the groundhog day project

Allow me to get the obvious out of the way after last week's Hunger Games marathon : in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 , Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence, in case you're living under a rock) actually does stuff throughout most of the film. Almost all of it is even her idea. The interesting thing, though, is that the story still manages to let Katniss kill almost no one. She kills some Mutts--and not the dog-type like in the first film, but some naked albino 28 Days Later -style zombies instead... In fact, that sequence does a great job of building some real tension and giving weight to an otherwise obvious set of deaths to winnow down the main group in the film--oh, SPOILERS will happen in this entry. If you want to see the film and have not read the book, you probably should not be reading this. My complaint regarding that sequence is that the score suggests action film when the sequence plays more like something out of a horror film. Actually, that sequence is one of severa...

Mockingjay Part 2 doesn't come out for a week, but today was a Hunger Games day. While grading papers, I've had the original The Hunger Games and then The Hunger Games: Catching Fire playing. Seen those two before, but haven't seen the third one-- The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 --before now. As this one gets going, I must voice my primary complaint with the first two because really, I wish Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) had more to do. The problem--the problem with my problem, that is--is that it would be hard to market a story to young readers (and maybe more so the film based on it) in which the main character kills a bunch of other young people, even if she is forced... In America, at least. I know there are those who call The Hunger Games series a ripoff of Battle Royale , a Japanese manga series (and I believe there's a movie, but I haven't seen it) that is very much about teenagers killing each other. In Japan, you can have that plot more readily wit...

(Before I get to Rambo tonight, there's this: earlier tonight in Media Theory and Criticism class, I got to talk about Groundhog Day . Went down a list of what our instructor calls Classic Hollywood Cinema criteria, matched up Groundhog Day to each one. Then, there were some followup questions--is it a Marxist film? is it a feminist film? something about Freudian psychoanalysis, something about class... and a few others--and the answers were easy. I told my instructor about this blog (or the first year of it, anyway) after class. He wants to read some entries. I'll have to figure out some good ones. Anyway, that's one more class I've included Groundhog Day in.) In Rambo and the Dalai Lama , Gordon Fellman (1998) calls Rambo "the personalization of war, the reduction of it to its pure elements of men facing each other in all their anger, toughness, power, confusion, and fear" (p. 108). Fellman, in writing about First Blood , details the scene in which Ram...

I have seen parts of Halloween [6]: The Curse of Michael Myers many, many times. I worked in a movie theater when this thing was out. (I must interrupt this introduction to point out the lazy screenwriting and/or direction in having the doctor call her “Jamie Lloyd” when telling her to push. We’ll figure out who she is soon enough.) I saw parts of this movie—especially the beginning and ending—a few times a day when I was working, which was a few days a week. (Not two minutes later, call her Jamie again, you know, just in case the audience doesn’t get it. It might actually play better if we have to figure this crap out for ourselves.) I believe I said before that Halloween 4 , 5 and [6] work together pretty well. The thorn setup, while certainly not what the audience wanted , makes retrospective sense. Michael tensed up a the beginning of 4 when his niece (which we can assume he didn’t know about previously) was mentioned... more on the cult stuff as it comes up in this film. ...

It’s like this... We live in claustrophobia, the land of steel & concrete. Trapped by dark waters. There is no escape. Nor do we want it. We’ve come to thrive on it and each other. You can’t get the adrenaline pumpin’ without the terror, good people... I love this town. A few shots of New York City (and it’s stand-in locations in Vancouver, then cut to Crystal Lake. No campers in this movie, though. A couple high school graduates on a boat on the lake and then we leave the lake, and even leave New Jersey. Jim tells Suzi about the murders around Crystal Lake, and ends amazingly... “And every now and then, the murders start up again.” Beat “Forget about it, Suzi. They’re just stories.” Proceeds to disappear, then shows up in a hockey mask (a conveniently scarred in the forehead mask, I would add—Jason’s injury from the end of The Final Chapter , not the break by the eye socket, though) and stabs her with a trick knife. Jason shows up once they’re back in bed, dons the new mask—...

Twice we’ve been left with endings implying Tommy may have turned bad, that he might even take up the homicidal mantle left vacant with the death of Jason Voorhees. A New Beginning even tries (but not particularly well) to implicate Tommy in the deaths therein, but here, as Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives begins, Tommy is maybe a bit eccentric, possibly insane, but he’s still the good guy. On the IMDb boards, a guy was suggesting that Jason was just a man prior to his resurrection here. Jason Goes to Hell suggests otherwise, but at this point in the series, it might be debatable. Since three people have now played Tommy Jarvis, I wanted to look at the timeline of these films, but first a comment: Jason, in the title sequence to this entry in the series has essentially become horror’s James Bond. Since he still remains the most prolific slasher, and at this time had the most films in his franchise, the comparison is apt. The James Bond films would be one of the few franchi...

Opening credits that scream 3D and music that seems more suited to the 70s than 1982—that’s the beginning of Friday the 13th Part III . And, this couple at the store remind me—not in their behavior but in there sort of unnecessaryness—of the old couple at the beginning of Halloween II . I guess these movies borrow from each other, back-and-forth. Lame 3D bits make this movie quite silly; guy has a wood pole, so what does he have to do for a moment? Point it at the camera. There’s a snake so of course it has to come at the camera. I kinda wanted Harold to get killed there after checking behind like 9 curtains and doors before finally, there was Jason with a cleaver. 3D warning: rat has to crawl toward the camera. 3D warning: baseball bat that has absolutely nothing to do with anything also has to be sticking out toward the camera. This is the kind of gimmicky crap that makes 3D look pointless. 3D warning: offer the audience a joint. I really don’t like the makers of this film ri...

Back into my comfort zone. Friday the 13th Part 2 was, I think, the first Friday the 13th I bought for my VHS collection of the entire series in my 20s, so I’ve seen this one a lot. I really should buy a DVD set of these things—assuming a boxset exists. I haven’t even checked. How sad is that? Jason is a very nice killer, taking the kettle off the burner like that. I mean, sure, he stuck a screwdriver into Alice’s face first, but does that really make him a bad guy? She did kill his mother, after all. Crazy Ralph is back. They really should have had that same guy stick around for every one of these films. Even though he dies in this one. I suppose, since this sequel comes before Halloween ‘s or Texas Chain Saw Massacre ‘s, not to mention before the first Nightmare on Elm Street , this is where the slasher subgenre really gets going. Leatherface may have survived outright, Michael Myers may have survived his wound swell enough to get up and leave, but Jason is the first real ...