the groundhog day project

Chris dances and mouths along to "Then He Kissed Me" and she dresses in black and white, which is an easy segue into her later dancing and singing--"Babysitting Blues"--at the Silver Dollar Room. Which, out of all the various messages one could take from this film regarding the "urban" world, is maybe the worst. I say maybe because the car theft ring is a pretty bad thing, but feels more opportunistic and less systemic. Wandering into a blues bar and immediately owning the stage when forced to perform--that's got bigger implications. Again, maybe. Albert Gene Drewery, better known as Albert Collins or the Ice Man, plays himself. He's the guitarist/singer running the stage at the club. Playing more like a nobody in a small club than who he really is (even thought he is credited as self... on IMDb; he is not in the cast list at the end of the film). This same year, he had been the musical guest on Late Night with David Letterman and in 1988 he...

Davies (1995) tells us that Groundhog Day "ignor[es] considerations of race and gender politics" (p. 215). But, in no uncertain terms, Davies is wrong. Well, somewhat wrong. Well, actually mostly right on the side of race. Gender is a different story. Take a "rom com" of any era and it will tell you something about gender politics at the time it was made. It's harder for the film to have anything to say about race when there are only two people in the cast who are not white and have lines. I argued in a media studies class once that Phil is effectively put in the position of the disenfranchised (as evidenced in his conversation with Ralph and Gus at the bowling alley bar) in that the regular rules of so-called civilized society do not apply to him anymore. Money has no value. His work has no value (though he does continue to work at least most days because Rubin wanted that check-in to sprinkle through the original script). Because this is a mainstream comedy ...

Opening music: "Hoochie Coochie Man" by Muddy Waters. Minus a point right off the bat. Mark spent the previous night drinking, and wakes in bed with a woman he does not remember. Not a race problem, but still an immediate negative. This guy should not be going to Harvard. (That woman in his bed is Missy from Bill & Ted and Kim from Summer School . Amy Stoch as girl who doesn't even get a name here.) He also has a bucket of tennis balls to turn off two separate alarms (set for noon). He's a Ferris Bueller-wannabe asshole, is what he is. Minor thing in Mark's favor later: as a lawyer he may be able to sue his father over spending money from what his father specifically calls his "tuition account" on a timeshare in a condo in Barbados. Calling it a "tuition account" sounds like at the least an oral agreement, and based on how banks deal with things like that today, the account itself might have been labeled per its purpose and prob...

It feels wrong that I hope Soul Man is horribly offensive. I mean, the premise is offensive enough, but we recognized that even when the movie was new. We. Just looked right on past it because the movie justifies (or tries to justify) itself with a nice romance at the center--and the church I grew up in had until recently been very much against miscegenation--and, of course, deep down, it's a movie about a white guy put upon by the world who just wants to make good. And, that makes it all okay. And, I imagine I will not be able to contain the smartass with this one. Sorry. First, a surprise: Steve Miner directed this thing. He directed Friday the 13th Part II and Part III . He directed House . He'd go on to direct Warlock and Halloween H20 , and Lake Placid , and we'd even see him directing a scene from Forever Young in person one night when we spotted some bright lights in... I think it was San Marino, but I don't recall the exact street. I was 16 and barely ...

I remember the sound mix for this film being amazing. All the music, all the explosions. I remember how exciting this, and a few months later Top Gun were. But, watching it today is harder because our ability to film aerial tricks and dogfights has improved and been augmented by special effects magic. Not that, I'm sure, this movie didn't employ some visual effects. On IMDb, Iron Eagle has 1 credit for visual effects, and 12 for special effects. A lot of the aerial shots seem fairly genuine (though the film very much did not get cooperation from the Air Force once they learned of what goes on in act two), so I'm guessing a lot of the visual effects are really the overlays to put the HUD targeting stuff over the footage, making really footage look like a simulator, blue screen backgrounds*, simple stuff like that. Or, you know, explosions, of course. I mean, it's the 80s. In America. Spare no expense making your movie big and loud... (* speaking of blue screen,...

I was raised white. Let me just be honest about that. Born in the 70s, much of my formative development happened during the Reagan 80s and I can't change that. I can't change who I am in that regard, no matter what I do. I saw a lot of movies with hypermasculine heroes killing a lot of foreigners. I saw a lot of random women bare their breasts for a paycheck because the Internet hadn't been invented yet and that kind of thing wasn't available for free. (Weirdly, the new thing these days, in the... Twenty tens? Is showing a penis in your film because that's subversive or something. But, penises are available for free on the Internet, too, so it is a bit... Deliberate, I suppose. All those years exploiting all those young women, I supposed it's fair play that male actors have to show their penises whether they like it or not. Because fuck men, especially white men. They've had the power for far too long. Like One-Eyed Willy. I mean, who does he think he is? H...

I can forgive--fairly easily because I grew up in the 80s so I know how movies were with the casual racism and sexism and whatnot--that the Fratellis feels like Italian criminal stereotypes and Data is the quintessential Asian stereotype (minus some martial arts skills, but Ke Huy Quan had already done a bit of that in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ) of the 1980s. Well, East Asian. If he'd been from farther west, he would have been a villain of some sort. But anyway, I can forgive that. Because, it's 1985, and America is very racist, very sexist, homophobic, and heteronormative. (Like today, only the most bigoted of us didn't have to claim so energetically how much we weren't. We just let it flow.) But, I cannot forgive Mrs. Walsh (Mary Ellen Trainor) for her racism. I mean, seriously, Mouth is a smartass little jerk, Chunk swears constantly--and Mrs. Walsh specifically dislikes swearing, mind you--but when they are both in her house, who does she notice? Whose ...

