final exam in my public speaking class, worked on my teaching portfolio for instructional communication, forensics class’ final day was mostly uneventful, then TA meeting and instructional comm. In the latter I had a presentation—the mainstreaming of rebellion. A little Simpsons , a little Switched at Birth , and some Hunger Games and my presentation was done, and the long day was finally catching up to me. Got home and turned on a nice wholesome Christmas movie... Ok, well, that isn’t true. I turned on Black Christmas , and maybe it’s because I’m tired, maybe the movies is just slow and confusing, but I really have little notion of what happened. Unless, of co...

Oh, the red and green. I wish I had the time to grab screencaps galore, because it is kinda crazy how much red and green is in this movie, particularly the beginning. It’s like the McCallister house is where Christmas threw up. Wallpaper patterns—several of them—red and green. Rugs red and green. Red bedspread. Red flowers (and not just poinsettias). Green lampshades, green phone. Kevin’s shirt is red and green (the green looks blue in some shots). Red chairs. Every one of the kids (plus Frank and Leslie, but not Peter (though he’s got a green and red scarf when they run through the airport) or Kate) is wearing red, green or red and green... except Linnie; she wears pink, but she’s got a necklace that looks like Christmas lights. Here, look at this: Buzz, Kevin and Rod all wearing red and green. Someone let the set decorators and costumers go a little nuts with the Christmas decor. Pizza delivery car is red, it’s signs red and green on white. Pizza delivery guy wears a red and gre...

Maybe Kevin isn’t the devil (or a Satan-Figure, anyway). But, he might be homicidal. I’ve got before me two different looks at the injuries he causes in Home Alone , plus... well, I will get to the plus after the injuries. First of all, both Hansen (2012), who spoke to her friend Dr. Ryan St. Clair at Weill Cornell Medical College for her analysis, and Fee (2013), who apparently just relied on Google (which is what I would have done if this movie was lasting me longer than a week), start with Marv getting shot in the face. I guess Harry getting shot in the... well, somewhere in the crotch region, maybe his testicles, it’s difficult to be sure. I guess that injury doesn’t matter. Hansen (presumably quoting St. Clair) points out that the BB gun probably had a muzzle velocity of 350 feet per second so it may have broken the skin, but would not have penetrated the skull. Fee, on the other hand, found at least one case in which a face injury with a BB gun was fatal. (Neither one points ...

(Half hour into the movie before I start typing. Not because I was paying attention exclusively to the movie either. Distracted by the internet. Welcome to the new world.) Anyway, I wanted to put forth a very specific idea today: prior to the events we see in Home Alone , Kevin McCallister probably would not have recognized himself in the mirror. Or, more accurately, he would not have recognized his self . His two scenes in front of the bathroom mirror—that is like his version of Gallup’s (1970) Mirror Self Recognition test. The majority of infants (in the Western world) recognize themselves in the mirror by 24 months, and some do so as early as 3 months. Kevin is not his own person when the action begins in Home Alone . Instead, he sees himself as part of a family, a role he clearly wants to reject, but he just doesn’t know how, so he lashes out. (Gallup’s test, by the way, involves putting a mark on an infant they can only see in a mirror, then placing him/her in front of a mirr...

Frank McCallister is deaf or Harry Lyme is an oblivious fool who is as inept at impersonating a cop as he is at robbing houses... Actually, that’s not fair. Harry and Marv do just fine with the whole burglary thing until they get to the McCallister house. But, my point here as I start is... Well, just look: Looking right at him, too. That seems to be Frank sitting just a room away when Harry is looking for adults. Or maybe it’s a ghost, like the ghost of Ted Danson in Three Men and a Baby . Or maybe Harry didn’t really want to talk to any adults, because he can’t handle that sort of thing. He only talks to Marv because Marv is a bit immature. Maybe that’s why Harry turned to crime in the first place; he just cannot handle regular life, holding down a job and that sort of thing. A separate issue (but not so separate, perhaps) arises with Kevin’s tendency to talk to himself, particularly while looking in the mirror. Subramaniam (2008) argues, “When a child is born it is unable at fi...

Check it out—Old Man Marley. You ever heard of the South Bend Shovel Slayer? That’s him. Back in ‘58 he murdered his whole family and half the people on the block... with a snow shovel. Been hiding out in this neighborhood ever since... Not enough evidence to convict. They never found the bodies. Everyone around here knows he did it. Now, it will just be a matter of time before he does it again. I’m trying to think how gullible 8-year-olds were in 1990. (Let’s ignore the fact that Kevin’s older cousin also buys Buzz’s story. (An aside, as I let the movie play without writing anything: there is a wheelchair hanging in the basement near the furnace. Someone in the production missed an opportunity to use that thing in the third act craziness.) Anyway, my thing today is simple— (I hope it leads to something a little more complicated tomorrow, but who know? It is a busy week, the last week of the quarter, and I’ve got a presentation in two days, another presentation in six, a c...

Immediately I must wonder if Kevin is as bad as Doyle from Dutch . Or he will be, as he is already prone to violence. Despite his badness, though, the movie does a good job of setting everyone else against him. It’s his fault, but you can almost forgive him because he is a kid. As for the movie, Home Alone is not a movie I would normally equate with having much depth... Then again, neither was Planes, Trains & Automobiles or Dutch or just about any of the slasher films I watched in October. But, I suppose the point to this blog, quite often, is that every film has depth. Even the most shallow-seeming, simplistic piece of entertainment tells us something about us for watching it, if nothing else. I am not suggesting that Home Alone is the most shallow-seeming film. There are plenty of films shallower. This film does a great job of setting up later scenes early on. The old guy with the shovel is introduced right away, as is one of the wet bandits, posing as a cop. When Kevin ...

The first bit I've got highlighted in Benesh's (2011) dissertation is, "such an iconic film can be seen as contemporary myth proposing an interpretation of the culture from which it originated" (p. 1). This is the kind of argument I will have use as justification in my own thesis as to why I am using this particular film, Groundhog Day as my case study. Fueling this mythic notion would be the addition of "Groundhog Day" to our lexicon for any situation mired in repetition and getting nowhere (some examples here ). The next highlight-- and I realize this might be too "systematic" an approach --is, "The film has been adopted by 'Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, and followers of the oppressed Chinese Falun Gong movement,' as well as Platonists, Aristotelian(s), and 'countless professors use it to teach ethics and a host of philosophical approaches' (Goldberg, 2005, para. 3, cited in Benesh, 2011, p. ...

The trailer for Groundhog Day , as my daughter said after seeing it, is cheesy. See for yourself. I don’t mind the cheesiness, or how much more the trailer feels like the early 90s (not the 80s) than the film itself does. Things I do mind: 1. That alarm buzzer. Considering “I Got You Babe” was in the script from the beginning, it’s a little weird they go for the buzzer. I get that they need the buzzer for how they use it, as a reset noise for new days within the trailer, but, well, I just don’t like it. 2. Giving away the punchline on the déjà vu exchange with Mrs. Lancaster… but I guess you’ve got to give away some jokes. 3. The “Why?” at 1:16. Phil does not ask “Why” when Rita ughs at him eating the cake. But, they edit it so he’s responding to Rita saying, “Don’t you worry about cholesterol?” So, they change the line. I don’t like that. 4. That “Ned!” before Phil punches Ryerson at 1:22. I’m not sure why they dubbed a different “Ned” than is in the film. Or maybe the one in ...