the groundhog day project

[(Note: This was mostly written a few hours ago, but I forgot to take my keyboard with me today. I hand wrote some stray thoughts then a few rants bits... You'll see.) My first thought while watching Cutthroat Island was to wonder when it came out. I remembered (accurately, it turned out) it coming out in the mid-90s but it has Mario Kassar listed as producer. My first note: Mario Kassar? - the 80s guy? Sure enough, it' she 80s guy, which explains some of what's going on with this movie. By the way: That's page one. Black then red on this page. The others are more organized. I will try to just type them as is, keep it simple, and save me some time.] Nice confident opening credits. Cold open feels like the cold open of Romancing the Stone , except this is the film, not a setup. Nice sweeping shots--this movie is far too sure of itself. And that score... [later added in red: It gets a little repetitive as it goes on.] Barely begun and trying so damn hard to be glor...

I've got Troll 2 playing again, because I wanted to say something more about it. But, I also saw The Dark Tower today, and unfortunately, there are also things to be said about that film in this month of bad movies. Both films have a problem with audience. Troll 2 is ostensibly a family-friendly horror film, but then Holly and Elliott openly talk about sex--she even specifically mentions "group sex"--and Creedence is fairly sexualized as well. Additionally, just watch that scene with Arnold and the girl in the woods and tell me there isn't some serious sexual undertones going on there; girl with a torn shirt running screaming through the woods feels more like a serious R-rated horror film, or some exploitation film from the 70s. (In fact, there's room for an interpretation of this film not just as Joshua's hallucinations but his vicinity to puberty being the fuel even if Grandpa Seth's death was the trigger. Think about it: his grandpa dies and Joshu...

The question is, what do you want from a movie? Must it challenge your mind, make you contemplate your place in the universe? Must it simply entertain? For that matter, does it have to make sense? And have good acting and a script that sounds like someone actually read it at least once before filming? A bad movie can do all of these things. The problem, really, is when the bad movie makes you hate the people who made it, makes you hate the world for creating a place for it, makes you hate yourself for watching it. Well, a bad bad movie does that. A good bad movie can fail at so much that makes movies watchable--like Margo Prey not bothering to act at all as the mother in Troll 2 , just, you know, saying things, or Connie McFarland as the sister yelling like she forgot microphones exist--but still be so watchable in spite of the flaws. Some of what makes a movie like Troll 2 bad can easily be credited to the filmmaker; the director Claudio Fragasso (credited as Drake Floyd because ...

I'm watching Groundhog Day again, as it the tradition. Watched it every day for a year and now I go right back to it every "month." (I put month in quotation marks because, as anyone keeping up with this blog would know, not every month is equal. Most months so far have been 28 days of other movies, 4 movies for 7 days each. But, last October went a little long, and a little differently. So did January, and so did April. Each for slightly different reasons. June is probably going to be a little long as well (for a reason similar to last October). Anyway, this coming month will be 4 movies, 7 days each. Then, Groundhog Day again.) I still know all the lines, but I think my timing on some of them is starting to get a little off. It's the tragedy of being away from something for too long. Familiarity is diminished. Don't get me wrong. I still know more about this movie than pretty much everybody else. But, the feeling is changing. It's comfort food when som...

(638) I've got so many sources bookmarked regarding Groundhog Day that I couldn't find a certain one I was looking for in preparation for today's entry. It's Day (3) with (500) Days of Summer and I want to talk about movies. As if that's unusual. What I mean is that this is a story about a story, a movie about movies. No, it's not a love story, but it's a story about love stories. Summer is named Summer for a couple reasons, for example: 1) it's romantic, it's special and 2) it's a season, something bigger than a single day, bigger than a single person... she's practically a force of nature. She quotes a song lyric in her high school yearbook and sales of that album go up for two years. She works at an ice cream parlor and sales increase 212%. She checks out an apartment for rent and is offered a price below asking. She loves pancakes and she loves The Smiths and she loves Ringo Starr, but she just cannot love Tom. She's somewh...

(636) (500) Days of Summer was the #9 film it's opening weekend. I saw it with my wife at Arclight Hollywood , I'm pretty sure. The #2 movie that weekend was a movie I would only see later (but also in the theater)--and I would not watch it every day, but Lawrence Dai would , and his blog would become part of the inspiration for this one. That movie was Julie & Julia . Also in theaters that weekend (that I would see in the theater at some point or another) was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince , The Hangover , Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen , The Hurt Locker , Up , Star Trek , Bruno , Terminator: Salvation , Moon , Food, Inc. (actually, i might not have watched that one until DVD), The Cove , Monsters Vs. Aliens , Land of the Lost , Away We Go , X-Men Origins: Wolverine ... I suppose it was a busy year for movies. But, not really. That's just my life occasionally. You should see my movie lists for, like, December and January when I'm playing catch up o...

It's interesting that the CliffsNotes for The Notebook suggests a religious theme to the story. On the surface, I don't think there is one... at all. Sure, the swan could be taken for its Christian symbolism (though I am not at all sure where that association comes from; some versions of the Bible list the swan among unclean birds but otherwise, the swan is not in there), OR it could be taken for its symbolism in that swans supposedly mate for life. (Plus, the whole migration thing I already mentioned yesterday .) Taking the presence of swans together with the clothing at Allie's family dinner, we get an interesting thing, though. While Fin and Sara dress in white and blend right in with all the rich folk, Noah wears black, standing out like a black swan--which in science is an unpredictable outlier (or something like that). Let us assume that Noah is not an unexpected thing existing simply to disrupt Allie's life... but not go so far as the CliffsNotes author who ...

