the groundhog day project

Dr. Benjamin Stone (Michael J. Fox) is headed for Beverly Hills. Another doctor, one who will not be seen again in this movie, critiques his choices because cosmetic surgery is clean and no one dies... apparently medicine is only meaningful when it is a matter of life and death. Oh, watching Doc Hollywood before Groundhog Day today. If you haven’t seen it, think Cars minus the cars, and Lightning McQueen is a doctor instead of a professional racer. Apparently it’s based on a book—”What? Dead... Again?” Who knew? I’ve seen this move numerous times and would not have expected an actual source... not to imply that all book sources involve some clearly noticeable depth. Anyway, like Phil Connors getting stuck in Punxsutawney, Dr. Stone is about to get stuck in Grady after he gets off the main road to avoid traffic and ends up crashing his Porsche convertible into a fence. Problem is, the local judge built that fence, so Dr. Stone is sentenced to community service. Initially, only 1...

In their essay, “Terminators, Monkeys and Mass Culture," Dimitrakaki and Tsiantis give us a slightly different take on Phil’s experience than Daughton’s (1996) notion that “Phil’s situation… parallels that of the economically disenfranchised, the Other”; Dimitrakaki and Tsiantis tell us “what comes under attack” in the film “is a particular manifestation of cyclical temporality that actually exists in capitalist societies.” One essay’s take on the “cyclical temporality” implicit in Ralph’s line, “That about sums it up for me” matches up with another’s take on Phil’s trap linking to him the disenfranchised, which arguably includes Ralph. That “arguably” of mine is a key point where many might disagree, though. Usually, we would only use “economically disenfranchised” to describe people living, say, below the poverty line, people without many options in their lives, people stuck… well, see, I’m already blurring the definition just enough to be sure I can include the likes of Ralph,...

Groundhog Day wasn’t the first exploration of the day-on-repeat phenomena, or its technical term per Star Trek : a temporal causality loop. Though, we shouldn’t confuse this with the causality loop of a “predestination paradox.” And, now that we’ve lost the non sci-fi fans, let’s discuss these loops as represented in a handful of relatively recent (one of these actually predates the release of, though not the writing of, Groundhog Day ) television shows. And, they are all genre shows. And, I watched all seven of these yesterday, declaring on Twitter that it was time loop day. Just to get the list out of the way (and there are more episodes like this left from other shows (and movies) so I may have to do this again sometime ), the seven episodes are: Buffy the Vampire Slayer - “Life Serial” Angel - “Time Bomb” Stargate SG-1 - “Window of Opportunity” Star Trek: The Next Generation - “Cause and Effect” The X-Files - “Monday” Supernatural - “Mystery Spot” Fringe - “White Tulip...

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 ...