the groundhog day project

I can relate to Amos and Theodore right now because sometimes plans go awry. I was supposed to be watching the original Star Wars today. But, 1) I don't own a copy of that film anymore, 2) it costs $17.99 to buy it on Amazon Prime (and apparently isn't available for rental), 3) I actually bought the original trilogy on video on eBay a few days ago hoping it would be here in time, so I didn't really want to spend money on it anyway (and that VHS trilogy did not arrive in time; let's hope it gets her tomorrow), but then this led to a dilemma earlier, 4) I had no movie to watch today. So, I was looking up--trying to keep things chronological--movies that also came out in 1975 or that came out in 1976 that fit the bill for this month, that is, I watched them a lot as a kid. There were some good movies in those years-- Carrie , Rocky , The Godfather Part II , Jaws , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , Taxi Driver , and two films I've actually watched for this blog be...

The dog gets my favorite line in Beginners . The full subtitle (because, of course, the dog doesn't actually speak) is: "Tell her the darkness is about to drown us unless something drastic happens now." I've been there. Felt that drowning sensation, the darkness, and had drastic things happen. (By the way, I'm not actually watching Beginners tonight. My Netflix was having some issues, so I moved on. #FirstWorldProblems) I've been diagnosed with depression, been offered prescriptions for medication to deal with it. Mostly, I've learned to deal with it on my own. I've gotten good at compartmentalizing different parts of my life, and I've learned to take time to do fun things. For example, today I went to the Renaissance Faire with friends with whom I play D&D. I also (in case some future reader hasn't noticed the jump in dates or some past reader is confused) restarted this blog, ostensibly as if nothing had changed. I picked up the ...

Before I get into the topic for today, the first recap of the new iteration of this blog: (By the way, here are links to all six recaps of the first year—the Groundhog Day year: Day 62 – for your information Day 121 – how else could you know so much? Day 180 – it would be great to stay for some of the other events Day 240 – it’s your choice. so what’s it gonna be? Day 300 – round and round and round we go Day 363 – and you’d be an expert ) Phase Two of this blog began with a week of The Ring . Day 1 (366) – seven days established the new format for the blog while, in trying to generally review The Ring I got stuck on the “message” of the movie regarding television. That topic continued into Day 2 (367) – i hate television and into Day 3 (368) – how far down do you think it goes? Then, I got into the “anti-romanticization” (though I didn’t coin that term yet) of the small town in Day 4 (369) – everything sheltered, protected and comfortable . Day 5 (370) – she just wanted...

The Ring is not about, but definitely includes a theme about the ubiquity of technology, especially the television and video tape. So much so that I wrote about that topic for 1 2 3 out of the 7 days allotted to that film last week. The Sixth Sense is even less about technology, but the film definitely has something to say about video tape, about recordings (both video and audio) made by technology and about memory. Memory does not work like a video tape,” the British Psychological Society (probably Elizabeth Loftus, Professor of Psychology and Law at University of California, Irvine, but the brief piece cites her indirectly at best.) points out, which is something we know but maybe not something we ever think about. Video tape, the British Psychological Society continues, “is rather constructive and reconstructive.” Memory is altered each time we access it, updated with new thoughts, new feelings. Just like I said yesterday , we are no more the same person each time we ac...

Interestingly, just as started The Sixth Sense tonight, I notice a link to an io9 article—“ The Cultural Curse of Knowledge and Movie Spoilers ”—that doesn’t deal with The Sixth Sense ’s twist and how everybody knows it, but makes a good point about how those of us who know because we’ve seen the film (or any film with a twist, for that matter) almost can’t help but SPOIL it for anyone and everyone without much deliberation or planning. We just do it, because, as Inglis-Arkell (2014) writes in the piece, “People who have some piece of knowledge, whether it's technical or incidental, have a hard time thinking from the point of view of people who don't have the same knowledge.” For more SPOILERS, by the way, here’s a nice shirt from Threadless : The Sixth Sense is on the right, about a third of the way down: THE KID’S THERAPIST IS A GHOST . That’s the big third-act twist. The twist that made M. Night Shyamalan a household name. The twist that “blind-sided” Roger Ebert (1...

