the groundhog day project

Twelve Monkeys starts with some lame text-exposition-- "...5 BILLION PEOPLE WILL DIE FROM A DEADLY VIRUS IN 1997... THE SURVIVORS WILL ABANDON THE SURFACE OF THE PLANET... ONCE AGAIN THE ANIMALS WILL RULE THE WORLD..." --but then makes it awesome by tagging it as "Excerpts from interview with clinically diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, April 12, 1990 - Baltimore County Hospital." Great counter to get us going. The movie doesn't really leave much room for James Cole (Bruce Willis) to actually be insane--far too much detail (as one might expect in a Terry Gilliam film) in the future opening and later future scenes. But, as long as we can understand that Cole might question his reality later, the drama works fine in that regard. Meanwhile, we get what is probably the best time travel movie ever, or high on the list certainly. Like Timecrimes , Twelve Monkeys never contradicts its time travel. It doesn't play with time and the ability to alter the past. I...

Instead, we get to Beginners from August: Osage County , the opposite direction of the original plan for this month. Things go backward sometimes. Plans fall apart. Marriages end. College plans get changed. A particular movie isn't available so a month has to be reconfigured so it will all still elicit the same poetry it was supposed to from the start. Poetry may be overselling it, but we'll get to that. (In the meantime, an aside: tomorrow is the Oscars, yesterday I saw the last of the nominees--Foreign Language Film nominee Embrace of the Serpent . This is only the second time I have managed every nominee. I've got a party of a sort tomorrow, but I don't even know how many people are coming. A speech tournament and a conference and a whole lot of sickness will be keeping people away. But, no big deal. Whoever comes comes, and we'll eat, drink, and be merry and I'm sure I'll tweet a whole lot (under my personal account, not the Groundhog Day Project o...

August: Osage County offers us pseudo-voiceover to start. Bev (Sam Shepard) is talking to, as it turns out, Johna (Misty Upham) who is hiring to help him out--he's getting old. But, she's offscreen until he's stopped talking, until Violet (Meryl Streep) interrupts. It's a cheat. There will, of course, be no voiceover for the rest of the film. Then Bev leaves and the play gets going. And, it is a play, or was. Only a few scenes early on are really staged differently than they would have to be on stage. This is a talky film, the kind of movie that brings a big ol' family together and lets the sparks fly. Give us a family, throw in a funeral or a wedding or a holiday and the drama writes itself. I saw this two years ago, of course, when Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep were nominated for Oscars, but I actually don't remember much of the specifics anymore. In my head, it's filed away with the likes of The Celebration or Rachel Getting Married , or even Home for...

Zombieland is an example of how you use voiceover properly. Columbus' (Jesse Eisenberg) voiceover adds significant content to the film.           I've already just been sitting here and writing nothing, and I'm gonna keep doing that. It's been a long day--subbed two classes, attended a rally/protest, watched some Republican debate, and after being sick all last week, I'm still not 100%. But then Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) just called Bill Murray "the tippy top of the A-list" and I couldn't help but comment on it. This is the Groundhog Day Project , after all. Bill Murray is like royalty here. When Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) asks who Bill Murray is and Tallahassee responds, "Hey, I've never hit a kid before," I get that. There is no excuse for such ignorance.           This movie is awesome. I love that Wichita (Emma Stone) knows what her first R-rated movie was ( Anaconda ). I have no idea what mine was. Too early i...

The Help is the kind of movie about black folks that we--white folks, that is--like. We like 'em as slaves or ex-slaves, as servants or in some way magical. And, in recent years, we occasionally like them as cops or, well, God. Or funny. A few black actors have made the grade for big box office--Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Chris Tucker I suppose. But, mostly, if they aren't in a film that's really about white people--like The Help is about Skeeter (Emma Stone) playing the saviour and collecting the stories of the poor black women--we mostly just don't care. Straight Outta Compton , Creed , Tangerine , Chi-Raq --these are a little too black for us. Creed passable because it's attached to a beloved series about a white guy. And, of course, we nominate that white guy at the Oscars. For The Help , we nominated two black women--Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer--but balanced that out with one of the white women--Jessica Chastain. Spencer won. The film was also...

Sometimes, things don't go as you plan. The movie I had planned for today--it turned out it was unavailable. Couldn't even steal it, not that I'm admitting I would. Watching What's Eating GIlbert Grape the week that DiCaprio is going to, as they say, finally get himself an Oscar, seems appropriate. It was even on one of the earlier incarnations of this month's schedule. Then, it had to start with some unnecessary voiceover. It's like a sickness. Like Hollywood doesn't have confidence in its ability to introduce a story without some extra exposition... It occurs to me now that I'm doing the same here. You don't need to know that the order of movies got mixed up. I could just jump right into What's Eating Gilbert Grape . To be fair, this blog is not a movie. Also, I have never written a screenplay that used voiceover. Plus, I'm not sure there is a main action today. I hadn't planned for this movie--combine that with it being a movie ...

