the groundhog day project

And, now I've explained it. And, explained it weirdly. Shoulda tried to make it more poetic, maybe write a song or create some animated presentation. Or just let it sit and be , without explicit explanation. If you didn't read yesterday 's entry, you just gotta let it go and be confused for a moment, as Murder in the First begins and Christian Slater (and Gary Oldman) brings us back to Kevin Bacon. (We'll also see William H. Macy for the second time this month, plus none other than Stephen Tobolowsky who will take us back to Groundhog Day for tomorrow.) Some news reel voiceover after the (first part of the) opening credits (which has offscreen dialogue playing behind the black screen), and it's like the Lazy Voiceover* and Lazy Text Crawl got together and said, "Let's make sure everyone realizes this is an old-timey movie. You know, not like they saw the damn trailer and know exactly what they're here for." (* Decided to keep the name simple a...

True Romance is Tarantino by way of Tony Scott. Almost immediately, the dialogue plays like straight Tarantino. And Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) almost feels like a slightly more grown up Mark Hunter from Pump Up the Volume . Almost. (Meanwhile, I’m here because of Brad Pitt. Or, by way of Brad Pitt. The poetry of these many degrees is almost at its inevitable end.) Alabama (Patricia Arquette) gives us some (probably) pointless Exporration... Does that work? Exporration ? Exposition crossed with narration. I wanted to get either introduction or opening into the compound word but neither one really fits with exposition or narration without just sounding like the two words mashed up next to each other instead of into each other. Anyway, it’s the usual bullshit opening stuff, life’s about to change and I didn’t expect it and all that. (Meanwhile, I want to explain. The short version is that it was a suggestion/dare from my friend Lane, current president of our speech team—to...

August: Osage County offers us pseudo-voiceover to start. Bev (Sam Shepard) is talking to, as it turns out, Johna (Misty Upham) who is hiring to help him out--he's getting old. But, she's offscreen until he's stopped talking, until Violet (Meryl Streep) interrupts. It's a cheat. There will, of course, be no voiceover for the rest of the film. Then Bev leaves and the play gets going. And, it is a play, or was. Only a few scenes early on are really staged differently than they would have to be on stage. This is a talky film, the kind of movie that brings a big ol' family together and lets the sparks fly. Give us a family, throw in a funeral or a wedding or a holiday and the drama writes itself. I saw this two years ago, of course, when Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep were nominated for Oscars, but I actually don't remember much of the specifics anymore. In my head, it's filed away with the likes of The Celebration or Rachel Getting Married , or even Home for...

You don't know what's going on. We start with pointless voiceover-- In Hollywood, one of the fastest ways to the top is to work for someone who's already there. The system dictates that one must first be a slave before you can become a success. But this can be a very demanding process. Only a few people have the drive to endure the thousands of indignities and hardships that make up the system. Now, this drive is usually motivated by greed, sometimes ambition, sometimes even love. There are stories of love inspiring success over the most insurmountable of odds. This is not one of those stories. --adds nothing to what's coming, doesn't reveal anything unique or particularly intriguing, and you don't know what's going on. The conversation about Shelley Winters, on the other hand, is a fantastic introduction to what's coming. Guy (Frank Whaley) knows his films. It's clear that he is better than his position. Then, we meet his overbearing boss Buddy...

Oh, the outrage when Shakespeare in Love beat out Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture... And, damn it, I am old because that does not seem like it was 17 years ago. Just three years ago, Time referred to it as the "ultimate upset" (or, to be fair, Time said that many Oscar watchers thought of it that way). Time credits Harvey Weinstein and his campaign game. Me--I didn't mind Shakespeare in Love winning. I mean, sure, I get the reasoning that the logistics that went into making Saving Private Ryan put it on top but then, I don't think that sort of thing should guarantee a win or, really, something like Transformers should win every year just by costing the most. I like that a movie like Room can be nominated alongside Mad Max Fury Road , The Kids Are All Right alongside Inception , Little Miss Sunshine alongside Letters from Iwo Jima , Lost in Translation alongside The Return of the King , and so on. And, it's not like Shakespeare in Love is a bad ...

One of my family's videotapes when I was a kid, often watched and rewatched, had Footloose , Romancing the Stone and Splash . But, it's been a while. There was a serious paragraph about religion I had going already before I pushed play on Footloose and then the song started and there's close ups on feet dancing and I just don't feel like ranting. Then, Reverend Moore (John Lithgow) starts talking and I'm tempted to rant all over again. Except he's a pretty good preacher. He gets into it. Hits the podium and everything. And, I really like that the film starts with him before we get to really meet Ren (Kevin Bacon) or Ariel (Lori Singer). We even get dialogue from Vi Moore (Dianne Wiest, who we just saw in Snecdoche, New York recently) before Ren's mother (Frances Lee McCain) or Ren get to speak. (The role of Vi Moore, by the way, is played in the recent remake by none other than Groundhog Day 's Andie MacDowell.) Then, we go off with Ariel and he...