the groundhog day project

7:30 show of The Breakfast Club was sold out, which kind of made me wish even more I'd been there. But, we--my son and I--made it to the second show. I had gone with the high school movies this month because I knew this film would be in theaters, so I'm glad we didn't miss it. 10:30 show wasn't as crowded, but at least it wasn't empty. The "event" began with some slide beforehand with trivia (facts, not questions) about the movie and its stars. Some examples: Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall dated for a while after filming The Breakfast Club . Not that exciting, that one. Judd Nelson was a philosophy major at Haverford College. On the one hand, definitely more interesting. And, it gets even more interesting when you consider the phrasing. It doesn't say that he got a degree, just that he was a "philosophy major." He could have taken like one philosophy class, for all we know. Hughes' business partner's son attended ...

Extras. Gotta love ‘em. [That one just might be wrong. The credited Jeopardy Viewers are probably the three older people to the left. A google search (24 April 2018) turned up a photo of a Samuel Mages who looks a lot like the old guy on the right end of that couch.] [That is also not Ari Golan. Not sure why I put that name to that guy. There is a guy holding the Channel 3 camera, whose face we barely see, who could very well be Ari Golan.] Today’s reason to repeat a day forever: to know everyone’s name.

Some random thoughts about Phil Connors: Maybe he spoke French already and he just had to get over his impulse to laugh in that restaurant scene. Maybe he already knew how to ice sculpt, he was just such a misanthrope he had never bothered to share his talent with anyone. Maybe his father really was a piano mover... not that that necessarily made Phil a great piano player. And maybe his "six months" of card throwing didn't even happen within the time loop but when he was a teenager and had mono. Just the other day... Oh man, how long ago was it that I rambled on about the use of that phrase, " the other day in TV shows? I think that was early on in this blog, back when I was still wide-eyed and innocent. But I digress. Just the other day, 24 April to be precise, Charles Murray at Fox News was describing some scenes from Groundhog Day that he says "illustrat[e] the unplanned and bumpy trajectory that Phil's thirty or forty years [referencing Rami...

There will be very few words in today’s entry. And yet, this entry took over 4 hours of work. I have, previously used Google Maps to identify a few locations in Groundhog Day . Today, I took that further, identifying a whole lot of exterior locations from the film, to a) be more thorough than before and b) prepare for my trip to Woodstock a week from today. They’ve got a walking tour of filming sites on both Saturday (the 1st) and Sunday (the 2nd) but I want to know more locations than they will probably show. (I will admit that I got a little help from Chas Demster’s Filming Locations of Chicago and Los Angeles blog . But, I did not get help from Julie Boggie , who might have photographed the right tree from which Zacchaeus fell but she got the photo from a bad angle to be sure. And, she did not show where the previous shot with Phil checking his watch then running was filmed. I think it was up the street (she puts the tree—and she went on the walking tour—on Madison between Mar...

There will not be a lot of words today. Yesterday I actually had the blog entry ready before the movie was even on (because I shared part of a paper I’m working on for grad school dealing with Phil Connors as Christ-Figure) so I was trying to watch closely, see if I could spot anything new on the blu-ray copy. The only thing I really noticed new was that at the end of god day, when Rita is asleep in Phil’s room, someone has eaten one of the chocolates that is always on the table. So, I guess they skipped dinner and the candy shop. See, I’m doing something different today. I’m labeling things. This might take a while to load. What you’ll be seeing is some labeled screencaps, with character names and some nicknames I’ve put on some extras. Enjoy. And, that’s enough of that… for now. Today’s reason to repeat a day forever: I may have mentioned this one before but I could use a frame by frame breakdown of the film. And I still haven’t finishe...