the groundhog day project

John Hughes is involved, you know it’s going to be good on some level. Still, my obligatory ruining... or rather a quick quote from Hal Hinson, Washington Post , 27 June 1988: The gags that spring out of this situation were dreamed up by John Hughes, who wrote the script and acts as the film's executive producer, and they're all lame variations on the theme of nightmare vacations. It's hard to imagine how this theme could have been executed with less invention. Really, the main weakness of the film is not the gags--they're basic but executed well--but the disconnected structure. The raccoons, really. It feels like something tacked on when the script was too short. And then there's teen romance that never matters to the rest of the film; it just is. It's cute, but it's separate. Anyway, unlike my usual habit of writing this blog during the film, the film is over as I write now around a few scattered notes. Like this early conversation that is...

It feels like, however much I had things to say regarding the last film on the list ( Stand By Me 1381 1382 1383 1383 1385 1386 ), with each further movie on my "movie life" list, it is much more about commenting from the present than remembering from the past, because for some of them--like today's Crocodile Dundee , for example--they were so briefly what I've been calling fixtures, that their influence is negligible beside something bigger and more attractive to my imagination like Dune or Masters of the Universe or Willow ... Actually, Willow might be on the list. But, I'm not sure, say, Batman is, even though I saw that movie 6 times on the big screen, bought the VHS on the day it came out, listened to both soundtracks constantly, and went retro watching reruns of every episode of the 60s tv show and the '66 film, and when I started reading comics regularly a few years later, the Batman comics were on my pull list for more than a decade. But,...

Newark, New Jersey, September is a great way to start a movie that is very much not set in Newark, New Jersey, nor in September. By the time the opening credits finish, we're in California. The landscapes along the way, the tiny bit of dialogue voiceover, establishing the car needing a push at the Canyon Portal Motel--there is something weirdly charming and, in retrospect, a little strange, about this montage. We don't just meet Daniel (Ralph Macchio) and Lucille (Randee Heller) as new arrivals in California; we get a glimpse of them before the transition, we see the process. We come with them. And, of course, most of the audience is not watching the film in California, so Daniel meeting Ali (Elisabeth Shue) at a beach party in September is strange. And really, that's all exemplary of how The Karate Kid introduces characters through their actions rather than having people tell us who they are. There's a little bit of exposition--like Freddy (Israel Juarbe) asking D...

One more time: Dave Made a Maze . Because repetition is the heart and soul of this blog, of my life, of life itself. Day in day out, what makes it all interesting and worth bothering are the little things, the moments that make one day unique and different from the next. Dave's incorrect use of "tertiary" for example--when friends of mine make silly mistakes with grammar (or, Phil forbid, I make one) I notice. I don't always correct them. But, I note it and if I had the memory capacity of, say, Santa Claus, I would have a list at the end of every year and I would let people know. Like, Hi Jared, you have made [this many] grammatical errors in public this year . Hi Shari, please repair the grammatical issues and try better next year . And, so on. Eventually ending with myself: Hi Robert, you have made thousands of grammatical errors, and far too many typos to ever be forgiven. You have to do better next year. Clear and civil communication is essential to a peaceful ...

Not really, though. We were pretty well off when I was born, I'm pretty sure. Nine of us in the house. Living on a lot of credit, though. Sometime in the late 80s that fell apart. I don't quite remember when. When I was young, though, whether it was true, whether it was because of credit cards or whatever, I figured we were affluent. Not that I knew the word affluent . We lived in an old house, two stories, with a small attic and a basement, a working fireplace, four bedrooms and a back room that was part utility room with the washer and dryer and part puzzle/game room. What I wouldn't do for a room like that today, when there are far more games I'd like to play and more folks than just my sisters I might want to spend time playing them with. I don't remember exactly how young I was when we got our first VCR, but I remember that VCR--a Quasar that loaded from the top, and the remote was not wireless... As "Mr. Nussbaum tries to buy some gas with a stolen Maste...

Let's get a couple things out of the way: 1) the gambling at the end of Across the Great Divide , unless we are supposed to assume Zachariah is cheating, is bullshit. It's cheap and convenient stacking of cards so both have good cars and Zachariah wins. It's the kind of thing a lot of movies do, actually. Nevermind the way poker actually works, the way players actually bet, the way you're not going to be betting horses after like one hand; 2) the song that plays as the men try to kill Zachariah at the beginning of the film is awful; so are many of the obviously-written-for-the-film songs that play and; 3) even worse, there is a moment when they've been at the native camp for a bit where the kids run in slow motion with some cougars and that same stupid running-with-animals music from Adventures of the Wilderness Family plays and for a moment, it's like one movie is the other, and not in a good way, because I think this movie is actually better. Some moments a...

Still 1981, but no James Bond today. Instead, we return to King Arthur. Excalibur . Now, I saw For Your Eyes Only in the theater, I'm fairly sure, and many times after on video. I do not actually remember the first time I watched Excalibur . I imagine it was on some Sunday afternoon on television, maybe a few years later. By the time I saw, it already knew about Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Sometime in the mid to late eighties (I think I lost my old collection of theater programs in one move or another, so I cannot check the exact date) I also saw the musical Camelot on stage several times. I'd read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and, presumably, other books about Arthur. I'd seen The Sword in the Stone on video (or would soon). So much of my knowledge about Arthuriana comes from vague memories that blend together over a few decades. Movies are like that, too. I forget what some movies are sometimes, or imagine movies that never existed....