the groundhog day project

There's a problem and an unexpected benefit to continuing researching articles and essays about Groundhog Day . For example, yesterday I mentioned an Irish Papist piece by a guy who calls himself Maolsheachlann . For those of you who don't click through any of my links, his piece is called "Why Groundhog Day is the Best Movie of All Time..." and its from August 2012. The problem: I find sometimes that other writers say stuff I intended to say or even have said. But then, I highlight a line anyway, thinking I'll quote it sometime. For example, Maolscheachlann says, "Strangely enough, I think a film about a man caught in an unexplained time loop reflects more of [a] universal human experience than any of those classics." Those classics, by the way: Citizen Kane , Casablanca , The Lord of the Rings -- (He calls that one "a great film," singular. I could nitpick one of two ways; I could point out that the film(s) he means are three films, none...

I've mentioned, of course, how one of my papers this fall quarter was on the cinematic Christ-Figure. I shared a bit of it a while back . That section got broken up a little and there was a separate introductory bit added and... well, don't worry, I'm not going to share the whole paper. The prospectus actually worked out well enough, that doing the research is doable. So, I'll hold onto it for now. That being said, I'd like to take a position today that would probably be a part of my conclusions in the final paper that would come from that research. See, the scale I plan to use-- (Keep in mind, the prospectus was supposed to be written as if we intended to go ahead with the research afterward, and so I will also write of it here in the same terms. So, when I say "I plan" to use" this scale, imagine it, if you must, as "were I to go ahead with this research, I would use." I will necessarily be writing in definitive terms for brevity while e...

Today is brief. Well, no, today still takes 24 hours like any other day. But, today’s entry here will be brief. IMDb still hasn’t updated the goofs page for Groundhog Day with my corrections… and I say that as if it has been a long wait. It has been just under 48 hours. Perhaps I should be more patient. Anyway, today I just want to share the additions I will be making tonight to that same page, which I hope doesn’t delay the original changes. Still, these changes must be added. 1. Inside the bowling alley, we see a guy bowl a strike and he has a friend sitting at the scoring table. Cut to Phil talking, then a wide shot that includes Gus and Ralph and the bowler and his friend are gone. 2. Behind Phil as he passed the homeless old man is a girl with an upside-down “Phil” sign. On the first three days of the time loop, she has a friend walking with her. Then, her friend disappears. 3. Since Gobbler’s Knob was crowded with people all morning and it did not snow in Punxsutawney all ...

Before I get into today’s thing, I must say that it was worth a shot. But, my mention of this blog on the film’s Wikipedia page has been removed—my blog, when it must be its own citation, is trivial and irrelevant. Gotta work on that. Meanwhile, it occurred to me that I need to compile a list of the goofs I have discovered in the movie to add to the IMDb page once it updates with the changes I made yesterday. But, neither of those things are what I want to talk about today. Nor do I want to talk about how The Groundhog Day Project ’s Twitter got a retweet from a guy with nearly 10,000 followers last night and today The Groundhog Day Project has gotten more pageviews in a single day than ever before. No, today I want to talk about Jeopardy! In the middle of Phil’s depression, he plays along with the show. It’s a part of the movie that should be memorable. Phil Connors hanging out with the mostly old crowd at the Cherry Street Inn. The episode of Jeopardy! that we see is ...

Instead of writing a lot here in the blog today, I am finally fixing the goofs page on Groundhog Day ’s IMDb page. INSERT: Clouds moving swiftly as time passes in a clichéd manner. Come back a while later—started when the movie did and right now Phil is robbing the armored truck, just for a frame of reference—and I wonder what to put here. I was going to copy and paste the corrected version of the page. But, apparently, it has to be approved by IMDb ’s editors. (Perhaps I will update this entry with the copy and paste when the page updates.) If you like, in the meantime, you can go read my post from over 100 days ago in which I checked on every goof , many with screencaps… though they were not from a nice HD copy, so maybe I should replace them. And, since there’s still a bit of movie to go today, I think I’ll wander over to Wikipedia . INSERT: Some more clouds, only a little less clichéd. My first correction is this: Eventually, Phil becomes despondent and tries more and ...

Linking Groundhog Day to impromptu quotations--as I did here , here and here & here and here & here -- yesterday and the day before and it is not going as... I guess you could say smoothly. It's not going as smoothly as other days. I'm getting bogged down in details and the picking of nits--which obviously is not like me at all. As a regular reader of this blog, you would understand that I never obsess about anything to the point of picking it apart until it dies. Seriously though, how does something get labeled as a Danish Proverb when it is neither Danish nor a Proverb? But, then there's a bigger problem; spend too much time on "random" quotations and I miss the boat on larger things I could be doing. Like spending four days revisiting eternal recurrence or deja vu, or a whole week on some other topic... perhaps deja vu. I mean, just because Carl Sagan supposedly once said, "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known," does...

Was too tired to do much linking of Groundhog Day to impromptu quotations--as I did here , here and here & here and here & here -- yesterday . So, now for some more: "What we obtain too cheap[ly] we esteem too little. It is dearness only that gives everything its value." - Thomas Paine An obvious one. What Phil Connors gets out of his life pre-loop or the early days of the loop are gains too easily gotten. He has shallow relationships. He steals money and (presumably) spends it absurdly. He Phil Connors Nancy rather than actually try to ask her out properly (which she might have said "yes" to). It is the stuff he gets later in the loop, the stuff he has to put real effort into, that holds "dearness." His ice sculpting, his piano playing, his saving of lives-- (Note: I do not include learning French, though one could argue it belongs on the list... one would be a presumptuous idealist, and maybe a moron, but one could argue it) --this i...