the groundhog day project

The remarkable thing about Lars and the Real Girl is how easily it allows the audience to understand its characters. The damaged, the desperate, the concerned--they are all painted with such care. We can relate immediately to Lars (Ryan Gosling), to his concerned (and pregnant) sister-in-law. Karin (Emily Mortimer), to his interested coworker Margo (Kelli Garner). Even his brother Gus (Paul Schneider), though he doesn't have much to do but play support to Karin early on. And Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson, thankfully given better material than Pieces of April ). It's like I've said regarding Linklater's films; they embody these character seemingly effortlessly. Yet, the plot makes a very explicit effort to complicate things beyond understanding (and fails, as it turns out). Bianca (the doll) is a missionary, very religious, and she barely speaks English, plus she's in a wheelchair, plenty of detail to explain why she doesn't talk much. That and her shyness. Gosling...

Saw The Jungle Book (the "live-action" remake) in the theater today. The CGI animals were awesome, but storywise, is ain't a patch on the animated version. Plus, by not going all in with the musical numbers, the two very brief songs come across as very out of place. Watched (and livetweeted) The Ouija Experiment just now. Better than I expected it to be, made good use of its minimal budget. But now, Punch-Drunk Love is on again. And, it occurs to me that the insanity of the opening is a good gauge of Barry's mental state. He's on the phone obsessing about the Healthy Choice/American Airlines promotion, then he wanders outside only to have a car randomly flip over in the street and a cab drop off a harmonium. This is Barry's brain, obsessive and calm one moment then chaos. And, I don't know if--and this is me going all fan-theory on the film, and I hate fan-theories--the phone sex girl really extorts Barry for money. I think that might just be Barry...

Don't read this. Day 989, so close to 1000 entries and after a depressing day punctuated by comedy (watching the end of the final season of Seinfeld ) and obsessing about finding the original version of a particular source for my master's thesis when I could just quote it indirectly, it occurs to me that 1000 is a nice round number and rounds numbers are great ends. Not that everyday me wants to finish doing this. Unless I could justify going back to writing fiction each day, I am lately again of a mind that I need these words each night to get by. It's that kind of day. And Punch-Drunk Love is on, the abrupt car accident just happened followed by the inexplicable dropping off of the... whatever kind of organ that is. Meanwhile, Barry Egan (Adam Sandler, twisting his usual comedy tendencies into a rather disturbed sort of drama) has discovered that he can get a whole lot of frequent flyer miles by buying a bunch of cheap products, and then he's met Lena Leonard (Em...