the groundhog day project

"You have come of your own free will," Lord Summerisle tells Sergeant Howie. But, did he? The lies and manipulation--from an entire town, no less--required to get him on that beach just in time to see Rowan and run with her into the cave... that's one of the more complicated plans. The folks at Consumer Recreation Services would be envious. The full sentence from Lord Summerisle is, of course, "You have come of your own free will to the appointed place." Sounds like a contradiction of terms to me. Lord Summerisle also explains--SPOILERS, of course--"You came here to find Rowan Morrison, but it is we who have found you and brought you hear and controlled your every thought and action since you arrived." I think Lord Summerisle needs to get himself a dictionary and check again what free will means. (I cannot find the article, but I read the other day someone making the explicit comparison between Sergeant Howie and the insect that Daisy has tied to a n...

For the record, in case anyone reading this really knows their versions of The Wicker Man , I am pretty sure I'm watching the "Middle Version" ... Except, weirdly, I do not recall any scenes before we see Howie's plane when I watched the movie last night. I'm reading about the "Long Version" earlier and I read about a sequence with Howie and his deputy-- that is not in this version. Then I read about the sequence in the church, Howie and his fiancee singing in church, Howie reading from the Bible and receiving Holy Communion. Apparently, this church bit flew right past me last night... or was magically added after the sacrifice last night. What is missing from this version (aside from that bit with his deputy) is a scene with a postman and that same deputy discussing Howie and his fiancee. The postman suggests that Howie has "a bit of skirt" at Summerisle, from which he has received the letter that sets the film's story going. McTaggar...

(This month, I'm doing things a little differently; I will be watching 10 films--each recommended by someone else, each one for three days. A risk I took by taking recommendations was watching a movie that I have not seen--yes, there are movies I have not seen. In this case, I have never seen today's film all the way through. I've seen parts of it before, but never the entirety... so today's entry may be fairly brief as I will be paying, perhaps, more attention than usual.) Right up front, this film is clearly not American. I mean, aside from it being a production of British Lion . The writer gets his name over the title. That just doesn't happen here. If any name is offered ownership over the film via an apostrophe and an S, it's the director, or the author of an original source (like Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet ). I had to doublecheck because Anthony Shaffer is a playwright, but he didn't write a play of Wicker Man unti...