the groundhog day project

The last recap was Day 942 - what we got here is a little game of show and tell . Today is Day 1000. So, how about a quick reminder of where we've been lately. Day 943 - the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth took Murder in the First as its jumping off point, ended the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon month and was maybe the thematic end to this blog because that's where every movie was every other movie and the message was on repeat. Day 944 - i'm going out to punxsutawney was a thing I wrote for class about my pilgrimage to Woodstock, Illinois and meeting Danny Rubin, and Danny Rubin later sent me a lovely message about it on Facebook. Then I drifted. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them 945 946 947 The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him 948 949 950 The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her 951 952 953 The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them 954 955 Antichrist 956 The Squid and the Whale 957 958 959 Mrs. Doubtfire 960 961 ...

"Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known." - Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters Today I mostly finished a draft of my thesis. Gotta add a couple things tomorrow, check some formatting, then hand it off to my committee for comments. Officially, I turn it in in two weeks. Defend it a couple weeks after that. So, today, I was writing about how a blogger can deliberately manipulate their public identity, become the words. High Fidelity , which is really just a placeholder as I get to tomorrow--Day 1000 as well as the end of the main part of my thesis writing. It's a big day. I imagine my world without this blog and me not being a blogger. I think about labels. Online, I can label myself whatever I would like to label myself. I can play the information game and control what you know about me. I can do my research to talk about a film thoroughly, make myself look like I know what I'm talking about even when I don't. And,...

Rob Gordon lives in Apartment 2B. I don't know if that's from the book--I can't be bothered to check--or if it's even on purpose. But, I noticed it and noticeable things matter. Echoes of "to be or not to be" or maybe I'm reaching. But, in a story about a guy trying to figure out who he is, it makes sense. A corny, on-the-nose sort of sense. And then there's the deus ex machina of Laura's dad dying, without even the setup of him being sick. (The script tries to cheat by mentioning that her dad never knew she and Rob broke up because he "wasn't up to it.") Kinda ruins the movie the more I watch it. I mean, it was a lame bit of plotting in the first place. But, it gets more offensive with each viewing. But, I keep viewing anyway, because... (And, really, he just compared Charlie to 'Nam? That's gotta be offensive to someone.) Seriously, what is Rob's problem? You don't own every woman who's kissed you. Sex isn...

I was writing today about the choices we make as bloggers. Or, as people on the internet more generally. Papacharissi (2009) Calls it an "information game." But for the moment I cannot talk about that. I've been stuck on High Fidelity because I find a bit too much of myself in Rob Gordon (John Cusack). Tonight, I'm checking out the deleted scenes before I get into the film proper, and I just watched one that surprised me because who else plays Rob's father but Harold Ramis. And, I'm done. I mean, to loop back around like that. Andie MacDowell's real first name is Rosalie (my mother's name) and now Harold Ramis is playing the father of a guy named Rob (my name, you inattentive passerby). Everything loops back to Groundhog Day , eventually. Every movie is every other movie. I intended to talk about white male privilege today, I want to talk about punctum, but here I am talking about links back to Groundhog Day because every blog entry is the same, e...

At one point in High Fidelity , Rob says "that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like." On the one hand, I think it's both. On the other hand, yeah, I regularly measure people based on what they like. Do they like the same movies as me? (So many.) Do they watch the same TV shows as me? (Again, so many. The highbrow HBO or Netflix originals and the nerd-friendly CW shows. And, I totally understand if you don't like Banshee because a) you haven't even heard of it or, b) you can't handle the brutality of the violence.) Listen to the same music? (Actually, music isn't such a big deal for me. I'm not a one-type-of-music person, though I do obsess about one type at any given time, for sure. I don't need someone else to like what I like, though if you've got a thing for musicals and the occasional heavy metal, the occasional folk rock, we might get along.) Read the same books? (Again, not the most important thing. I mea...

I've got a theory, one minor part of my master's thesis, that among other things I do in this blog, I reference my knowledge of and experience with other films in order to 1) yeah, increase my credibility when talking about film, 2) obviously, to make my points using basic comparison and contrast, but maybe most importantly, 3) to manipulate the reader into thinking I know what I'm talking about, whether or not I actually do. Admittedly, that's just another way of saying #1, but the thing is, there's a certain clout to just having this blog, maintaining it for hundreds of days, watching movies day in and day out, that suggests to the casual reader that I must know something. #3 is supposed to be a negative version of #1. Like, yeah, I've got plenty of film knowledge, I've seen thousands of films, gotta brag about that from time to time, but I'm still just some blogger, a bit too full of myself sometimes, desperate for attention yet often actively avoidin...

Film School Rejects offers up five reasons High Fidelity is still culturally relevant. (In 2014, mind you, but I find the implication that a movie from 2000 wouldn't still be relevant a little odd.) Their #1 is what they call the--and I'm not sure this is a word-- listiclization of everything . Two years past their piece, how many clickbait articles offer up top ten reasons for such and such or the top 18 excuses for whatever, you won't believe what #14 is. (Meanwhile, teenage Rob is admittedly a jerk: "I wasn't interested in Penny's nice qualities. Just breasts.") Their #2 is about vinyl, and yeah, hipsters totally want vinyl to stick around. Their #3-- the rise of DIY creativity --which, yeah, YouTube and Vine and every other online platform for Joe Schmo to be famous. Their #5 (which doesn't get numbered in the piece--and yeah, I realize I skipped #4, bear with me) is your preferences are still bullshit . Political debates about Trump mixing...

