the groundhog day project

Something I didn't know the first time I saw Trading Places : it was supposed to be a Richard Pyror and Gene Wilder vehicle. Pryor dropped out. Eddie Murphy came in, got Wilder out (according to random trivia bit on IMDb) so he wouldn't look like he was "just trying to be another Pryor. Something I did know: Yoda, Marcus Brody, and Laurie Strode are in this. It's Christmas season. Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) is a commodities trader, rich, snooty, with a classy fiancé to match. Billy Ray Valentine (Murphy) is poor, he pretends to be a bling, legless Vietnam vet to beg for money. Their lives are about to get switched, because high concept comedy is a good start. Real classist deconstruction is where you go from there. Or where this movie goes from there. Billy Ray--who's black, in case you don't know who Eddie Murphy is, you cinematically uneducated miscreant--accidentally bumps into Louis--who's white, you filmically inexperienced buffoon--and pic...

I was not going to watch The Net again, but yesterday I noticed something... worth discussing. Here's the thing. Obviously, The Net is an early attempt to fathom the reach of the Internet and what it means to have our information out where anyone can find it if they just know how to hack the right website or database. But, then there's the plot itself--Angela (Sandra Bullock) has her identity erased and is sent on the run. Yesterday, I compared it to The Fugitive , the film version of which came out in 1993 (and I could also compare it to 1995's Nowhere Man TV show). (On the subject of The Fugitive , by the way, two things: 1) I watched the film just last week on the plane, indirectly. That is, guy in the row in front of me was watching it, and, somewhat familiar with the film, I didn't really need to hear the dialogue again to follow it. Not as good as when I watched Groundhog Day and the earphone splitter wasn't working, so I let my friend Pablo hear the mov...