The Ring is 1 hour 55 minutes in length, give or take a few seconds and including the end credits. Numbers below will be approximations. It’s time to break down the script structure before I go. Before I move on to another film for the next seven days, that is. Meanwhile, I wanted to deal with Martin’s (2009) notions about Ringu and its place in the timeline of the horror genre, and by extension, where The Ring fits into that same timeline. Martin places Ringu —the American importation thereof, rather—into a postmodern horror revival that includes The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project , and to a lesser degree Scream . These are all horror films that are more suggestive than explicit in their violence. (Realize, for example, the only actual violence in The Ring is committed by regular, living, breathing humans, not by the deceased Samara.) The first 10% of the film should be setup, and the “Small Catalyst” should occur about 10% of the way in, according to Dyer (2010). A...

The ordinary becomes extraordinary, even scary, in The Ring . Not just the videotape (and by extension the VCR), but the telephone and its ring. That opening sequence, with Katie's back-and-forth as to whether or not there is a tape, whether or not she watched it, whether or not she's dying--it turns serious when the phone rings (only to have yet another double back since it's just her mother calling). Similarly, in the opening sequence of The Ring Two , Jake is horrified by the ring of the phone and so are we, on some level, even though we know better--Samara does not call you when she's about to kill you. She calls once, right after you watch the tape. The ordinary becoming a danger--that's anxiety over technological ubiquity turned into a horror film. Well, technological in terms of the VCR and the telephone, and ultimately the television itself. But also the ladder. But, I don't even want to write about today. I will forego that topic by simply pointing ...

I – RINGS VS THE POWER OF SUGGESTION Before I get into something more interesting, I just wanted to say that the prequel short to The Ring Two — Rings —is probably several times better than The Ring Two . You can watch it in two parts on YouTube . Part one: Part two: For those without the time to click through and watch those (15 minutes total), the premise is that the tape has gotten out. Whatever Rachel did with Aidan’s copy, the tape has now gotten around, and the short focuses on a group of teenagers who deliberately a) watch the tape, b) record the weird stuff they see in the days following, and then c) get a friend to watch a copy to continue the ring (though, technically, it’s more of a chain than a ring). There’s some confusing dialogue at the beginning (one guy says something about no one making it past day seven, when he means no one has made it to day seven… without finding someone to watch a copy, that is. But, otherwise, it’s a nice little short that leads quit...

“You can’t poop in this town without everyone knowing what color it is.” – Lou ( Doc Hollywood ) I find myself coming back to Groundhog Day tonight. I just watched Ringu and now The Ring is on and it occurs to me that both of these films (one being a remake of the other, there should be no surprise there) and Groundhog Day involve a sort of romanticization of the small town, or at least the rural, as opposed to the larger urban environment. I had to throw in that “sort of” because the romanticization in Ringu and The Ring (and to a lesser extent in The Ring Two ) is actually a bit negative, a hint of the invasion of the city, the crowding leading to a dangerous environment. It’s interesting that I cited Gerbner et al (1986) yesterday because I’m reminded of Gerbner’s mean world syndrome in which our viewing of (the violence in) television (and movies) leads us to conceive the world around us as more dangerous than it actually is. The cursed tape in Ringu and The Ring cou...

I don’t mean to talk about television again. I really don’t. But, there is more to say. Regular reader of this blog, Maolshechlann, for example, wrote in his blog a couple years back about television , specifically about being “brought up by television.” An idea I can relate to. An idea I’m sure Samara Morgan in The Ring can relate to, though for her it is almost forced upon her in her loft high up in the barn. Maolsheachlann writes, So when I claim that I was brought up by television, I really mean that everybody my age was brought up by television... TV was out first window onto the wider world, and one’s earliest influences always imprint themselves upon the imagination. The blank slate is gone forever... Even all my romantic notions of the simple, the pre-technological and the traditional were supplied by television. In setting myself against the cultural influence of television and popular culture, I am in a sense like some post-colonial African leader who was educated at Oxf...

(note: mistakenly mixed up my year for The Ring with the release date for Ringu . So, the specifics in the first couple paragraphs here are 4 years off. The point about television ownership still stands, though.) …except, I don’t. I love television. I think television has it’s brain-frying downside, and a lot of people—like several of those in that Rear Window -inspired balcony scene in The Ring —use television to numb their minds, to yank themselves out of their dreary lives, to spy on the rich and famous perhaps, or live vicariously through reality game show contestants, or just to laugh at a good sitcom. In 1998, when The Ring was in theaters, there were 67,011,180 households in this country with cable television, and that was 67.4% of households with TVs… meaning 99,423, 116 (rounded off) households had television in this country alone, according to Nielsen Media Research . According to Infoplease , there were 102,528,000 households total in 1998 (again, in the United States). ...