the groundhog day project

Recent high school graduate who, sure, has flown a fighter jet at least once--we see it in flashback--plans a rescue effort in unnamed Northern African nation along with a few friends and a retired pilot in three days (and that includes executing the mission itself). The plot alone is silly. But, worse--and I almost wish I had time to catalog all of this--it uses the same footage over and over again. Obvious case in point: every single time Doug fires a weapon, there's the same shot of thumb pressing button. And, when it's the machine gun, always the same closeup of it firing: And, then there's everything in act one between Doug's father's capture sequence and Doug and Chappy teaming up. Doug drives like an asshole. Then he fights with Knotcher for also driving like an asshole. And, then they can't fight because--and this is an almost clever infodump scene--Doug can't get in trouble for fighting again. Then, brother shows up with Doug's ...

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...

For some reason, every time I watch The Exorcist , I forget that it starts with that sequence at the excavation in Iraq. Of course, the movie is not called The Possessed (though I am pretty sure that I have seen more than one movie with that title); it is not about Regan (Linda Blair) but about Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) and, even moreso, Father Karras (Jason Miller). Something Clover (1992) tries to explain "this gendered division of narrative labor--to understand what it is about the male crisis that needs harnessing to a narrative of female hysteria or indeed psychosis" (p. 70). While Regan's story drives the narrative, the narrative belongs to those two men (and primarily Karras). Man versus the devil. The girl is just their battleground. But, what kind of battleground is she? Kinder and Houston (1987) write about the "psychological interpretation" presented in the film to explain Regan's initial extraordinary behaviour--her parents' divorce ...

All the conspiracy stuff people see in The Shining (like this stuff ) aside, Kubrick is clearly playing with cinematic structure and staging. The opening credits running up the screen, for example. The impossible sets for another. The deliberate dismissal of the tension of Jack coming upon Wendy reading his book, for a third. In fact, there's so much out there about this movie, I'm not sure what I can add to it. (Clearly, I can play with it, though.) Not to the movie anyway, not even really to the conspiracies or theories about theme. In a Mother Jones piece by Maggie Caldwell--"The 6 Weirdest Theories about "The Shining"--one of the theories referenced (but not specifically cited from any particular source) is that The Shining is "Kubrick's meditation on the weight of all of of history on the present moment." And, that's got me thinking not about what theories are true or not about The Shining but more a question of why we find so many t...

I Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is like any other 1980s alpha male. Only more so. If that makes sense. His drives are the drives of men in business, men on the prowl for women. He's the bastard child of the men of Mad Men , the contemporary of the men of Wall Street and his generation bypassed the problems of John Rambo or Tyler Durden--two different angles on emasculation. Patrick Bateman, as capitalist extraordinaire, would never put up with emasculation. He's too territorial for that. He'd sooner kill you than let you even attempt to take away his power. Maybe that's exactly the same situation as Rambo or Durden, except Bateman has money. He doesn't need to hide behind anonymity or an alias because his name has clout. But, I'm interested in something else about American Psycho . Patrick Bateman is also interested in brand names, owning the right things (far from Tyler Durden). But, then there's a problem; see, I'm reading on the trivia sectio...

Seriously, though , fuck the rules. I could probably spread out discussion of Fight Club over several days. I don't know that I need to, however. I would like to begin the discussion with my usual go to -- Roger Ebert . His review ranges from insightful--"eroticism between the sexes is replaced by all-guy locker-room fights"--to the... well, not quite getting it, I think--"the movie stops being smart and savage and witty, and turns to some of the most brutal, unremitting, nonstop violence ever filmed." Regarding the first quotation there, I get it. It's like the homoeroticism that sat right under the surface of so many manly 80s movies grew up to become this. Damn the women--except Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), but we'll get to her later--you don't need to include every gender to explore every gender... or to explore gender at all. I know, I've said numerous times in this blog that every film offers commentary on (or at least insight into) ...

I lament the fact that we arrived in Tombstone too late last week to get into a few of the places. But, driving into town, we saw Boothill Cemetery first. The gift shop/entrance had this on the door: Doc Holiiday (Val Kilmer) didn’t need his guns just now to kill a man, of course, in Tombstone . Set his guns on the table and stabbed the guy instead. Sure enough, Holliday was a bit of a killer and not a particularly nice guy. Some graves, starting with the Cowboys killed at the “Gunfight at the O.K Corral”: And, this marker which could fit right in outside the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland: A couple more: Two gift shops—and a shot glass for my collection later and we drove into the town proper, parked about 20 yards from this: For the record, once again, the gunfight did not happen at the Corral but a good distance off, next to Fly’s Photographic Studio. right about where I was standing when I took these pictures: first, on fremont looking east, the porch at the ri...