I've seen Cape Fear once. The remake, I mean. Also, the original once. I have no idea where today's blog entry will be going. Play by play? Like, that was an awkward way of not starting with voiceover, for example. Juliette Lewis staring at the camera, and is that a blackboard behind her? Is this a report she's doing for school like Lidia in The War ? How young is Lewis supposed to be here? Are they watching Problem Child ? In other news, according to the trivia section of this movie's IMDb page, supposedly Steven Spielberg was attached to direct this remake at some point and he planned on casting Bill Murray as Max Cady--DeNiro's role. Scorsese is really liking his rack focus--that's when two sides of the scene, that should not be in focus at the same time, are. In other other news, I may have to finish up my final paper for this writing class early so I can share it in this blog next week. It relates to Groundhog Day and next week is the 2nd. That also...

(Officially, today we're going back to the 80s to go back to the 20s and 30s with The Untouchables . But, as I'm trying to get over being sick for a week, I wasn't doing much but sitting around the house anyway, and for me that means movies. Notably, Cinderella , Youth , The Hunting Ground and Racing Extinction . If you don't pay as much attention to the Oscars as I do, each of those films has one nomination. I now have just one Foreign Language Film nominee to watch and I will for only the second time ever, have managed to watch all the nominees before the awards. And, that film-- Embrace of the Serpent --is in a theater in Santa Monica. Bit of a distance, bit of a cost, without my own car, but maybe I'll borrow one next weekend, get it done just in time for next Sunday's awards.) The Untouchables was nominated for four Oscars and won one. One of its losers was Ennio Morricone, nominated for Best Score. He's nominated this year for The Hateful Eight . H...

Elijah Wood, especially as a kid, has a tone to his voice that limits his vocal range that doesn't mean he has to be as ridiculous and melodramatic as he was a few too many times in North . Today: The War . Same year as North , but a much better showing from Wood. The film doesn't have too many notes to hit, and it hits them in such obvious ways most of the time, but I have loved it since I first saw it at a free screening at USC just before it was in theatres proper. (Full disclosure: I also used parts of this film in two different interp speeches my first two years competing in speech and debate, so I'm a little attached.) It's got this nice combination of childish innocence and a keen adult sense of how horrible life can be. Something I loved about some of Stephen King's early novels, a tone I put into the a few of my own. I guess it's easier to explore some of the darkest of the see through eyes that don't understand it, because we all love to imagi...

I want to love North just to be a contrarian. (I did see it when it was new (on video, not in the theater) but I don't remember it.) This is the movie about which Roger Ebert quite famously wrote: I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience but it's belief that anyone would be entertained by it. Oh, and this, regarding the sequences with North's potential new parents: They are all seen as broad, desperate comic caricatures. They are not funny. They are not touching. There is no truth in them. They don't even work as parodies. There is an idiocy here that seems almost intentional, as if the filmmakers plotted to leave anything of interest or entertainment value out of these episodes. Personally, so far, twelve minutes in, North (Elijah Wood) having just talked for the fi...

I forget to begin as The Fifth Element involves the ancient from 1914 Egypt. We'll jump the the future soon. First, some adorable aliens? cyborgs? robots? (They're not German.) Tiny little heads, giant bodies, and they waddle like penguins. And the madness of The Fifth Element begins. It should be no surprise that so much of this film was in the director's head when he was young. This is like every kid's crazy version of science fiction and fantasy writ large. You've got absolute evil. You've got monsters. You've got a brave hero, a beautiful heroine, comic relief. You've got fantastic visuals and profound concepts shoved into tiny, easy-to-understand boxes. You've got black goo that come out of folk's foreheads when the big evil... thing approaches. Hell, you've even got (briefly) Luke Perry. Okay, maybe Luke Perry is not a part of the quintessential science fiction fantasy world of every (pre-)adolescent.... (Pardon the sexism, but I...

Interesting thing. I'm watching Chaplin the other night and I'm too sick to really get into some preachy, self-help-style rant about being creative, being yourself, and all that jazz. Tonight, I'm watching Dazed and Confused and it occurs to me I could pull the same sort of message out of this film. I mean, that is the point to, say, Pink's (Jason London) throughline, yeah? That's what the freshmen are doing heading out to party with the older kids. That's even what Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey) is doing hanging out with everyone younger than he is. They're all trying to just hold onto some ideal form of self, to enjoy a life full of possibilities and... ("I wanna dance," indeed.) See, it could turn cheesy, easy. And then I get distracted, because cheesy rhymes with easy and I thought maybe I should replace it with corny and then I got to wondering what was the difference between cheesy and corny . And, I'm feeling like Slater (Rory...

