the groundhog day project

I go into this viewing of Tremors assuming there will be little to say because it has no flaws. But, then again, I think Back to the Future is one of the best screenplays ever written and I wrote about that thing for like a week. Even starting off with what feels like an obvious matte painting watching it today, and one of our lead characters taking a piss off a cliff. It's a remarkably apt opening shot for the film to come. That cliff will come into play later. And, Val not only being out in the middle of nowhere first thing in the morning (though the light reads more like afternoon) but also taking a piss out in the open tells us a lot about him as a character. Plus the cowboy hat, of course. Earl is introduced asleep in the back of the pickup. And they argue about breakfast, then talk about their schedule in the truck (Earl keeps track, Val wants things easy). Rhonda is introduced as an immediate punchline to what Val wants the new grad student to be--"long 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 ...

Let us start with the cynical take: love is a fantasy. But, that is exactly why the romance in Romancing the Stone works. The premise itself is Joan Wilder's life echoing her romance novels, fantastic adventure, treasure hunting, a mysterious stranger, relentless villains. If we buy into the premise, it is very easy to buy into the romance, because the one fantasy is nested quite comfortably within the other. Damon Suede, possibly a pseudonym, writing for Romance University , says: Romance authors love Romancing the Stone because it simultaneously ribs and respects the genre. [Screenwriter Diane] Thomas got romance at a visceral level, and for all the winking send ups of romantic cliché, she embraces them shamelessly... no small feat. It has remains a touchstone in Hollywood and within the Romance community for a simple reason: Romancing the Stone remains one of the only blockbuster hits in pure romance. Suede goes on to explain how classic romance films are generally melodr...

Joan Wilder's life isn't normally like her books. Great romance. Adventure. Life and death. Revenge. She lives alone with her cat (named Romeo), drinks alcohol from the little bottles you might have gotten on a plane back in '84. Romancing the Stone begins as she finishes writing her latest romance novel. And the premise of the film, in case you're some unfortunate millennial who has never heard of it, is simple--Joan's brother in law is murdered in Colombia, but not before getting a treasure map in the mail for Joan (Kathleen Turner). Then Elaine (Mary Ellen Trainor), Joan's sister is abducted and Joan heads for Colombia, hooks up with Jack Colton (Michael Douglas), who coincidentally resembles the shadowy Jesse from her novels--think cowboy with a modern twist. The film is basically Joan's fantasy coming true. And, for the audience, it's a nice adventure fantasy as well. And, I only just learned that this was screenwriter Diane Thomas' only fini...

One thing about Big Hero 6 --the reason the film works well despite whatever flaws it might have--is that its structure is basically textbook feature film. You've got your small catalyst at 10* minutes in--Hiro meets Tadashi. Dyer (2010) specifies that the small catalyst be something that "happens to the protagonist, and not... an action that the protagonist takes. We've already got the setup of the status quo. Now, we're moving into what will change it. Notably, it was not getting arrested that turns Hiro around. It was seeing that there were better things that he could do with his intelligence (just as his brother suggested). Dyer also suggests that a character should state the theme of the film early on, and there are important lines the clearly set up the plot, all from Tadashi. He asks Hiro, "When are you going to do something with that big brain of yours?" He asks Hiro, "What would mom and dad say?" And, after offering Hiro a ride, he tel...

Today, I came to appreciate the sound design of Big Hero 6 while thinking of the next step in reifying my social justice warrior interactions with film. See, I had the movie on in the kitchen while making dinner, had my wireless earphones in, and while I could see the screen if I turned my head, mostly I was just hearing it. The sound in the opening bot fight, for example, was amazing. And, for the record, I like this movie. A lot. I gave it a 9 on IMDb. (You should know how my IMDb scoring works, I suppose, to be sure what that means. For example, while The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction get 10s from me, so does La La Land , which I think is a fundamentally flawed film, and Toy Story and The Big Lebowski and Zootopia and Sling Blade , Jaws and Deadpool . Now, as much as there was talk last year about Deadpool being nominated for Best Picture, I don't think it should have even been considered for that. Best Picture is a different sort of ideal. While Get Out earn...

