the groundhog day project

We're introduced to Mattie (Kim Darby) in the original True Grit --I will also be watching the remake later--through a window. She's inside at a desk and she seems to know as much as or more than her father about the business of their ranch. She also has a short haircut that doesn't immediately suggest femininity, at least within the setting. But, True Grit brings up an interesting thing about the setting, about the genre. In an interview with The Guardian regarding the Coen Brothers' remake, Joel Coen compares the film to Alice in Wonderland ... In our minds, we never got real close to thinking about it in terms of the western. We weren't thinking: let's shoot it in widescreen like Sergio Leone. Ethan Coen interrupts. Sergio Leone has this weird western opera thing... and it's definitely not opera. And it's definitely not that John Ford tragic thing. Our sensibility has nothing to do with that. Joel continues: If anything... we were thinking ...

If Americans can be divorced for ‘incompatibility of temper’, I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible. – G. K. Chesterton In his review of The Mirror Has Two Faces , Roger Ebert writes, “It's rare to find a film that deals intelligently with issues of sex and love, instead of just assuming that everyone on the screen and in the audience shares the same popular culture assumptions.” While he may be correct on the first point, I think he’s wrong on the second. I think The Mirror Has Two Faces operates on the very same assumptions that most any romantic comedy does: that we all want romance, that men and women are supposed to couple and copulate and consummate marriage. Plus, remember (as I’ve already referenced them a couple times) Dowd and Pallott...

I want to get into talking about Deborah Tannen’s Genderlect Styles , but it’s hard to map it onto The Mirror Has Two Faces . Gregory is hardly the stereotypical male that Tannen talks about, nor really is Rose the stereotypical female that Tannen talks about. Tannen’s male wants status—meaning he wants the score that comes from having bedded a woman. Gregory is far from that, wanting anything but the score. Tannen’s female wants connection, but Rose gets the connection and wants more... Arguably. The question is—and this may just be a reiteration of my attempt to define the successful relationship the other day —does a connection include or preclude sex? Personally, I think it’s inclusive, and The Mirror Has Two Faces seems to support that idea even if Gregory and Rose have still not consummated their relationship at the end of the film. When Harry Met Sally... comes to the same conclusion (including the sex) thought it approaches it from a more stereotypical direction; that i...

The Mirror Has Two Faces includes numerous mirrors. Shocker, I know. The first mirror: Rose’s opening scene. She pulls a Sno Ball out of the drawer, takes a big bite, and in the mirror we see her with a facial mask on. Very cinematically feminine, snacking on junkfood stashed secretly—reminds me of Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson in The Closer , though that came later—while readying for a date. But , then there’s a baseball right by her hand, the Sno Ball juxtaposed with the baseball, two sides of her character framed within the mirror. And, she has to then choose between those two things a moment later, and she chooses to cancel her date (feigning illness) to watch the baseball game. It’s not a literal mirror, but when Candy leaves Gregory’s apartment, he asks if he can call her. Her response: “What for?” When Rose leaves him (the second time), he also asks if he can call her ? Her response: “What for?” Another mirror: before Claire’s wedding, Rose in the pink bridesmaid dress, ...

It isn’t that Greg wants something that’s impossible. I mean, plenty of people spend their lives without sex, without physical intimacy. Of course, plenty of people probably live without companionship as well. We just can’t all have all the good things in life. Regular companionship would be nice, even if there weren’t sex. Not that I would go for Greg’s notion of excluding it outright. A personal anecdote—you know, because that’s so rare for me: being married doesn’t guarantee either of those things, sex or companionship. Long before we separated, my wife and I had our moments of one or the other, or neither. Unlike Groundhog Day ’s Phil Connors (pre- and early-loop anyway), I never really wanted casual sex. But, unlike The Mirror Has Two Faces ’ Greg Larkin, I also don’t want companionship without. I broke down the successful relationship yesterday into four parts: sexual, intellectual, spiritual and emotional. Those last two are so close together the way I see it, I’m not sure why...

The Mirror Has Two Faces plays like a regular romantic comedy—guy meets girl, guy like girls (or girl likes guy), some manufactured obstacle shows up, but eventually they find each other anyway and all is wonderful. But, it does its darnedest to deconstruct the genre along the way just enough to stand out from the crowd. Still, even as Greg is expressing antiromantic sentiment, scenes play out, visually especially, just like they would in any romantic comedy. Take the proposal scene for instance. Greg and Rose are walking in the park, he’s got something to ask her, so they sit on a bench. They are framed close together on the screen and if not for the exact wording of his proposal and her briefly negative reaction, it looks like any proposal scene in a romantic comedy might look. At the start of the movie, as I mentioned yesterday , Rose is involved in her sister’s wedding. Meanwhile, Greg’s ex hits him up for some relatively meaningless sex before she sees her new boyfriend again. ...