the groundhog day project

In 2000, Fievel Mousekewitz was named an official icon for UNICEF for "promoting worldwide understanding and friendship among children." However much Roger might have dismissed the movie for being too depressing— he wrote, among other complaints, "The movie has such vague ethnic grounds... that only a few children will understand or care that the Mousekewitzes are Jewish. And few of those are likely to be entertained by such a tragic, gloomy story. —the film not only performed well—it was #2 behind Crocodile Dundee its opening weekend and #18 at the box office for all of 1986 (and it didn't come out until November)—but has also endured. A few sequels, a couple video games, a comic book, and some nice retrospective articles years after release. Regarding the latter, for example, Dave Trumbore, who credits An American Tail as the first film he saw in a theater, writes for Collider , 21 November 2016: What I once regarded as a darkly serious and sometimes sil...

Opening shots are of Quigley's cowboy implements. His boot. His bedroll. His saddle. His rope. His belt and cartridges. Plus, his hands, nails short. His knife. His rifle sliding into its case.Spurs going into a bag. His pocket watch. His hat. And then the map. The setup is simple enough. We've got a cowboy on our hands traveling to a faraway land, but the piecemeal shots maybe suggest a deconstruction at play. Reminds me of, at the same time, the gearing up sequence in Rambo: First Blood Part 2 and the fictitious magical costuming in Chaplin . One of the first things Quigley does, before he's even off the ship that brought him to Australia, is, on the behalf of an old woman, hit another guy between the legs with his gun. We've got basic masculine cowboy imagery, and then a nice hit to the balls to drive home the idea that... well, either we've got a serious man on our hands here, or we've got something very much else. Next thing he does is save Cora and s...

I see a lot of movies by myself. Hell, I see most movies that I see by myself. There is often overlap with my ex-wife's viewing habits where we can have conversations about certain movies, but mostly, it's me, and, well... You           An audience that cannot--at least in any particularly meaningful fashion--talk back. So, it's just me and the screen, usually my iPad, that has been a fixture of this blog since before I even had a smartphone or a fire stick or a moviepass. Sometimes, rare times, I want more. Like after I saw I Feel Pretty a few days ago, or after Infinity War just this afternoon. I want to walk out of the theater talking about what we just saw, start digesting it at least in a shallow way as it settles. I had a few ideas recently about new ways of doing all this, reacting to, responding to, conversing with all the various movies I put into my head. I've even made some steps toward one of them, and I had this feeling like that lead-up...

I never really got around to talking about destiny yesterday . Probably because I really didn't want to. There is a bit of a deterministic streak to Back to the Future , and I've written about stuff like that before in this blog. How what we call "free will" is just a long series of tiny events leading to all the inevitable decisions you will make and actions you will take. It's both entirely plausible and entirely pointless at the same time. At the moment, I'm more interested in a couple details from the end of the film that have little to do with time travel. 1) who parked Marty's truck in the garage at that weird angle? It's impractical, and actually would have been fairly difficult. But, it shows off the truck real nice, so I guess it's good for the product placement. 2) And this is interesting because I have got to wonder if the placement is deliberate. So, the Libyans drive a blue and white VW bus. When Marty gets away in the DeLorean, ...

I like to find in-universe reasons for things even if practical behind-the-scenes reasons explain stuff. That's a given. One that caught my attention watching Back to the Future yesterday was Doc Brown's photos of scientists. In 1955, he has four of them on his mantel--Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein. So, it took the second viewing in as many days to notice that in the opening tracking shot, there are just three of these photos hanging by Doc's bed in his 1985 abode--the garage of his old house (which burned down and then he sold off the property-- and which exists (the filming location anyway) next to a Burger King that is still there--and I forgot about heading there after work to get a photo... His 1955 house exterior--the Gamble House--still exists not too far from here as well, but I didn't get over there either. I would love it if I had time to get to every nearby location--and living in LA, there are a lot, for many a film--b...