I've been obsessing over the Groundhog Day musical of late. I often obsess when I get a new musical to listen to, of course; this is not unique to Groundhog Day ; it's just the latest. And, I wanted to talk about it. I have not gotten to see it live yet, of course, because it's just in New York for now and I cannot afford to just fly off to New York whenever. As much as I'd like to. (And, as I was writing this, I just got a notification about Tim Minchin's tweet about the show being nominated for seven Tony Awards.) Thing is, I cannot cover all of it in one entry. Nor would I need to. Nor would I want to. This isn't a blog about stage musicals, after all. But, there are a few details that stand out. First: Nancy. I've written about Nancy many times, of course. I swear I spent an entire entry just on her once but I cannot for the life of me find that one. But, that's almost poetic in itself--that she is just a detail in other entries. That is Nancy...

(An apology before I get into today's film... Today's official film; I also watched the Oscar-nominated The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared . (Think Forrest Gump by way of Sweden if in the present Forrest inadvertently stole millions from some criminals instead of telling his story to random people at a bus stop.) Today's film is Horrible Bosses --and no, not as some thematic link to yesterday 's Swimming with Sharks . In fact, I've never seen Horrible Bosses so I'm not even sure how related the two might be. Horrible bosses, obviously. But, that's a big part of so many movies. 9 to 5 , for example. And, that is where we get to my apology. For, you see, yesterday was Day 925 of this blog, and I did not plan ahead so that I would be watching 9 to 5 on that day. And, watching 9 to 5 on Day 925 is just... poetry. Like if I had not watched 300 on Day 300... Which is a despicable example because I did not watch 300 on Day 300 ...

Two things: 1) When Craig first enters Malkovich's head, he has a piece of wood in his hand. On the one hand, I'm not sure why some random board was sitting in the file room. On the other hand, as Craig points out, that board disappears. On a third hand, the board actually shows back up at the end of the film when Craig is kicked out of Malkovich's head for the last time. 2) There was a piece published on rogerebert.com the other day--"Unfathomable Life: A Writer Grieves for Her Father, Through Five Movies." The title gives it away. Jessica Ritchey writes about her grief and her grieving process by reviewing five movies through 2015. It's remarkably succinct in how big it is, how encompassing of so much of the human experience but also entirely isolated to Ms. Ritchey's experience. It's the argument I make time and time again in this blog--movies can evoke so much, pull us out of our selves, or push us into ourselves just when we need it. Groundhog ...

The thing that really fascinates me about Charlie Kaufman sometimes is how mundane his early writing credits are. A couple episodes of Get a Life --not the most normal of sitcoms but not as strange as Kaufman's films--a sketch comedy show that I cannot remember if I ever watched ( The Edge ), eight episodes of The Dana Carvey Show , two of Ned and Stacey , and then Being John Malkovich . Like suddenly he had free reign and he embraced it. ( Adaptation. was supposed to be Kaufman coming back around to normal and he both fails and succeeds at this.) I don't know if I ever had that moment when I was writing fiction regularly. I think I actually had the opposite in a way. I started by writing fiction with bits of the supernatural in it. My first novel--the writing of which is awful, but which I would love to rewrite now if I had the time--started as an attempt to take the idea of the virgin sacrifice seriously in a modern context. I think I was picturing the stone sacrificial...

A week with Groundhog Day . Seven days in a row of this one film. Who would have thunk that I could survive it? I mean, the repetitive nature of the film itself should have made repeated viewing unbearable. But no. Remarkably, it was quite readily repeatable, this film about repetition. And, watching it these last seven days has been rather comforting, like coming home to an old friend. But, I am not done with that friend. I’m not even done with the final revision of the script for that friend. But, I will be soon. I said that there were nine tabs left, so let us just be systematic about this... Beware, six days ago, I said this: “Now, let us just do this systematically. I will try not to mention every little tab or highlight.” Today, I will mention every little tab... of the ones that are left. #10 ... because I skipped this one on the previous page of my printout - the girl who comes out of Mary’s house, i.e. the piano student Phil gets thrown out into the cold out of selfishn...

So, today is Labor Day, and the movie I watched at the theater featured in Groundhog Day (aside from Groundhog Day two mornings in a row) was Labor Day starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin, directed by Jason Reitman. It should have been better than it was, given its parts, but still, I scored it higher than a lot of people on IMDb . Oh, I’m also not watching Labor Day right now. Gotta watch Groundhog Day one more time to get through the final revision of the screenplay. Not too many pages to go. This should be ending today. Then, on to other movies tomorrow. Unless I get sidetracked. Or just want to make it an even seven days, to echo what I was doing with so many other movies last year. Or something really controversial comes up that demands a detailed analysis and an intricate study of Ramis’ themes, his writing tendencies, his Buddhism, or the complicated question of which of the flat tire ladies is which... ...which is actually going to be not that complicated, once the s...