the groundhog day project

The Omen again. That whole parenting thing--leave that to the side for the moment. But, not too far to the side. The changeling child idea--central to the premise of the film-- does tie back into the parenting. But it also suggests a larger notion of fear of the unknown, specifically fear of foreign unknowns, of foreign influence. I mean, this film puts us in the realm of international politics at the start. Robert Thorn is made the American ambassador to the UK not long after he and his wife get Damien in their lives. Father Brennan points Thorn and Jennings to Italy and then Israel to find, far from the modern trappings of the Thorns' life in England. Seriously, compare the excess of Damien's fifth birthday party to the ruins seen in Israel later in the film. But, the real danger here is in the child influenced by... maybe it's foreign powers, maybe just belief systems to which we do not subscribe ourselves. I was wondering why certain religious themes were promine...

In case you haven't noticed the trend this month, we're on horror films again because it's October. Last year it was a different slasher film every day. I was going to try something like that with non-slasher films this month but I'm getting stuck on trying to go a little deeper... but also failing a little at that. Don't get me wrong; my two days ( 794 795 ) arguing about Poltergeist as a feminist film was amazing stuff. But, I feel like I'm sidestepping the point of the horror of it-- why we need such a film to give women the power (and why the remake had to take that away), why we fear the unknown voices of technology calling first our kids and then us, why ghosts are inherently frightening even when they're doing nothing to disturb us but to exist. Why does the more visceral (even at its coldest) version of The Shining (Kubrick's) work so much better than the more direct translation from the book in the miniseries version? Why do we enjoy our hor...

(This will be the first time I've gone with a made-for-TV version of a story for this blog. Sure, I watched TV shows during that first Groundhog Day year, but I also watched Groundhog Day on those days. And, I watched 12 Dates of Christmas and 12:01 , Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss , but I also watched Groundhog Day on those days. Today's entry, perhaps, opens up some more possibilities for the future.) I The thing that always bothered me about Kubrick's The Shining was the casting of Jack Torrance. Now, since I haven't made it clear the last few days, I love The Shining . I think it is one of the greatest horror films ever made. But, I have read the book, and I longed (prior to the TV miniseries version in 1997) for a version that might offer up a Jack Torrance who did not seem a little bit crazy from the get go. After this version--I'm watching that miniseries today--I'm not so sure that I long for it as much. The miniseries has its problems, of...

Regardless of deeper reasons --the Native American genocide, the holocaust, the moon landing--Kubrick does seem to have deliberately toyed with set layouts and the positioning of doors and windows in order to keep things a little off kilter. The opening credits running upward add to that. With opening music that seems far more sinister and dark than the driving scene it plays over. That there is no hedge maze anywhere near the hotel in the establishing shot yet that maze will be vital to the climax of the film is another. Then there's the so-called "impossible window" in Ullman's office opening to daylight and plants when the lobby we have just tracked from (without any cut) implied another hallway is behind that office. Ullmann mentions Grady's daughters being 8 and 10, yet they are played by twins. (And, anyone who hasn't read the book always assumes they are twins. Ullman's line about their ages is just in passing and we haven't seen the twin sis...

Drifting away from the horror film itself for the moment. Room 237 is on instead of a second day with The Shining because I think it's important to understand why we do this. Why I do this. Why you read this, for that matter. These movies--they're just movies. We don't really need all the subtext to enjoy them. I would never argue that there is no subtext; in fact, I think there is always subtext. For example, maybe it's about the Tang cans or the Golden Rey boxes over the Calumet cans. Picking one detail out of many says more about you (me) than it does about the film. Day 113 , I wrote: Why am I doing this? Because someone needed to. Because every piece of art deserves to be studied and broken down. Every piece of fiction deserves to be dissected until we know not just what it means but what it can mean. Chuck Klosterman, reviewing Room 237 for Grantland , says, "It introduces a new way to experience and consider movies." I'm trying to rememb...

All the conspiracy stuff people see in The Shining (like this stuff ) aside, Kubrick is clearly playing with cinematic structure and staging. The opening credits running up the screen, for example. The impossible sets for another. The deliberate dismissal of the tension of Jack coming upon Wendy reading his book, for a third. In fact, there's so much out there about this movie, I'm not sure what I can add to it. (Clearly, I can play with it, though.) Not to the movie anyway, not even really to the conspiracies or theories about theme. In a Mother Jones piece by Maggie Caldwell--"The 6 Weirdest Theories about "The Shining"--one of the theories referenced (but not specifically cited from any particular source) is that The Shining is "Kubrick's meditation on the weight of all of of history on the present moment." And, that's got me thinking not about what theories are true or not about The Shining but more a question of why we find so many t...

I wanted to write about masculinity and identity--Woody's and Buzz's conflicted relationship as a sort of testosterone-fueled contest, who can more fully fill the role of man . I wanted to tie this back into identity and how Buzz being all alpha male even when he doesn't really know who he is effectively reifies a notion that all is nature... and I wondered if that was reassuring or damaging. Or if I actually do read too much into things sometimes... Meanwhile, I just paused to check the photos on the wall by the stairs in the Davis household. I didn't see any picture of a couple. Nor on the mantle. Andy's mother is inexplicably single... And, that sounds like it's shocking or unusual, but I meant, literally, we are not offered explanation. Anyway, I noted out loud that there's a theory that Andy's father has died (Actually, the theory is about he and Andy's mom going through a divorce but I guess I conflated the two ideas in my head... but don...

In Groundhog Day , two males and one female go from the big city to a tiny hamlet in western Pennsylvania. In The Shining , two males and one female go from living in the big city to a hotel in the mountains of Colorado. In Groundhog Day , the black guy works at the bar. In The Shining , the black guy works in the kitchen. In both films, there's a blizzard, a nice old lady, a bathtub, a bar, and a holiday party. Plus, Phil gets stopped in the hallway by the Chubby Man, who is certainly large enough to contain those twin dead girls. Coincidences? Maybe. Or maybe, just like the crazy folks behind Room 237 think The Shining is Stanley Kubrick's way of admitting that he secretly created the moon landing footage, Groundhog Day was Harold Ramis' way of admitting that he secretly created The Shining . Think about it. Ramis is not known for making adaptations. Nor is he known for making horror films. So, if he were to make one from a beloved Stephen King novel, it would ma...

Episode 5 of Day Break : "What if they're stuck?" Today I will be watching several episodes of Day Break , so I will try not to just list details about the plot with a comment on the time loop stuff here and there. Instead, I hope to comment on the larger use of the time loop and the show's themes. For example, Hopper's got a To Do list this morning, and he tells Rita that for the first time in a while "I see some daylight." The metaphor is simple; the time loop is Hopper (or Phil) in the dark, with all its complications, but there's light at the end of the tunnel (to mix metaphors). Speaking of which, I haven't commented on the title of the show itself: Day Break . On the one hand, the time loop seems to begin and end around daybreak (one word). When Hopper headed out of town a couple episodes ago, as the sun rose over the horizon-- Ehrmentraut (at the rock quarry, where this time they have Hopper and Rita): "Do you believe in deja vu?...