the groundhog day project

That's the Griswold's house from the original Vacation , but as it looks today. (It's got a wall, but otherwise it looks basically the same.) Like, literally today, by the way. I made a slight detour on the way home from work today. And, this is the car dealership. That's even closer to where I live. Not as good a photo, though, because I couldn't park. But also, I just noticed that the opening postcard montage melds into the establishing shot of Chicago just like the tv screen melds into the establishing shot of Pittsburgh at the start of Groundhog Day . On the one hand, I'm trying to remember if Ramis used that trick in other movies. On the other, I'm thinking of what it means. It ties into the whole fantasy thing I was talking about yesterday --this nostalgia-ish sense of a vacation as some amazing escape and adventure. Imagine if the trip had gone as Clark wanted it to go, though; it would not have been that amazing, certainly not as memorable for...

I watched Best in Show on the plane today. I've been awake (aside from a little dozing on the other plane today) for something like 18 hours, after about 4 hours sleep after being awake for about twenty hours after... You get the idea. Exhausting (in a good way) trip. Home now. Was going to watch Slam one more time, may do so tomorrow. In the meantime, I recommend the likes of Best in Show --I'd seen it before but years ago--some great humor, without going too much into adult humor or crass humor, keeps it pretty family friendly and still manages some great laughs. In fact, I should probably come back to Best in Show another day to actually say some things more specific.

1. Today is the third anniversary of Roger Ebert's death, so I thought I'd share his thoughts on today's film--repeating Slam . 2. Today was the final day of AFA Nationals, it's already after midnight local time, and we're heading for the airport in the morning... Since it is (was) the last day of AFA and the final round I watched was, like yesterday, poetry--an amazing round, six brilliant performances, five of those six on issues about black Americans, so that's why I'm repeating Slam . 3. I'd like to get into some serious political stuff related to, primarily, the argument between Ray (Saul Williams) and Lauren (Sonja Sohn) that comes (oddly) late in the film. (Oddly, because the structure of this film seems a bit off. The jail sequence just goes on a little too long, and structurally comes too early to be the second act, and goes too late to be confined just to the second act. Also, the jail sequence is not split appropriately to be both acts on...

The heart of Swingers is Mike, especially what I've been calling that scene . If you're with this somewhat depressed guy and can make it through that scene--my daughter was in the room the other day when that scene was on, and her "Oh, sweetie, no," was exactly the kind of response we should have--you're rooting for him, rooting for his life to get better. And, that's easy. Mike is not a jerk like Trent or Sue. He's not there to pad the rat pack esque group at the center of this movie, like Charles--though his "this place is dead, anyway" is amazing--or Rob--whose useful advice about life for Mike could have come from Trent and maybe worked a little better dramatically, structurally. Instead of the latter, we're barely offered up much that is positive about Trent. Sure, he's trying to get Mike out of his apartment but it's hard most of the time to really see Trent doing that for Mike, rather he's taking advantage--or so it seems...

(Starting the blog entry a while before the movie today. Sitting in a hotel room in Florida, brought my Fire Stick on the trip to have access on the room's TV to Hulu, Amazon, HBO and Netflix. The modern Western world--am I right? Anyway, long day, with a little sleep on the plane and a bit of a nap here at the hotel before dinner. About to judge some practice rounds with our students, give them some last minute notes for this weekend's competition. In the meantime...) Swingers is all about that scene, the answering machine sequence. Like the Groundhog Day Project is all about sharing and nitpicking and being who you gotta be... No, being who you want to be. Like our speech competitions are all about finding the piece that fits you, and you it, and figuring out how to put it to the audience in the best way you can. And, all that may sound a little generic, a little obvious, but I suppose that's on purpose. As I've stated before , the thesis of this blog, if there...