[Rob Gordon's] Top five dream jobs Journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, 1976 to 1979 - Get to meet The Clash, Chrissie Hynde, Sex Pistols, David Byrne, get tons of free records. Producer, Atlantic Records - Get to meet Aretha, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke. More free records and a shitload of money. Any kind of musician. Besides classical or rap. Settle for being one of the Memphis Horns or something. I'm not asking to be Jagger or Hendrix or Otis Redding. Film Director. Any kind except German or silent. Architect Rob of course readily offers, "I'm not sure I even want to be an architect." Laura critiques his choices: "So you've got a list here of five things you'd do if qualifications and time and history and salary were no object? ... One of them you don't really want to do anyway." Rob proffers, "Well, I did put it at number five." And, Laura makes the point that matters. "Wouldn't you rather own your own record...

People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands, of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? - Rob Gordon (John Cusack), High Fidelity More importantly, do I watch too many movies because I have no life or do I have no life because I watch too many movies? Note, of course, I acknowledge there, it's "too many" movies. First, regarding the movie that's on right now-- High Fidelity --there is an excess of voiceover here, but this is one of those movies that knows how to use voiceover, how to use it to actually add to what's happening on screen. Plus, the voiceover is not quite voice over , rather Rob tends to talk to the camera, so it's voiceover plus fourth wall breaking. It shouldn't ...

The remarkable thing about Lars and the Real Girl is how easily it allows the audience to understand its characters. The damaged, the desperate, the concerned--they are all painted with such care. We can relate immediately to Lars (Ryan Gosling), to his concerned (and pregnant) sister-in-law. Karin (Emily Mortimer), to his interested coworker Margo (Kelli Garner). Even his brother Gus (Paul Schneider), though he doesn't have much to do but play support to Karin early on. And Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson, thankfully given better material than Pieces of April ). It's like I've said regarding Linklater's films; they embody these character seemingly effortlessly. Yet, the plot makes a very explicit effort to complicate things beyond understanding (and fails, as it turns out). Bianca (the doll) is a missionary, very religious, and she barely speaks English, plus she's in a wheelchair, plenty of detail to explain why she doesn't talk much. That and her shyness. Gosling...

Saw The Jungle Book (the "live-action" remake) in the theater today. The CGI animals were awesome, but storywise, is ain't a patch on the animated version. Plus, by not going all in with the musical numbers, the two very brief songs come across as very out of place. Watched (and livetweeted) The Ouija Experiment just now. Better than I expected it to be, made good use of its minimal budget. But now, Punch-Drunk Love is on again. And, it occurs to me that the insanity of the opening is a good gauge of Barry's mental state. He's on the phone obsessing about the Healthy Choice/American Airlines promotion, then he wanders outside only to have a car randomly flip over in the street and a cab drop off a harmonium. This is Barry's brain, obsessive and calm one moment then chaos. And, I don't know if--and this is me going all fan-theory on the film, and I hate fan-theories--the phone sex girl really extorts Barry for money. I think that might just be Barry...

Don't read this. Day 989, so close to 1000 entries and after a depressing day punctuated by comedy (watching the end of the final season of Seinfeld ) and obsessing about finding the original version of a particular source for my master's thesis when I could just quote it indirectly, it occurs to me that 1000 is a nice round number and rounds numbers are great ends. Not that everyday me wants to finish doing this. Unless I could justify going back to writing fiction each day, I am lately again of a mind that I need these words each night to get by. It's that kind of day. And Punch-Drunk Love is on, the abrupt car accident just happened followed by the inexplicable dropping off of the... whatever kind of organ that is. Meanwhile, Barry Egan (Adam Sandler, twisting his usual comedy tendencies into a rather disturbed sort of drama) has discovered that he can get a whole lot of frequent flyer miles by buying a bunch of cheap products, and then he's met Lena Leonard (Em...

I was going to watch Hackers again but apparently my rental was only 24 hours, not 48 as most Amazon rentals have been. Anyway, I'm inclined to write in response to Everybody Wants Some!! instead, anyway, except for this: You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert. This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of the service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... And you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge, and you call us criminals. We exist without skin colour, without nationality, without...

Then there's Hackers . Which, remarkably, has great characters, realistic characters--and I do not at all mean that their hacking is realistic; I'm sure it isn't. Our old standby Roger Ebert contrasts the teenagers in this movie to those in Dangerous Minds , and calls these "much more authentic... they're younger, more intense and vulnerable, and more gawky than hunky." I love that Dade / Crash Override (Jonny Lee Miller) hacks a TV network just so he can watch The Outer Limits .           As I get pulled into the film and "forget" to write about it, let's look back at its opening weekend. September 15-17, 1995, a couple months after The Net . To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar is the #1 movie, which is weird because I don't remember much of anyone coming to see that movie. Clockers at #2 was over at the underground theater. I saw it sometime that weekend, probably Sunday. Dangerous Minds was #3, and we had that o...

I was not going to watch The Net again, but yesterday I noticed something... worth discussing. Here's the thing. Obviously, The Net is an early attempt to fathom the reach of the Internet and what it means to have our information out where anyone can find it if they just know how to hack the right website or database. But, then there's the plot itself--Angela (Sandra Bullock) has her identity erased and is sent on the run. Yesterday, I compared it to The Fugitive , the film version of which came out in 1993 (and I could also compare it to 1995's Nowhere Man TV show). (On the subject of The Fugitive , by the way, two things: 1) I watched the film just last week on the plane, indirectly. That is, guy in the row in front of me was watching it, and, somewhat familiar with the film, I didn't really need to hear the dialogue again to follow it. Not as good as when I watched Groundhog Day and the earphone splitter wasn't working, so I let my friend Pablo hear the mov...