the groundhog day project

The film version of Rent starts with a song--"Seasons of Love A"--that doesn't come until Act Two in the stage version. On the one hand, this is because a film, even a musical, doesn't have the two act structure common to stage musicals. But, this song also serves as a sort of love letter to Rentheads who will probably be disappointed by other changes made for the film--from small stuff like Mark never actually calls Alexi Darling to quit his job (seriously, though the lines are there, he's nowhere near a phone), or Mark opening up the film (after that initial transplanted song) with dialogue rather than singing; to big stuff like cutting half of "Goodbye Love" because director Chris Columbus thought it was emotional overload. Similarly, the film never explicitly lets us know that Roger's ex-girlfriend killed herself because Columbus thought that would be "too much." It's a musical about a bunch of poverty-stricken artists, many of w...

"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...

Well, they may have been robots. I mean, I think they were robots. I mean, I know they were robots. I was at the theater today to see Ex Machina and there's a moment that got me thinking... Well, there were a lot of moments that got me thinking, but there was one in particular I thought was worth sharing here. Nathan (Oscar Isaac) asks Caleb (Domhnall Gleason) why his type is his type ; that is, did he look at all the various types of women, analyze them in detail, measure them, evaluate them and decide on one type , or did his type come from a genetic predilection, or a particular specificity of idealization supported and maintained by his parents, his friends, society in general around him? Actually, most of that phrasing is mine. But, the point is the same. Not to get back into the free will discussion, but I wonder if once a certain complexity is reached, the actuality and the appearance are indistinguishable. That is to say, if his type comes from such a complex combin...

There's a moment in the third act of Westworld in which Peter finds a woman he thinks is injured after the robots have gone... wrong. He believes she's a guest who has been injured because, unlike so many others nearby she is semiconscious (and chained up). Then he gets her some water and she shorts out. Turns out she's a robot. The fact that the robots cannot be distinguished from the guests (except by their hands) is important. And, it makes me wonder if there isn't some greater similarity between the two. I'm reminded of the Architect in The Matrix Reloaded ... [The Oracle] stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly 99.9% of all test subjects accepted the program, as long as they were given a choice, even if they were only aware of the choice at a near unconscious level. I'm reminded of The Purge , which if you haven't seen it a) isn't that great a movie as it ends up just being a rather straightforward home invasion story but b) is based on an imag...

(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.) For the equivalent of $5524.99 today, you can go to Roman World for the hedonism, Western World for the violence or Medieval World for... a different kind of violence I guess. This is a bunch of rich people. Let's get that out of the way up front. I mean, they're still humans, and it's easy enough to empathize with them when they are in danger. We learn pretty young to idealize the rich; it's no coincidence that so many of Disney's animated films are about princes and princesses. It goes right along with the whole protestant ethic... ...which I did not want to write about today. But it has to be said. This entire story is a fantasy. We have to identify with these rich people spending tons of money to play, and then we can fantasize about being them right alongside fantasizing about being at Delos, in one of those thr...