the groundhog day project

Ben wants a big answer. His story here begins with a dream that leads to the design of a new antenna the leads to the space bubble thing, which leads to the Thunder Road spaceship which leads to the alien vessel and Ben wants it all to mean something. Like, there's got to be a reason he and Wolfgang are bullied, when Trisha over at Charles M. Jones Junior High School is just as much a nerd... but maybe not as much of a geek. A reason why Steve Jackson and his friends are assholes. A reason why Darren's father is the way he is. Why Darren's mom died when he was young. Why movies like War of the Worlds and This Island Earth can lift Ben out of his mundane suburban life. Why he can't manage the confidence to talk to Lori Swenson. Ben is still a child. He's got a crush on Lori but when he gets the opportunity to hover outside her bedroom window, he isn't looking for her to be undressing--as Darren points out, it's too early in the evening for that--but is e...

Something I didn't know about Tremors was that the filmmakers made an effort to let the audience think a person was doing the killing early on. The graboid POV shots when Rhonda gets in her truck and Old Fred's death scene were added later when the studio decided to advertise the film specifically as a monster movie. In a way, if the studio hadn't jumped in, this could play like a slasher film almost. Except that most of the cast are adults, and most of them are quite capable. I also hadn't really noticed (and learned from IMDb trivia) that aside from two interiors--Walter's store and the Gummers' basement (and inside a couple pickups)--every scene takes place outside, which fits with our leads. They sleep outside, even though they clearly have a trailer; we see them exit it after the septic tank mishap, freshly showered and heading out of town. Whether monster movie or slasher film, or whatever other subgenre of horror you want to call it, this is a not...

I was thinking about westerns today, you know, as one does. And, about war films, and cop films, and all those ex-soldiers killing far too many bad guys in the 80s, and there was a clear trend about (mostly) lone white men fighting all levels of evil, this specifically American (but surely understood in many another culture as well) fantasy about how much one man can do on his own (or with a small band of similar heroes). And, while recently we have drifted back into the same fantasy with the prevalence of superhero films, there is an interesting gap through the 90s--full of aging versions of too many of those 80s heroes and young heroes raging against fascist governments--that makes me want to do a serious study, a la Wright's Six Guns and Society or Nowell's Blood Money , but focused on the thesis that all these various types of action films are variations of one genre, not multiple. That westerns and those grungy cop dramas from the 70s, those big buff soldiers (some damage...

With action movies, it's easy. With courtroom dramas. Even with romances. If--and if they had, this movie would have probably been quite forgettable--they had gone ahead and filmed the scenes with Stephanie DeCastro , maybe it would have been easier. But, what makes Phil's situation so hard is there is not clear victory to be had, no simple solution. Chasing after Rita is not dictated by some Fairy Godmother or Magic Mirror. Phil's situation is both entirely his own doing and entirely not. It's simple. It's complex. It's unsolvable. And, eventually, it solves itself. Like life. If you're lucky. If the social and cultural and political and ethnic and racial rolls go in your favor and circumstance doesn't set you as an example for everybody else. The thing is, however silly bullshit American Dream lines feel all too often-- you can accomplish anything if you just put your mind to it , you can be anything you want to be and all the similar lies we tell...

I'm torn, on this final day with Halloween II ; I wanted to do some Christ-Figuring but I cannot decide if I want to do a serious sort of figuring focused on Loomis or a semi-serious one focused on Laurie, or a probably not serious at all one focused on Michael. The vital question, because I think we know what I got from a movie like this back when I was five years old, is can I manage all three. And, in the process make an even bigger farce of the Kozlovic-Black Scale of Christ-Figuring. Note, in case you are new: the scale is scored out of 25, but there are more than 25 items. 1 tangible and 2 central are easy here, but Michael and Loomis take the lead over Laurie with 3 outsider and Michael takes the lead with 4 divinely sourced (though I could make the argument for Loomis having that point, too). Michael: 4, Loomis: 3, Laurie: 2. No one gets the point for 4.5 miraculous birth but Laurie gets the point for 5 alter ego . I'm tempted to give that point to Michael as...

