the groundhog day project

Man, are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon. Watched Primer before Groundhog Day today. It’s a very low budget exploration into time travel and its consequences… except I don’t think it deals too well in actual (morally) bad consequences. It demonstrates a lot of the complexity Phil Connors might have to deal with, though, in repeating the same day if he wants things to seem normal. In Primer , Aaron (played by writer and director Shane Carruth) uses recordings of the original conversations through a certain day, for example, so that when he returns to that day he can keep one earbud in and follow the conversation how it is supposed to go. Tying back to yesterday’s entry about Run Lola Run , the way tiny differences can be a problem (or not) is demonstrated when Aaron has a conversation on a basketball court; he misses a shot in the resumption that he made previously, so the dialogue on the tape differs from the new reality. But, that doesn’t really lea...

Backtracking just slightly, I can't believe I neglected to mention, in regard to #24 ("verbal tags") yesterday , that Ned also says, "Oh God! It is so good to see you." Foretracking back into the present--no, foretracking isn't a word, but it should be--I just watched Time Freak (2011) again. It's an Oscar-nominated short about Stillman, a guy with a time machine who has spent 3 days (real time) and year and a half (his time) going back in time to yesterday. Just yesterday. See, he had a run in with the dry cleaner because the shirt he planned to wear for photos in Ancient Rome wasn't ready. So, he went back to try it again, and again, and again. He tells his friend he was just trying to change his reaction to the situation. Since you probably won't ever see the film unless you find me and ask me to show it to you or you buy a copy yourself on iTunes, I'm going to get right into SPOILERS. He ultimately (that time) ends up hugging the dry c...