the groundhog day project

Heaven Can Wait can wait. Because today was an awesome movie day. I had an unplanned class cancellation, so I made it to a couple movies in the afternoon ( Marshall and then Professor Marston and the Wonder Women ), then in the evening I took my daughter to see Happy Death Day because 1) she wanted to see it and it turned out to be a good horror film and 2) it's always fun to watch a time loop movie a second time. If you are out of the loop... And that wasn't a pun. If you are out of the loop, regarding Happy Death Day , think Scream ( 387 388 389 390 391 393 394 ) crossed with Groundhog Day ( 1 ... 365 + so many other entries)--except don't because Quentin Fottrell over at Market Watch seems to either think that mix is Hollywood out of ideas, because reusing one idea with another, and adding your own bits is bankrupt Hollywood at its finest, or some such bullshit. I mean, I think most remakes are cynical cash grabs from, yeah, a Hollywood out of ideas, or at l...

If you're reading this, you've probably got a slinky somewhere in your house, or you have had one in the past. Maybe it was just some cheap plastic knockoff, the kind you get for a few tickets at Chuck E. Cheese, but still. Is a slinky useful? Barely. Does it do what its advertised to do? Maybe that one time you got it just right at the right distance from the top step in your house and you got so excited that it was still going after four steps that you jumped for joy and shook the step just enough as to send that fancy little coil off course and it settled into itself on the next step. But, just that one time. Otherwise, it goes a step, maybe two and then fails to go further. I bring up the slinky for two reasons. First, they mentioned the choice to run with the obituary for the guy who invented the slinky* in Obit. , which I saw in the theater today. You run that obituary because that there is that ubiquitous connection to so many people in the readership. You want the name...

Speaking of remakes and reboots and sequels, in theaters today is King Arthur: Legend of the Sword . Take a bunch of fantasy clichés, at least one biblical one, throw in some first act anachronistic organized crime (think: they cast Charlie Hunnam because they were fans of Sons of Anarchy and only then realized they were making a pre-medieval film), a whole lot of Robin Hood-style/freedom fighter stuff, and mostly none of the actual tropes of King Arthur stories. Which is kind of weird given that Guy Ritchie is from England. But, also exactly what one should expect given Ritchie's short-attention-span style of directing. There are some great visuals here, of course. Ritchie can do those. The opening sequence's oversized elephants, for example--if we had reason by then to care about any of the characters being slaughtered, would be fairly frightening. We don't, of course. Have reason to care about any of the characters. In fact, we'll hardly have reason to care about...

I was born in 1976. This is what babies looked like: (Yes, that's me.) This is what politicians looked like: This is what fashion looked like: This is what music looked like: This is what movies looked like: And there is where my record of the "connective tissue as well as the abyss between the present and the past" ends.* * quote from Sheila O'Malley's review of 20th Century Women . See, those movies... Rocky has been recently rebooted (after five sequels). Carrie has been remade twice (after one "sequel"). A new version of A Star is Born is being made now (I believe it's the fourth iteration of this story). Hollywood is stuck in nostalgia mode. I must make two things clear: 1) I'm not necessarily complaining about this. For every remake of The Magnificent Seven there's The Lobster . For every Ghostbusters remake, there's Swiss Army Man . If you bother to pay attention beyond the big studio films, there is plenty more th...