the groundhog day project

I would say Ferris Bueller's Day Off is classist, but a) I'm kind of in the mood to be more rambly and thoughtful and b) it's hard to argue a class conflict between Ferris, Cameron, Sloane, and Jeanie and the richer folks in the city... well, no, it's harder than it should be, but it's not hard. The problem is that the Bueller family is obviously well off. Katie Bueller works in real estate, Tom works in advertising--and, seriously, he needs to be the guy the same actor plays in the beginning of Planes, Trains & Automobiles (and the garage attendant's friend should be Gummy from Fletch , having had enough of Los Angeles the year before). No good reason for it, but there's no reason he can't be, and movies connecting to one another is awesome, especially when it's just for shits and giggles (like most of Quentin Tarantino's movies linking up tangentially). Also, the Bueller family was supposed to have two more kids, 7-year-old Todd and 12...

I suppose my problem, having watched La Boheme and seeing which scene they feature in Moonstruck , is that the two don’t actually play well together. On the one hand, you can take the experience of the opera as the thing that turns the heart of Loretta—even though that turn is inevitable from the start because it’s a romantic comedy... (Come to think of it, the use of Casablanca in When Harry Met Sally —something I never mentioned last week—makes more sense if you consider the original ending in which Harry and Sally remain just friends.) The turn may be inevitable, but it still needs a catalyst. Ronny’s persistence isn’t enough. But, the romance of the opera works. It’s simplistic. We don’t know—generally—what’s going on in that scene from La Boheme , but maybe we’ve got a vague idea that La Boheme involves love and romance, or maybe we just assume that the opera includes those things. There’s actually some room for discussion of class in this film, though I’m not sure I part...