Out of nowhere today, it occurred to me what was " missing " in Marshall . Well, not out of nowhere; I was leaving the theater--I saw The Foreigner today before heading off to class, and there was a poster for Marshall in the lobby. And, I realized that Marshall has the same sort of subconsciously racist problem that Birth of the Dragon had this summer, and that numerous other movies have all the time. See, Birth of the Dragon is ostensibly a story about Bruce Lee (Philip Ng), but the main character is the white guy (Billy Magnussen). Marshall is ostensibly about Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) but the filmmakers didn't choose a case he won on his own, they chose the case where he brought in the white guy (Josh Gad). Now, these white character's stories are interesting in their own right, sure. But, it's problematic when you tell the story of the famous person of color and you have to bring in a white character to tell the story... Meatballs doesn...

As I start writing today's entry, I'm not sure if I'm going to watch Ice Castles one more time. I've got a 48-hour rental, so I could watch it a third time, really boil down what it taught me when I was a kid, but it's mostly going to be something simple and cheesy... like It taught me about perseverance and love and the importance of having people around you . Obvious crap like that. One thing it didn't teach me was that being blind is fine because you can get right back up and... skate. Again. I don't skate. Not only was that never my calling, I rarely roller skated, and often did it wrong, and have only ice skated like twice ever. But, that's beside the point. My calling when I was young (not as young as where I still am with this deconstruction thing. Older, able to have dreams about what I wanted to do with my life.) was writing, then filmmaking. I could write without my sight, I suppose. But, filmmaking... And, more importantly, filmwatching--thi...

I want to see something new tonight. It's the 2nd of the month. I'm watching Groundhog Day . Again. In the meantime, I sit here and recite a lot of the lines as they go. Not spending every day with this movie--like I did in Phase One of this blog--my timing is off with some lines, but mostly I've still got it. You know one detail from Groundhog Day: The Musical (which I have yet to see because I can't make it to New York too readily, but I listen to the soundtrack plenty) that I love that differs from the film? When Buster announced that the groundhog said, "I definitely see a shadow" and he proclaims "Six more weeks of winter", in the film, the crowd just boos. The people on stage even have signs to egg them on: BLIZZARD, SLEET, 6 MORE WEEKS OF WINTER. The crowd in the musical has a slightly different take. Sure, they boo, but then, almost immediately, they scream yay, because they're such cheerful folk they can't really be sad about t...

Asked by Tasha Robinson at The Verge , in regards to the end of Sing Street : It's clear the scene in the gym [i.e. the band's performance of "Drive It Like You Stole It"] is a fantasy, because it's got that bright candy color, and things happen that are so obviously unreal. But in the boat crossing [i.e. Conor and Raphina running away to England at the end of the film], you spend a lot of time establishing the physical danger of what they're doing. It seems like if it was just a romantic fantasy, you would have just had them sail off together. But there was a point where it looked like it was going to end with them both dying in the Irish Sea. director John Carney responds: I wish they had, in a way. I'm sorry! But there is a side of me that wishes they had. Given the difficulty of people who are making journeys, and end up dying... I don't think it's supposed to be a fully real sequence. I think they're supposed to be quite brave, setti...

The question for today is this: how do you measure a film's... Worthiness? Greatness? Must it be objective, or is the subjective as or more important? See, today, I saw Wonder Woman . (And, right now, I've got Groundhog Day playing because it's the 2nd of the month, but I'm not sure how much I might say about that film tonight. Additionally, I should probably get around to a recap entry sometime soon, but that won't be happening tonight either. Also, I'm starting to have ideas for themes for upcoming months. I think this blog might be here to stay for a while. At least until, say, August 1. That would make it three full years. But anyway, Wonder Woman ...) First, a story from just after the film. See, I'm thinking about stuff I might say in this blog all through the movie, and I'm trying to figure out how to get into the subjective versus objective thing. I mean, there's the obvious (and oft repeated here) bit from Benesh (2011) about how every...

I was going to rage tonight, get political, get advantage on ability checks. But, weirdly stressful midday and my students bugged me this evening and I'm in the mood for something simpler. This morning I watched Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and right now I'm watching Beginners again. And, I feel like some old fashioned Christ-Figuring. If you've been with this blog for a while, you know what that means. If you haven't, then maybe look back on the original Kozlovic Scale Christ-Figuring two-parter (Days 93 and 94 ) regarding Phil Connors in Groundhog Day or what I take as the inaugural Kozlovic-Black Scale*--when I Christ-Figured Rambo . * Yes, I gave myself partial naming rights. If Anton has a problem with that, he has yet to talk to me about it. Anton being Anton Karl Kozlovic, who published a few times on the subject of the cinematic Christ-Figure. And, I've done it several times here. Thing is, I'm going for a twofer tonight. I am going to Christ-Fi...