[EDIT: If anyone is coming to this blog from the Believer article, welcome. To find the daily pieces on Groundhog Day you've got to look at August 2013 to August 2014. And, I will be watching Groundhog Day and writing an entry related to it later today--today being February 2. The piece below was posted late last night for February 1st. For the month of January, I watched 5 action movies from the 1980s. Enjoy.] Let us get the most important item out of the way first off on this last day with Top Gun : There’s a question on Quora — In Top Gun , why was Jester allowed to fly below the “hard deck,” but Maverick and Goose were reprimanded for it? But, I’ve got a better question—if the “hard deck” was 10,000 feet and Maverick gets in trouble for flying below said altitude, what were both jets doing flying so low well before the moment in question? I mean, look at this: Does that look like they are above 10,000 feet? (It’s so low, it reminds me of the opening titles sequ...

The opening shot of Top Gun —after that somewhat superfluous text—is the deck of the USS Enterprise. (Seen in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home later the same year). There’s fog, or I guess it’s exhaust, blowing across the deck. We see men, but not in detail. We see fighter jets, but also not in detail. The music is low energy, and when it transitions into “Danger Zone” the light comes up a little; the planes are a little more visible, the men a little more visible. Then, we’re introduced to the leads as they come up, inexplicably, against two MiG 28s. This—in the Indian Ocean, where everything should be fine and dandy. An exchange of fire and this would be like Tonkin all over again. But, this time for real. And, involving planes instead of boats. The reference is important because, like the other movies this past month, Vietnam hangs like a shadow over the whole thing. It’s not as obvious as Rambo or Commando or even Lethal Weapon . It’s not as deliberately left behind as Die Hard —r...

Let's talk about war. Let's talk about America. As if those were two different topics. I don't know if Rambo had an effect on military recruitment, but Top Gun definitely did. Enlistment spiked after Top Gun was released--BLANK estimates BLAH BLAH--and recruitment tables were even set up outside movie theaters to answer inquiries from young men who had just seen a feature-length, blockbuster commercial for the Navy. The Washington Post reports: During production, the Pentagon worked hand-in-hand with the filmmakers, reportedly charging Paramount Pictures just $1.8 million for the use of its warplanes and aircraft carriers. But that taxpayer-subsidized discount came at a price--the filmmakers were required to submit their script to Pentagon brass for meticulous line edits aimed at casing the military in the most positive light. (Sirota, 2011, August 26) Salon --same author, actually--quotes "public relations expert" Nancy Snow: "Propaganda is most ef...

Watching Rambo: First Blood Part II for the last time--I like to toy with the idea that after watching any of these movies for multiple days I will retire them from my viewing repertoire--it strikes me that I haven't had much that was actually negative to say about this film. Sure, it represents an attempt to rebuild American hegemony symbolically, and a manipulation to reconstruct the myth of Vietnam, but it's just so damn fun. So, I figured I'd end this week of Rambo by looking backward, see where Rambo came from. I've mentioned David Morrell, author of the novel First Blood . I've even talked here and there about differences between book Rambo and movie Rambo. But, why does Rambo even exist? Wilder (1990) presents us with a story--I'll just provide the beginning of it: A young boy is raised in a patriotic Christian culture to love god and country; to believe "Thou shalt not kill." At the age of 18, not yet old enough to drink or vote, he is giv...

Winding down on Rambo --I gotta wonder if there isn't some (probably unconscious) juxtaposition between the prison at the beginning of the film, working the rock quarry, and the traveling POW camp group, working those prisoners harvesting crops. An enslaved group working the fields--no, that couldn't be worth exploring. There are always topics left behind when limited to a week. Hell, I've still got things to say about Groundhog Day and I've watched that somewhere around 400 times (and will be watching it again a week from tomorrow). There is an implicit homoeroticism in how the camera loves Rambo's body (or John Matrix's body last week, John McClane's the week before, Martin Riggs' the week before that), but I've left that topic as maybe an occasional aside. I haven't written about how rude Rambo is to Ericson (Martin Kove), who seems genuinely excited to meet him. Lifer, on the other hand, is a bit of a dick. There's some room for a discu...