the groundhog day project

Today is Day 1096, the last day of the third* full year of this blog. I'm watching Groundhog Day tonight. I saw The Emoji Movie today. I don't think I have a lot to say. Except this: Two important movies in theaters right now... No. Two important movies in theaters right now are Detroit and The Emoji Movie for two very different reasons. I was going to joke about how both involve the use of force to stomp out those who are different from the norm (not white, and not singularly expressive), and I can still say both will induce rage in the discerning viewer. But, I won't go any further with the comparison because it would be 1) disrespectful to what Detroit represents, to what it could and should do for its viewers--and those viewers should be many, and won't be enough-- and it would be 2) pointless when there are better points to be made. For example, Detroit should make you angry because people are racist assholes, because the slave trade and systemic racism ...

Sing Street --and, I think I'm about done with this film, I swear--begins with Conor playing guitar and making up lyrics on the spot, mostly basing them on the phrases he can hear his parents Robert and Penny yelling from downstairs. Then you get a news report about poor folks from Ireland migrating to England to look for something better. Then, Robert and Penny gather their three kids together to announce that they're having money troubles and Conor has to transfer schools. He was going to a Jesuit school but now he's headed to the Christian Brothers (Catholic) school, Synge Street. In passing, we also learn that Brendan has dropped out of college. In the first three minutes, we know so much about what's to come. It's a great example of how to set up the status quo quickly. Conor is a musician. His parents' marriage is coming apart. Brendan is a slacker. And, Conor is headed to a new school. The plot is in motion. That opening bit with the singing and parents ...

It's not a profound thing, but I've been noticing more than usual lately how films often put a trio of characters at the center of the story. Just running back the recent films I've watched for this blog, you've got: Joy and Sadness and Bing Bong in Inside Out ; Samantha and Jake and the Geek in Sixteen Candles ; Andie and Duckie and Blane in Pretty in Pink ; Keith and Amanda and Watts in Some Kind of Wonderful ; Gerda and Einar and Lili (yes, those last two are, arguably, the same person) in The Danish Girl ; Lucas and Maggie and Cappie in Lucas ; two versions of Ronald, along with Cindy in Can't Buy Me Love . Serendipity breaks it because of its deliberate plot division--Jonathan and Sara each get their own sounding board rather than (sort of) sharing one. Then, of course, we get back to Groundhog Day . I've written at least one whole entry just about trios in that movie. Of course, I'm not sure I ever revisited that topic, and with as little screentim...

I've written before about Inside Out . In my other, less regularly updated blog, of course, but I still wrote a basic review. So, we'll skip past that. (For context, I've seen the movie a couple times already. Tonight was a special screening with Q&A with co-writer Meg LeFauvre courtesy of Jeff Goldsmith (same as The Danish Girl last week. Saer went with me and something she said about how the parents in the film are annoying actually got me thinking...) Structurally, Joy (Amy Poehler)--and to a lesser extent, Sadness (Phyllis Smith)-- is the parent for Riley (Kaitlyn Dias). Mom (Diane Lane) and Dad (Kyle MacLachlan) are important in the overarching plot, of course, but ultimately they don't do anything special for Riley, they don't really affect the plot except inasmuch as the move to San Francisco triggers what would otherwise be a pubescent change, and none of the emotional beats belong to them; even that bittersweet core memory hug at the end of the fi...

The thing about Everything Is Illuminated is it suggests--at the same time, mind you--that it's never too late to get over your past and your past will always catch up to you. If The Grey was purgatory , this is somehow both heaven and hell... or maybe just another form of purgatory... or maybe just life. The movie returns us to the idea that life is just stories , the what we choose to remember-- how we choose to remember it--matters more than the reality. Stories change over time. So do memories. Each return of a memory is affected by the previous one--that was a detail in the latest Pixar movie, Inside Out that I rather liked, in fact; positive memories turn negative, joy turns sad... and vice versa, I suppose. Bittersweet is introduced. Everything Is Illuminated is based on Jonathan Safran Foer's first published novel. It is, of course, about a young man named Jonathan Safran Foer going to the Ukraine in search of family history, specifically, the woman in a photo...