The opening shot of Back to the Future is almost perfect. All those clocks, the slow pan. That one clock that foreshadows the climax of the film. All of Doc Brown's morning routine--the radio and the clock, really?--and the automated machinery. Plus The plutonium is set up and gets a mini-pay off already with the end of that tracking shot. The opening scene, if you move into the next bit, with the giant amp and Marty's particular style of "rock and roll", also sets up both a defining characteristic of Marty McFly--he tends toward too much --and a particular problem in what is often considered to be a flawless film. Seriously, people study this screenplay as an ideal example of screenwriting. (Nevermind, of course, the multiple drafts it took to get to the final product.) And it is fantastic in terms of structure, in terms of setup and payoff. Every scene serves a purpose. Characters and events all interact just so. But--and I've written a bit about this, for ...

Movies blend together sometimes. That's the life of a person like me, watching movies all the time for decades. Marty talks about how great that 4x4 is and wants to take it up to the lake, and I'm thinking of the 4x4 from the opening sequence of The Goonies and the lake trips from The Last Starfighter .           And, I realize there might be very little to actually say about Back to the Future . I almost watched the trilogy a few years ago in time for the 30th anniversary, but opted not to because of this very problem. One thing, though: when Doc first drives the DeLorean out of his truck and gets out, there's smoke inside of both. And, some weird tube thing attached to Doc's hand-- --and I think we can assume Doc has been sitting in that truck smoking something special (like the band later in the movie) while he waits for Marty's arrival and his own potential demise. It ain't just head injuries that put DeLorean time machines in your mind.   ...

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 ...

Incompetent police force. Jeep commercial disguised as car chase, and I'll get to the racism and sexism later. But, the first moment of genius comes early--Mama Fratelli, driving the getaway vehicle for her son's jailbreak, and she's eating, casually. And that car chase allows for some simple introductions to all of our main characters, and offers details on who they are. Andy (Kerri Green) is a cheerleader... That's all. Cheer captain, I guess. Rosalita (Lupe Ontiveros) is (appropriately, I suppose) jumpy, and maybe not that bright. Police cars have sirens so, for example, you don't get caught in the middle of the crosswalk as they come speeding through. (This characterization might actually matter regarding one of the complaints later. [Or tomorrow.]) Mouth (Corey Feldman) tries to be helpful with his father. And it is not their house, mind you--the Mad Jack's Plumbing truck is parked askew at the end of the driveway with traffic cones in front of it. But, ...

The best part of Fletch is not the humor, not the one-liners, or Fletch's deliberate obnoxiousness. The best part is that the plot works, and works well. And, like many a "detective" story-- like Jonny Gossamer novels in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang , "the plots, they all have this thing, this formula that was so cool... two cases that were seemingly unrelated. One's normal, and the other' some wild shit... Then you' defined out that they're connected. That it's all one case." --the two cases/stories that Fletch is working end up more connected than just the coincidence of him hanging out at the beach to look like a junkie and Stanwyk picking him because he seems aimless and disposable. And, the connections don't feel arbitrary. SPOILERS. But really, if you haven't already seen Fletch , you should just go watch it now, come back later. Stanwyk's connection the drug trade is a pretty good reason for him to fake his death and make a run ...

The Harold Faltermeyer music gets going and I'm all in when Fletch is on. We can start there. (Even though Hollywood Reporter reviewer Duane Byrge called the "eruption of mechanical drumming and percussive bass lines, appropriate in action and triumph-type movies... Annoying and incongruous here", the music helps define this film for me in a good way.) The titular Fletch (Chevy Chase) and his sardonic, sarcastic, deadpan disdain for everybody sat well with me when I was just turned nine and it sits well with me today. (Sidenote: I know the "Pup 'N' Taco" line could be taken as racist and dismissive, but I think it is just Fletch playing unsophisticated because he doesn't trust Alan Stanwick (Tim Matheson) one bit. Hell, most of Fletch's character, and his unsophisticated, boorish, childish behavior, is deliberate.) Meanwhile, in 2007, Reihan Salam, writing for Slate , calls the film "abominably bad" and I am baffled. Salam doe...