the groundhog day project

”Anything might have been anything else and had as much meaning to it” --Tennessee Williams, “The Malediction” The thought is a complicated one—and I’ll get to it below—but first, I like the idea of that quotation given what I’ve been doing with this blog a lot, lately; I’ve been sublimating my interest in Groundhog Day with other—albeit thematically-related—films. The discussion continues, though the angle is twisted. Tonight it was Mr. Nobody , a film that doesn’t deal in a time loop but does deal in disjointed time and alternate realities based on choices—a lot like Run Lola Run , Sliding Doors , Blind Chance . Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto) is the last mortal human in the year 2092 (maybe), and he is either being hypnotized by a guy with facial tattoos or being interviewed by a reporter using a tape recorder he “borrowed” from a museum. He’s recalling his life, especially certain moments where choices led to his life changing one way or another (or sometimes another). He’s tellin...

I was watching Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blind Chance ( Przypadek ) earlier tonight. It’s basically Run Lola Run structurally, with a little more of the gravitas of Sliding Doors — and I did not expect to use the word gravitas in connection with Sliding Doors . I like the movie, but that just wasn’t a word I would have put to it —a slow-paced alternate-reality story about, well, chance and choice in decided one’s fate. It starts each of its three segments like Run Lola Run does, minor variations that don’t really mean anything, but those lead to more significant opportunities in the life of Witek (Boguslaw Linda) when he a) makes his train and meets an old communist and joins the Communist Party, b) misses his train, knocks a guard to the ground and receives community service which eventually leads him into an anti-Communist group and religion, or c) misses his train but has no altercation with the guard, meets a girl on the platform and goes to medical school. It got me thinkin...

“There was a time in my life not so long ago, that I experienced a moment that could only be described as pure love and happiness. It was as if love and happiness were finally real to me and were something tangible, embodied in that moment. They were in everything I could hear, touch, taste and smell. I could see them with my very eyes—reflected back at me in someone else’s. They were all around me, breathing life into me, as if wrapping me up in a divine blanket. And in that moment I caught a glimpse of something. A parallel universe—a way things could have been. An alternate reality where that love and happiness were mine to keep, a place where I didn’t have to let them go. I only hope that one day… many years from now when I am an old lady and I close my eyes for the last time—I will open them again and find myself there.” —Renata Suzuki Six minutes into Sliding Doors , we have our setup: two alternate realities. Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) has been sacked from her PR job and heads...

Have you seen The Prestige ? Some spoilers for that film follow, so, stop reading, go watch it because it is amazing, then come back here later. Seriously, I am about to spoil at least one and maybe two plotlines from that movie. Basic premise: a couple of magicians one-upping each other. But, between illusions and near-magical science via Nikola Tesla, things get complicated. Anyway, one of the magicians, Robert Angier, played by Hugh Jackman, gets Tesla to make him a teleporter… or so it seems. The thing is, the teleportation device is not really teleporting anything. Like Badger pointed out in a seemingly out-of-place conversation in this week’s 5.5 season premiere of Breaking Bad , arguably the teleporter in Star Trek is not actually transporting you; instead, it’s tearing you apart here and recreating you someplace else… i.e. it’s making a copy of you. This argument is supporting by, say, the creation of Thomas Riker. But, this isn’t about Star Trek . It’s not even supposed ...