Flashback to the mid-90s, when big bands and swing music seemed to be making a comeback... They never quite managed, right? (Had swing dancing been a thing beyond Porto-hipster levels, I would have had a head start, actually, because we learned dancing, including swing, at the private school I attended.) But, while they were there, we got a movie like Swingers . Gotta love the answering machine telling Mike (Jon Favreau) to put his life in perspective.           Picture me, sitting on the floor as usual, a few hours early as I'm heading to Florida later, but I'm forgetting what I meant to write about this movie for its day one because it has been a good while since I've watched it and I'm just amused as hell. "I just get, like, this thing where I want to be be a gentleman and I want to show respect." Love that Mike calls that a "thing" like it's not what he's supposed to do. Of course, that is what Trent (Vince Vaughn) is trying to ...

In an interview in Vanity Fair , the interviewer started with, “This is the most romantic film I’ve ever seen with this much fighting.” Star Julie Delpy replied, “The most romantic film about fighting!” Amusingly, a piece in Elite Daily says, “No epic love stories were written about complacency from years of living in the doldrums of lame ass bullshit.” Before Midnight , taken on its own, is not particularly romantic. But, it also is not supposed to be. The Celine and Jesse story has moved beyond romance. That does not mean that it has moved beyond love. The present (and near future) of Celine and Jesse’s relationship actually gets wrapped up in the car conversation; Celine announces that she may take a government job and this exchange happens: JESSE No, you don’t want to work for him. CELINE Why not? JESSE For the government? CELINE This is different. We need laws. That’s the only way this is gonna happen. JESSE That’s not the only way. You guys have been getting a lot of good ...

Elijah Wood, especially as a kid, has a tone to his voice that limits his vocal range that doesn't mean he has to be as ridiculous and melodramatic as he was a few too many times in North . Today: The War . Same year as North , but a much better showing from Wood. The film doesn't have too many notes to hit, and it hits them in such obvious ways most of the time, but I have loved it since I first saw it at a free screening at USC just before it was in theatres proper. (Full disclosure: I also used parts of this film in two different interp speeches my first two years competing in speech and debate, so I'm a little attached.) It's got this nice combination of childish innocence and a keen adult sense of how horrible life can be. Something I loved about some of Stephen King's early novels, a tone I put into the a few of my own. I guess it's easier to explore some of the darkest of the see through eyes that don't understand it, because we all love to imagi...

As Anomalisa gets underway again, I reflect on the days that were full of life. And I reflect on today. I think of full days like some speech tournament days--good and bad--or when I met my first girlfriend in Salt Lake City, or my second in Memphis, or my third in Burbank. It is not that many things need to happen. It is just that something needs to happen. I've written before in this blog--so very long, it seems--about the moments worth repeating. But, it could just be about the moments... the mundane moments. Today, for example, I awoke just before my 6:11am alarm. I actually have several alarms set, most of them on my old phone which is now just a glorified alarm clock. The 6:11am is louder and on my iPhone. I was awake early enough that I did not have to rush. I fed the cats and headed out, stopped at Starbucks on the way to work. Taught class at 8:00am and at 9:50am. I got a good impression of both set so students. I've got a good feeling about this quarter. It was the...

It has been a good long while since I have connected a film to impromptu quotations... For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, the usual setup for the impromptu speaking event at our speech tournaments--I'm a coach, and we just had two tournaments in two days this weekend--is you get a quotation, and you use that as a prompt for a 5(-ish) minute speech after 2(-ish) minutes of prep. During phase one of this blog, when I was watching Groundhog Day every day, several times after a tournament weekend, I would take a sheet of the quotations we had and link them to the film because when I was a competitor and participated in that event I used Groundhog Day as an example in nearly every round. Anyway... I judged the final round of impromptu today and instead of quotations, per se, competitors were given a choice of three meme-ish images. So, I'm looking over them and on speaker two's sheet, I see this one: Now, it really is not that great a line. But, it...

