the groundhog day project

Before Groundhog Day proper gets started, we get the studio logo, of course. A little background: Columbia Pictures started as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales in 1919. Columbia, by the way, was the name for the United States of America in Samuel Johnson’s Reports of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput , a camouflaged publication of British Parliament’s debates. It went on to become the feminized personification of America, and so when C•B•C changed its name in 1924, the new logo was a woman (originally, a Roman soldier woman, but then by 1928 something more like the one above). Some background on this entry: I realized as the movie was starting tonight that I never said anything about the credits. I remembered Lawrence Dai doing a thing about the title card of Julie & Julia and looked it up. That was his Day 6. Missed it by 301 days. Anyway, GroundhogDay ’s main titles are very simple, a basic serif font, close to a Garamond but not quite. (And, yes, the font can make a dif...

Today was the last day I will watch Groundhog Day ... this year. But, there’s always next year. The weird thing—and I’ve got a theory to cover it—is I noticed something new just last night. Day 151 and I notice something new. At the banquet, two old ladies dancing together come up to Phil and Rita. He changed their tire earlier. And the exchange goes like this: Old Lady: It’s that nice, young man from the motor club. Thank you again. Phil: It’s nothing, ladies. Old Lady: He’s the fastest jack in Jefferson County. Then, the Old Lady does... for lack of a better description, a couple air kisses… Just look: As Rita asks, “What was that all about?”, the other Old Lady glares at the first like she said something awful. At least that’s how I saw it before. It was only last night I noticed the kisses. My theory is that, while I may not be in a time loop, I have fallen into some alternate universe that includes those kisses in the movie and they were not in there before. I was actua...

Sometimes.... no--often, lately, I've come to this blog without a plan. It's my winter break from grad school so I should be doing some of the time intensive stuff. Hell, a few days ago I did some of that; I finally did the third TV Time loop day and I watched a couple time loop movies. I don't even remember what else I did this week. I know I talked about being in a relationship with Groundhog Day , and last night I wrote The Ballad of Phil Connors . But, the days blend together... But, maybe that's the point. You may notice that, here on Blogger I don't number the entries. But, I do number the Word files, and on both my Facebook page and Twitter I number them. But, here I let them be... timeless, sort of. And, in my head I not only forget what I've done lately--I swear, for instance, that it was recent that I wrote extensively about eternal recurrence ( 39 , 40 , 41 ) and Christ-Figures ( 93 , 94 , 107 , 110 ) and deja vu ( 14 , 15 , 16 ), yet those ...