the groundhog day project

Ottway's father's poem is so simple as to not quite ring true, though it's understandable that a man's man like John Ottway would appreciate it. It's like the epitome of some simplistic, stereotypical version of masculinity... Once more into the fray... Into the last good fight I'll ever know. Live and die on this day... Live and die on this day... In the commentary track, director Carnahan keeps coming back to masculinity, how Hollywood's sense of what it is to be a man has gone wrong. He's never particularly specific, though. Does he think that these men, who are (eventually) able to talk about their feelings and their fears and their love--of course, Ottway never talks about his wife with these men, only his father--are real men? Is he suggesting that the usual macho men of action movies are the wrong version? What kind of men are these men? In an interview with Screen Rant , Liam Neeson talks about men and emotions. He says: I don't think ...

Commentary track--director Joe Carnahan with editors Roger Barton and Jason Hellmann. They're drinking scotch--"watching The Grey the way it should be." Me too. Referencing Anne Openshaw who plays Ottway's wife (and who only says three words in the film), Carnahan says it's a lesson for filmmakers, tell your actors to shut the fuck up. Because with only three words she has a big presence in the story. First wolf, the one Ottway shoots on the job, is CGI first then a practical effect, with a bellows for its lungs, with a guy blowing into a tube up its ass. Carnahan likes his swear words about as much as the characters in the film. Joe Anderson, who plays Flannery, thought that Carnahan hated him and would fire him after his first day. Carnahan says Anderson is not the actor that he hated. The not so subtle implication being that he did hate one of the actors. Obvious stuff, but worth mentioning: they like James Badge Dale for what he gave the film with such ...