the groundhog day project

I would especially note the kitchen scene late in the film between Dave (Nick Thune) and Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani). It goes a little something like this... Keep in mind, Annie has bought into the maze (she is the one who hangs the towel over the exit to keep the Minotaur inside). The apartment has been taken over by the maze. They have just come up with the plan to create the chrysalis at the heart of the maze to give the whole a weak spot. Dave didn't make a weak spot originally because, "then someone could destroy it." Harry and Annie don't come right out and say it, exactly, but they frame failure (or the potential for it) as part of life. No matter how much Dave wanted this maze to last, it is supposed to have a weak spot, because everything has a weak spot. That is life itself. Success really matters because to get there you overcome the potential for failure. Dave says, of the maze, "This is the only thing I've ever started that's worth finishi...

There are some great shots in Raiders of the Lost Ark . I will inevitably get into a rant about how awful Indy is as a person (probably tomorrow), but importantly, the film never tells us that he is a good person. So, today, I will ignore Indy and look at Spielberg's work. From a great shot with mist and sunlight through the trees in the opening sequence to that warehouse matte painting in the final shot, Spielberg frames things nicely. But, even better--and this probably comes from screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan more than from anybody else--are a couple key moments of foreshadowing and... Whatever you call explaining something ahead so that when it happens we don't need useless dialogue. And, I don't mean the snake thing. That's basic stuff. Also, an odd detail I noticed yesterday (and maybe I'd seen it before, but it stood out yesterday): that bit where Sapito gets Indy to throw him the idol and then drops the whip--there are stone walls on either side of them, an...

Asked by Tasha Robinson at The Verge , in regards to the end of Sing Street : It's clear the scene in the gym [i.e. the band's performance of "Drive It Like You Stole It"] is a fantasy, because it's got that bright candy color, and things happen that are so obviously unreal. But in the boat crossing [i.e. Conor and Raphina running away to England at the end of the film], you spend a lot of time establishing the physical danger of what they're doing. It seems like if it was just a romantic fantasy, you would have just had them sail off together. But there was a point where it looked like it was going to end with them both dying in the Irish Sea. director John Carney responds: I wish they had, in a way. I'm sorry! But there is a side of me that wishes they had. Given the difficulty of people who are making journeys, and end up dying... I don't think it's supposed to be a fully real sequence. I think they're supposed to be quite brave, setti...