Stephen Spielberg knows how to start a film. From the storming of the beach in Saving Private Ryan to the revolt here in Amistad , he can pull you in. I also like how he avoids subtitling Mende. I've said in this blog before that I don't like to deal in "snubs" when talking about Oscars, but damn it, looking at the nominees that year, I can barely fathom how Djimon Hounsou was not nominated. In fact, you've got a bit of the #OscarsSoWhite problem. For this movie, very much about the experience of its black characters, the acting nominations (at the Oscars, anyway*) are limited to Anthony Hopkins. (* Hounsou was nominated for a Golden Globe.) Also in the supporting category, you've got Robert Forster, white guy, nominated for Jackie Brown , a film led by black actors. Of course, a) Anthony Hopkins is amazing in this movie and b) a nomination for Director or Best Picture wouldn't have mattered in the year of Titanic . I think there's a familiarit...

The opening of Chaplin is a perfect opening. It almost feels cliched, but it's honest enough that it manages. We begin with Chaplin (Robert Downey, Jr.) as the Tramp, coming into his dressing room and taking off his costume, taking off his makeup. This is director Attenborough letting us know where we're going--into the life of one of the most famous men, behind-the-scenes. Because 1) I am still quite sick, spent most of the day in bed and 2) it has been a while since I've watched this film, I may say very little here. I love this movie. That bullshit magic bit and the boring scene that follows when he creates the tramp character is brilliant.           Downey, Jr. Was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar for his role here and he won the BAFTA.

I can forgive the voiceover initially in The Soloist because  the real-life Steve Lopez not only writes a column for the Los Angeles Times but also has done several narrative stories on TV as well, which involved him reading a lot of what would be a column out loud. Now, if it doesn't continue throughout the film, The Soloist and I may have some words like Horrible Bosses and I did yesterday . (I wish my head were clearer tonight. Came home rather sick after seeing a couple Oscar-nominated Foreign Language Films-- Theeb and A War . Watched the BAFTAs a little feverish, going to have to double checked what movies won things tomorrow.) I have seen The Soloist . Once. In 2009. I remember dismissing it a bit the way I would dismiss The Blind Side later in the year. White savior for a black man in trouble. (To be fair, technically, Steve Lopez is not white, but Robert Downey, Jr. certainly is.) Having read the book recently and having spent a few hours with Steve Lopez every Mo...

(An apology before I get into today's film... Today's official film; I also watched the Oscar-nominated The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared . (Think Forrest Gump by way of Sweden if in the present Forrest inadvertently stole millions from some criminals instead of telling his story to random people at a bus stop.) Today's film is Horrible Bosses --and no, not as some thematic link to yesterday 's Swimming with Sharks . In fact, I've never seen Horrible Bosses so I'm not even sure how related the two might be. Horrible bosses, obviously. But, that's a big part of so many movies. 9 to 5 , for example. And, that is where we get to my apology. For, you see, yesterday was Day 925 of this blog, and I did not plan ahead so that I would be watching 9 to 5 on that day. And, watching 9 to 5 on Day 925 is just... poetry. Like if I had not watched 300 on Day 300... Which is a despicable example because I did not watch 300 on Day 300 ...

You don't know what's going on. We start with pointless voiceover-- In Hollywood, one of the fastest ways to the top is to work for someone who's already there. The system dictates that one must first be a slave before you can become a success. But this can be a very demanding process. Only a few people have the drive to endure the thousands of indignities and hardships that make up the system. Now, this drive is usually motivated by greed, sometimes ambition, sometimes even love. There are stories of love inspiring success over the most insurmountable of odds. This is not one of those stories. --adds nothing to what's coming, doesn't reveal anything unique or particularly intriguing, and you don't know what's going on. The conversation about Shelley Winters, on the other hand, is a fantastic introduction to what's coming. Guy (Frank Whaley) knows his films. It's clear that he is better than his position. Then, we meet his overbearing boss Buddy...

Sunday morning, October 16, 1994, the underground theater in Old Town Pasadena. Officially, it's called the AMC One Colorado. Throughout the 1990s I would go there a lot. This time, I'm there for Pulp Fiction . I had only recently started my subscription to Entertainment Weekly so I'm fairly sure I knew about this film this weekend because I read the review in the Los Angeles Times that Friday morning, sitting in a classroom in Waite Phillips Hall. Discussion section of an anthropology class. I had the Times delivered daily back then, even made an effort to read it, especially the Calendar section. And, I made my way to Old Town for movies as often as I could. I wouldn't work at the United Artists Marketplace a block from the underground theater until '95. Thursday night, February 11, 2016, my living room floor. Groundhog didn't see his shadow last week so winter's over and it's been hot this week. Got a fan to my right, my son Kieran sitting in the ...