the groundhog day project

So, the structure could use some work, but the performances are amazing. That's the short version. Roger Ebert writes in his review about leaving "the theater feeling good and warm, and with a certain resolve to try to mend my own relationships and learn to start listening better." On Golden Pond is mostly the tale of an old couple, still adorable with one another, and the "grandson" they take in at their lakeside summer home. The father/daughter stuff is there, mostly under the surface, but it's almost apt-- almost --that it remains off to the side, not quite... there. Because, that's how it is for Chelsea and, especially, for Norman. For Chelsea, her problems with her father are deep-seated, so much a fundamental piece of who she is (especially when she comes back to Golden Pond) that it makes sense she has trouble talking about it, expressing it, confronting it. For Norman, his failing memory can't help matters. Plus, he doesn't even realiz...

But nevermind the personal rambling. I am sure there will be more later. For now, what about the movie? Vincent Canby, writing for the New York Times , calls the original Broadway play "processed American cheese, smooth, infinitely spreadable and bland, with color added by the actors. The screen version... Is not much different in any superficial way." I immediately think of Homer Simpson sitting up all night eating an entire package of American cheese, not because it is particularly delicious but because it just so damn edible. Canby's choice of "smooth" is a good descriptor. To be fair, Canby suggests that the film's cast "add more than color to this pasteurized product. 'On Golden Pond' now has the bite of a good old cheddar." It's not like Canby dislikes the film. Leave that to David Kehr, writing for the Chicago Reader , who calls the film "the cinematic equivalent of shrink-wrapping, in which all of the ideas, feelings, ch...

So, I made some notes about Altman and Taylor’s Social Penetration Theory for this blog and then I was looking at them and realized something interesting. In a way, the same stages that make up the theory fit the way I approach movies in this phase of the Groundhog Day Project . Allow me to explain. The basic concept, which I mentioned before, is like that bit in Shrek : we’ve got layers to our personalities/identities, and as we get to know someone new, we penetrate the layers. Like a wedge being driven into an onion. There are four stages to this penetration—orientation, exploratory affective exchange, affective exchange and stable exchange. All of these are driven by a cost-benefit analysis, in which we weigh the cost of revealing more and more personal information against the reward of the relationship (or, in a slightly more cynical way, the simple reward of learning more and more personal information from the other person). Orientation – Griffin (2006) tells us, “peripheral ...

So, today I was at the movie theater watching her — —which, since several people have had no idea what movie I’m talking about when I mention it, I’ll describe. Spike Jonze writes and directs. Joaquin Phoenix stars as Theodore Twombly, recently separated with divorce pending, unable to really get on with his life. For a living, he works for Beautiful Handwritten Letters (a dot com I was actually surprised to find didn’t exist) crafting notes, postcards, and letters for other people based on whatever little information they provide. Arguably, he’s more responsible for some relationships than the people involved, with all the work he puts in. The film begins, in fact, with him composing one letter then immediately starting on the response to that very letter. Out one day he buys a new artificially intelligent operating system—OS1—for his computer/phone. His personalized OS—voiced by Scarlett Johansson—names herself Samantha because she likes the sound of it. She calls him at work and d...