We interrupt the usual program for something new-- The Danish Girl . Saw it at a screening tonight with Q&A with the screenwriter, Lucinda Coxon, afterward. As the film has not properly come out yet, I will not actually say much--I don't expect--about its details. I was not sworn to secrecy as with a different screening a couple weeks ago (technically, I'm not sure I'm even supposed to mention what film that one was, let alone any details)-- (These screenings are benefit of living around LA, by the way, not some perk of being a movie blogger. Though, I do with that blogging every day about movies came with more perks than simply having an excuse to watch a movie every day.) --but I also don't want to SPOIL a film that is not really in theaters yet. It is a completed film, has been seen by audiences at film festivals and whatnot, though, so I also may be more specific if necessary rather than be stuck with broadstrokes. I will return to the 80s and teenagers tomo...

The one thing that Poltergeist is, aside from a three-decades-old horror film that holds up pretty damn well despite a few structural flaws-- (For the record, those structural flaws include the late introduction of Steve's boss, and the very late lead in, thereby, to the explanation of what's going on, or rather why. Its is also, arguably, a structural problem that all those potential metaphors I mentioned yesterday pretty much get forgotten after the first act... or get twisted up into the one metaphor I'm going to play through today. The movie hints at things that are not followed up on. Why do Dr. Lesh and Tangina exist as separate characters at all? (I might figure out how to answer that last one below.) And, for the record, there is definitely something going on in this film regarding suburbs and tract homes, but that also gets twisted into today's actual topic. Actually, the potential dangers in domesticity--those kids with the remote control cars that purpos...

Writing on the road, movie on the small screen of my phone beside me. On the way to San Diego for the weekend for a speech tournament. Today is the 2nd of the month so it's Groundhog Day . Like coming home again... Meanwhile, a quick recap of the past month of this blog [and here's the link to the last recap ]: One day with Groundhog Day turned into seven when I got into a newly discovered draft of the script and that opened a lot of old sections of my blogger brain. Groundhog Day - 762 763 764 765 766 767 768 I don't recall how I decided where to start the month, but I went with Say Anything ( 769 770 771 )--one of my favorite movies, and the first movie I watched with my ex-wife. I thought this might get me into an exploration of romance or something schmaltzy, and it almost did. The next movie was Better Off Dead ( 772 773 )-- (And, I still can't believe I didn't have the time in those couple days to get out to the location of the Meyer and Smit...

The problem with American Psycho --and there are many, of course, but one in particular that gets to me--is that Patrick Bateman is depicted as crazy. Sure, it's not entirely normal to kill people. And shouldn't be entirely normal to destroy the lives of others through mergers and acquisitions (though, to be fair, we do not see Bateman actually doing his job, taking over any companies, laying anyone off; we just kind of have to know that's what he does). But, aside from a few key moments, Bateman might as well be homicidal, yeah, but not necessarily mentally ill... He knows what he's doing. And he enjoys it. Only briefly at the end of the film does he seem to show any regret--when he calls his lawyer and confesses to the crimes we've seen and many more. Not long before that call, he has his truly (cinematically) insane moment; when he's standing at the ATM, the ATM tells him to feed it a stray cat. It's debatable (but pointless to debate) whether or not muc...

Let us follows John Cusack back a few years to a movie that Siskel and Ebert apparently rather disliked--two thumbs down, though the few links to the review video that I clicked didn't work so I can't offer specifics. Lane Myer (Cusack), with all the pictures of Beth (Amanda Wyss) on his walls, is like an even more obsessed--and more suicidal--version of Corey Flood (Lili Taylor) in Say Anything . (Seriously, I neglected to mention it while watching that movie the last few days , but Corey has a rather large cutout of herself back to back with Joe on her wall, plus a couple photos and a handwritten JOE ♡ ME.) Lane's suicidal-ness is played for laughs, of course. That's kind of the point to Better Off Dead... . His urge to kill himself is so insane he can't succeed at it. Honestly, it's hard to get into a serious discussion about this movie. I'm just enjoying watching it... Perhaps I'll note the awesome along the way, worry about something more serio...