I want to talk about Orientalism and Mr. Miyagi as stereotype, but that topic is not very novel. It's been done. Instead, I'm noticing things that have nothing to do with big topics like that. For example, when Daniel is throwing away his bike, Lucille parks her car on that side of the building, but their apartment is on the other side of the building, there are limited spaces, and her space should be on the opposite side. It's actually a weird detail because it would have been easy to fix; just have the exterior of their apartment—which we only see that first day as Daniel enters and then as he leaves to go find the fix it man—be on the same side of the building as the walkway that goes out to Miyagi's workshop, and that dumpster where Daniel disposes of his bike. Amusingly—and maybe I noticed this once upon a time years ago but not yesterday—Ali deliberately kicks Daniel's soccer ball far away when she sees that Johnny and the Cobra Kai guys are at the beach. S...

I find it interesting that Space Ramblings calls Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark "a tough as nails equal to Indiana Jones" when her abduction and presumed death, and her need to be rescued (even if she almost manages to outdrink Belloq and escape) is central to that film. And, Matthew Rozsa at Salon calls Marion "a proactively adventurous female counterpart worthy of Indiana Jones" even though she was (offscreen, anyway) a child when she was involved with Indiana and is tied up more than once in the film--to be fair, Indy doesn't fare very well himself. Still, Marion feels like a more solid character than Willie Scott. That might be because Stephen Spielberg and Amy Irving's relationship wasn't the most solid (and he would end up getting together with Kate Capshaw, who plays Willie Scott, later) and George Lucas was going through a divorce (he admitted at one point, purportedly, that he was "not in a good mood" because of the di...

High Road to China makes sure pretty quickly that we understand it's the 1920s. Old cars, men in suits, and flappers. Vincent Canby explains , High Road to China "is set in a sort of mythical 'Roaring 20's,' which can be immediately identified because a young woman is seen doing a mad Charleston in an early scene." Also, some guy gets shot in the opening scene and I have no idea who he was. Eve (Bess Armstrong), the young woman dancing the Charleston, needs to find her father before he dies or his business partners will have him declared dead and take his business. She needs a plane for this and hooks up with O'Malley (Tom Selleck). That's the setup. Simple. She's a "society dame", he's an alcoholic. They head (initially) for Afghanistan (from Istanbul) and, well, basically, this is an adventure plot with a romance sprinkled in. Half an hour in, I gotta agree with Roger Ebert's conclusion : "High Road to China" is ...

Sometimes, I see a new movie and I wish I dealt in something more like reviews. Less of this unstructured discussion. This afternoon I saw Black Panther and I wanted to come home and fashion a brilliant review that celebrated the statement the film makes for Africans and African-Americans, and indicted white folks for, well, all of the shit they've done and do, and for their paranoia regarding Black Panther itself. I saw a post this morning--on Twitter I think... Nevermind the vagueness; I looked it up to check. It was the Twitter handle The Trump Train . They posted this: It's very fitting that the same people who claim to support equality and diversity also glorify a movie that idolizes black supremacy and establishing a black-only ethnostate. There was also a line about liberals and hypocrisy but it's that bit about Black Panther that gets me. Even before I saw the movie, and before I saw replies on Twitter confirming it, I knew that Black Panther is quite explici...

Filmmakers steal ideas all the time. Even if not on purpose. Every storyteller does. George Lucas wanted to make a Flash Gordon film before he couldn't get the rights and went ahead with his own story-- Star Wars . It shouldn't be much of a surprise that his story, a space fantasy designed like an old serial would bear some resemblance to Flash Gordon (even if this film ended up taking long to get made, remember, characters in Flash Gordon. Which is another reason I'm still sad that Prince Thun was just a black guy with a big hat instead of a furry lion man. I mean, if Lucas could have Chewbacca, Hodges should have been able to have a more visually interesting Prince Thun. And, a Prince Thun with a bigger part of the story. And maybe he could be applauded at the end of the story, and Chewbacca could get a medal along with Luke and Han (or maybe every pilot who survived that assault on the Death Star should have gotten an award, not just the MVP(s)). We've got moons her...

I never got to the second . Yesterday , I mean. I quoted some Alexander Hamilton, then got to ranting and rambling about a topic with a political bent--far, one might argue, from Blackbeard's Ghost . And, in particular, I said, "First, there's that line about seeing desolation and ruin everywhere." But, I never had a second to pair with that first . And, that provides me a mild disappointment. Before I move on to my final thoughts regarding the links between Blackbeard's Ghost and the formation of my identity as a film aficionado and as a human (because, I suppose, at times, the two things must be separated), I must have at last a second . And, it is this: Hamilton, near the end of the passage I quoted, says, "Say not, we have suffered also, and thence withhold your compassion." You know, your all lives matter crowd, your--and, here, I will raise the ire of some for sure--folks who blame antifa for the violence in Charlottesvilke as if a crowd of ...