the groundhog day project

Took a break from Charlie Kaufman today, was going to try to see one of the few Golden Globe-nominated films I haven't seen yet (the awards are tomorrow), watched Star Wars The Force Awakens again, instead. While there is always room to say more about any given film, I actually do not have much to comment on today. I had considered a response to Andre Seewoods's IndieWire piece about Maz Kanata and what he calls the "othering of the black female body"--in short, I don't totally buy his argument and think he deals a little too much in attractiveness (and winning an award as experience, but that's not that big an issue). I also was thinking about all the plot holes--my three days ( 1 2 3 ) picking apart Seth Abramson's Huffington Post pieces--and getting a little bitter because the Groundhog Day Project doesn't get much play online, people don't get excited by my insights here enough to share all over Twitter or Facebook or what have you... No...

Winter quarter starts next week, but I had to go to campus today to sort out some stuff. Ran into fellow TA Brian in the parking lot and then fellow TAs Wesley and Alex in the office. We hung out there for a bit--after getting that stuff sorted out. Then, we decided to go. See Star Wars The Force Awakens . Third time for me, of course (previously blogged: 1 2 ), second for Wesley, first for Alex and Brian (and Brian may not have even seen the previous films-- I know . That's just awful). Anyway, so we head off and we the film and get some dinner afterward. And, I told them all they could write something for this entry. Only Wesley took me up on that. His bit will come later. Meanwhile, Alex loved it and wondered aloud how he would keep it to himself until his brother saw it. Brian liked it and amusingly, had comment after I brought up my primary complaint with the film upon seeing it the third time: They've been flying together for like forty years, and Han has never fired Ch...

More Star Wars , more SPOILERS. Not that I will make a particular effort to SPOIL things this time, but since I do not deal in straight reviews in this blog, it is inevitable that I will bring up details of Star Wars: The Force Awakens that are SPOILERS. Proceed with caution.           I was going to write today about how it is okay that The Force Awakens echoes plot points from the original trilogy because there are only so many available plotlines anyway, and as Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong'o) describes it, the fight going on in the present is the only fight, the same fight that keeps happening in different guises. Whether it is the Sith or the Knights of Ren or some megalomaniacal dictator who isn't even force sensitive--Domhnall Gleeson evokes a good Hitlerian vibe in his General Hux, and it really a different type of villain than Star Wars has had before. We can assume that Palpatine made some big speeches like Hux's but we've never been shown those thing...