It's time, ladies and gentlemen, for the classic Groundhog Day Project exercise--the Christ-Figuring. I don't mean to spend too much time on it, though. I'm less interested in the score than in why a film like Speed Racer would need a Christ-Figure (assuming that it has one). (For anyone new, this is Kozlovic (2004) adjusted. You'll catch on.) First criterion: Racer X--no, I'm not Christ-Figuring the title character-- is tangible . 1/1 He is not central to the film. That is because he is definitely, and quite deliberately an outsider . 2/3 He is not divinely sourced , but he is sourced into the story from outside. I'm going to give him this one. 3/4 No bonus point for miraculous birth , but Racer X definitely has an alter ego and the special/normal division. 5/6 (For those of you new to this, the bonus points are not counted in the overall denominator, but do allow for additions to the numerator. It's just... a thing. Deal with it.) Racer X ...

(This month is a little different than usual. Instead of four movies for a week each, I've got 10 movies recommended by other people--family, friends, regular readers--three days each.) This movie is like a live action cartoon. Which makes sense, considering it's a live action film based on a cartoon. By the way, it's Speed Racer . And, I have seen so many episodes of the show--not that the individual episodes were all that unique; the closeups and the blurred lines for a background--that is very much my memory of the show. I didn't see this movie in the theater. It was #3 its opening weekend. #1 was Iron Man starting its second week. I saw that one opening weekend. I'm trying to remember what I was doing spring 2008 that I wasn't seen a lot of movies. Seriously, out of the top 20 movies that weekend, I only saw 3 of them in the theater (the aforementioned Iron Man , The Visitor and Dr. Seuss' Horton Hear's a Who . I'd eventually watch on cable ...

I forgot to mention yesterday that I was writing from the plane. It was a very long travel day, a couple hundred miles by car, a couple thousand or so by plane. I had intended to look over the blog entry before I posted it but by the time I was home, I was far too tired. I can barely remember what I wrote, some rambling about Murray and his wife, Murray and Paul, Paul and his fiancee, Paul and the postmistress. I think I might have said that these men of Tickle Head wanting to bring the oil company to their town just to have a good paying job was a bad thing. Well, maybe I didn't say it, but I feel like I implied it. I do sort of side with the postmistress--her name is Kathleen, by the by. She rejects the idea of the factory coming to Tickle Head specifically because it's the oil company. Sure, it's a "petrochemical repurposing plant"--essentially a recycling plant, but just a PR thing the oil company is doing--but it's still "the oil company", sho...

Take a bit of Waking Ned Devine , some Doc Hollywood , a dash of Funny Farm , some themes left over from the likes of Brassed Off and The Full Monty and Billy Elliott (with those last two, I do not mean the dancing or the stripping) and you've got The Grand Seduction , an English-language remake of the French-Canadian Seducing Doctor Lewis . It's the simple story of a small town... village... "harbour" lying to an out-of-town doctor to convince him to settle there so an oil company factory will also settle there and the locals will all have jobs again. The film begins and ends with nice down-home narration about the importance of hard work--and the sex to be had at night when your tired, which, with at least one local woman, has amounted to a few too many kids. (Anyone who has seen the film might note a mistake there. Since the past seven years in town have been mostly everyone collecting welfare checks because their fishing industry dried up, that woman has not ...

Though it is day three with After the Dark (AKA The Philosophers ), I don't think I have much to say about the film as a film . It's shot well enough, the acting is good for such large cast, some with only a few lines to work with. A warning going in: if you don't like Sophie Lowe's whispering in the opening scene, you should know that she continues to talk like that. Though she tells him to be quiet, ostensibly because someone is in the house with them--he assures her that they know she's there--she is not actually whispering to be quiet; that's just her voice. She will continue to talk like that and will not have many facial expressions either. Somehow, it kind of works for her character. A big problem this film has, generally, with its cast is some of the lesser (meaning, less screen time) characters have more personality than the leads--Petra, Mr. Zimit (James D'Arcy) and James (Rhys Wakefield). Freddie Stroma's Jack, for example, is more expressive...

I don't particularly know where this film is going. But, it's opening scene intrigues me. We open on two young people, naked in bed, kissing. But the film doesn't really show us their bodies. So, we know this film won't shy away from human feeling, from sensuality, but we also know this film is probably aiming for a PG-13. Second scene (not counting the guy from the previous scene waking up late and running to get to what turns out to be school) is a philosophy class. Hard to know if this film will succeed in being thoughtful but it certainly wants to be. The movie, by he way, is After the Dark . This philosophy class--it's the last day of the schoolyear--gets underway first by discussing the usefulness of philosophy then covers a few basic philosophical exercises--the infinite monkey idea, the trolley problem, some other one I hadn't heard of involving trying to get your friends to save your life--then they move on to a bigger idea (which I think is going t...

In these dangerous times, where it seems the world is ripping apart at the seams, we can all learn how to survive from those who stare death squarely in the face every day and [we] should reach out to each other and bond as a community, rather than hide from the terrors of life at the end of the millennium. First of all, I'd change that ending to, well, ever; just cut it off at "the terrors of life." Forget the millennium ; live this every day. Reach out to people, connect. Second of all, those were some of the final words written by Jonathan Larson, found on his computer after his death. For those of you not paying attention, Jonathan Larson wrote the stage version of Rent . In his analysis of Rent , Scott Miller says quite succinctly (and obviously), " Rent is so many things to so many people." As it should be. As any movie should be. As any story should be. In Rent , we've got eight principal characters--Mark, Roger, Mimi, Maureen, Joanne, Angel, Col...