the groundhog day project

On Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast from Wired , 21 March 2020, science fiction author Tom Gerencer says, regarding Willow (on the occasion of a reported Willow -related television series for Disney+ ): It wasn't quite up to Star Wars standards... I wasn't 100 percent in love with it, but I didn't think it was completely awful either. The podcast's host, David Barr agreed, adding: Star Wars draws on Flash Gordon, samurai movies, Westerns, and a bunch of other stuff... I feel like Willow pretty much just draws on Lord of the Rings and Conan the Barabarian . I feel like George Lucas wasn't as knowledgeable about--or maybe as passionate about--fantasy. I read that yesterday before turning the movie on and figured I had no use for it. But, given some points I am about to make, I should say, I think Barr is wrong. 1) Star Wars is very much fantasy. It's got wizards. It's got magic. It's got sword fights. It's got monsters. That Lucas base...

Matt Melis, writing for Consequence of Sound says, regarding Bernard Malamud's novel's ending—had it made it to the big screen intact: Malamud's ending undoubtedly stands as the more compelling conclusion (and more true to experience); however, I cannot imagine people lining up at the box office to see Roy Hobbs strike out and the movie end with Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley), Red Blow (Richard Farnsworth), and Bobby Savoy [George Wilkosz] huddled in tears in the dugout. Yep, the novel The Natural ends with a downer. And, it does so deliberately. (Hollywood ruins it.) And I am distracted as the movie gets going because, do you realize that 48-year-old Redford is supposed to be just 19 years old during the first act of this movie? Couldn't be bothered to cast a younger version of himself to carry the first half hour, so he just plays 19. INSERT, me sighing. In his introduction to Malamud's novel, Kevin Baker calls it an "anti heroic tale about a baseball pl...

I made the mistake--and, in this case, it was a mistake [it made hating this thing even easier]--of reading Roger Ebert's review of The Natural before I pressed play on the film tonight. I remember this film as a weird sort of film noir that somehow involves a baseball player. And, it opens now with Robert Redford (who we will find out later is playing a character called Roy Hobbs) waiting for and then getting on a train, not useful dialogue, not characterization effort, just Redford. CUT TO: flashback montage, Roy as a boy learns to play baseball while his father says some lines that someone thought were philosophical when they wrote them... A storm. Montage of sports pennants in the flash of the lightning. Then the tree out back gets struck, Roy carves a bat out of its trunk and I get something Roger says. Roger explains: As for the baseball, the movie isn't even subtle. When a team is losing, it makes Little League errors. When it's winning, the hits are so accurat...

Roger Ebert called The Fisher King a "disorganized, rambling and eccentric movie that contains some moments of truth, some moments of humor, and many moments of digression." That sounds like he meant it as a bad thing. But, really, that's just life. Just because we like our movies to be more straightforward, more organized , less rambling, more focused, doesn't mean they have to be. More from Ebert: "The Fisher King" is so charming it's hard to say when we notice it has no clothes. Individual sequences are bittersweet and moving, some [only some?] of [Robin] William's inventions are funny, there is no denying the originality and force of the [Mercedes] Ruehl performance [which won her an Oscar]--and yet there comes a time when we cannot sustain one more manic outburst, one more flight of fancy, one more arbitrary twist of plot, one more revelation that the movie tricked us into caring about subjects it eventually throws away. Where to start? ...

The opening shot of Life as a House is a digital trick (one done much cleaner elsewhere, but not too bad for 2001)--the camera cranes down toward the shack, then through the window into the interior, focusing briefly on the model house that will be built later, then onto George in bed. The visual metaphor is simple: 1. we are being allowed into this man's life in an intimate fashion, 2. George is already being equated to that house and the shack; and 3. that house is inside the shack just as the idea of it, and the potential for its building is inside George. Additionally--and linked to #1 there--the window frame works as a stand-in for the frame of the camera, the frame of the movie screen, the frame of the TV as we watch the story begin. (That this window will soon not exist does not negate the metaphor because by then we're invested or explicitly disinterested.) At the end of the film, George will also see the finished house (looking as small as that model) through the ...

I really should just be doing multiple entries rather than these extra long double movie ones. But I like them being numbered nicely. Today: The Searchers and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral . The opening of The Searchers offers us one of the structural oppositions that Henderson (1985) and Wright (1975) discuss--wilderness/civilization. Also inside/outside society. The door opens to the outside wilderness and Ethan (John Wayne) arrives, not unlike Shane yesterday . Henderson's focus is this very film and he offers up an important summary of one of the major themes: The Searchers is explicitly concerned with a number of anthropological issues. On its surface it treats questions of kinship, race, marriage, and the relations between tribes. These questions also have to do with the identity, status, and responsibilities of individuals: who is responsible for the retrieval and burial of the dead, for the search and recovery of captives, for vengeance? Who can marry whom? Which marri...

Two movies today-- The Naked Spur and Shane . Twenty minutes into The Naked Spur , I'm wondering why Wright (1975) categorizes it under the vengeance plot. Howard Kemp (Jimmy Stewart) is a bounty hunter... and he did rip off the bottom of the wanted poster where it mentioned the reward, so maybe he's got a personal stake in this. I tend to like writing during the movies for this blog, but reading about a Western that, yes, I've probably seen, but no, don't remember, can spoil what's coming. There's some interesting gender commentary going on in this film. The wanted man, Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan) claims he took in Lina Patch (Janet Leigh) because her pa was his best friend. And, the old prospector Jesse Tate, asked if he ever married one of the good women he's known, says he never had to with his good looks. Thing is, the male/female opposition is like a footnote at the edge of the main story. The real story here is Ben trying to put wedge between...

First of all, I really wanted to listen to a commentary track tonight, but I cannot get a subtitle track to turn on, and I don't like doing commentary without subtitles... it's not like I've got this movie memorized just yet. Groundhog Day , sure--it'd be like bring on the commentary track because I know every word... and I've heard the commentary track like three times. But, Moulin Rouge! --I do not have it all memorized yet. The songs, maybe. But, not all the dialogue. Anyway, outside the world of this blog, it is Oscar day. Awards ended about an hour ago, as I am starting this entry. Since it is Oscar day, I thought it worth mentioning that Moulin Rouge! was nominated for best picture, for lead actress and for cinematography and editing and makeup and sound, and it won for costume design and art direction. Kidman won the Golden Globe for actress in a comedy or musical, and Craig Armstrong's score won--which is surprising; I know there are percentage standar...