the groundhog day project

Roger Ebert ends his review of Joe Versus the Volcano with a great bit: What's strongest about the movie is that it does possess a philosophy, an idea about life. The idea is the same contained in "Moonstruck": that at night, in those corners of our minds we deny by day, magical things can happen in the moon shadows. And if they can't, a) they should, and b) we should always in any event act as if they can. First a note: Roger references Moonstruck because John Patrick Shanley wrote both and directed Joe Versus the Volcano . Second, though, I love especially that last line. That we should always act as if magical things can happen is one of those ideas that so many movies put forth--from the eternal recurrence of Groundhog Day to the hyperrealism of American Psycho , from the time travel of About Time to the deliberate fantasy of Moulin Rouge . And, yes, Moonstruck . Joe Versus the Volcano takes place in a reality where miracles can happen, where desk lamps ...

Once upon a time there was a guy named Joe Who had a very lousy job... I worked office jobs in my 20s. The opening scene of Joe Versus the Volcano is amazing in its satire (and it's awesome that both Lloyd Bridges and Robert Stack (who played it relatively straight in Airplane! are in this), workers all dressed in black, trudged through a muddy parking lot, turnstile doors, a zig zag walkway, all to enter a factory that makes medical devices and leaks exhaust into the air. The lighting inside makes everyone look sickly, the hat rack doesn't even work right. It's no wonder that Joe Banks (Tom Hanks) feels like he's always sick. Effectively, he is . His job drains away his life. Or as he tells DeDe (Meg Ryan) (regarding his shoe), "I'm losing my sole."           Strictly speaking, Joe Versus the Volcano is not a bad movie. But, I'm going to end this month of bad movies with it because 1) it was one of the first movies recommended when I asked...

From the Los Angeles Times , April 9, 1967: "Hippies... many officials see them as a serious threat to today's young people." In 1963, counsellors and campers at were run off from a summer camp outside Rosman, North Carolina after "'Hate literature was distributed around [the nearby] town saying some very untrue things about the camp--that we were sex perverts, Communists and God knows what else,' [camp counselor Bruce] Grund said" (NYT, 1963). In 1964, Reverend Frederick C. Wood, Jr. stirred up controversy when he suggested that sex was a "good." "Premarital intercourse need not be 'bad' or 'dirty,' he said. 'Indeed, it can be very beautiful.' (NYT, 1964). In 1959, Leo F. Koch, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Illinois was dismissed from his position after purportedly condoning premarital sex. Koch wrote a letter to the school paper, which included this: With modern contraceptives and medi...

Any time spent with bad movies must include "Manos": The Hands of Fate . Why do they sing "Row Row Row Your Boat"? Hell, why, in Troll 2 , was that the "song I like so much" for the mother? What is this background music? It's almost poetic that the subtitles on Amazon Prime's copy of the movie are timed ahead of the bad voiceover. It's like they wanted to see if they could make the experience even worse.           Considering the technical difficulties--they couldn't record sound and could only film up to 32 seconds at a time--this film isn't that bad... Well, except for the atrocious dialogue and the bad acting.           The other couple that keeps making out and getting run off by the cops--is that going to connect to the "plot"? (It's been a while since I've watched this movie and I don't remember.)           I can't help but feel like there is some deep message to this movie. Like som...

This weekend, my daughter performed in Twelfth Night three times and had a voice recital. There were rehearsals three times a week for several weeks now and I generally sat around and worked on this blog during those (the rehearsals and the play were 30 something miles away, so it wasn't worth it to, you know, drop her off). And she's got auditions for new things coming up quite soon. For me, fall classes get started this week and I'm teaching a new class I haven't taught yet (though I have covered some of its material as a debate coach). My son's college classes for fall get going tomorrow. My older daughter's last year of her bachelor's gets going in September. My ex (with whom I share an apartment) has already returned to teaching this past week. Like most anyone, we are all so very busy. But, with the right distractions, the right amusements, I at least have figured out how to deal with the stresses of modern life... Until Trump tweets something inane o...

In 7th grade--can't remember if it was fall semester or spring semester, but 7th grade was '87 to '88--I was rereading Joe Dever's Lone Wolf books. Particularly, I was reading The Caverns of Kalte (that's the second book) again during a lull in math class... I had probably already finished my math work--I was amazing at math, would get a couple years ahead by the end of high school. And the assistant teacher, whose name was Mr. Mentell or some spelling--we called him Mr. Mental--happened to look over my shoulder when I'm at an image of a big tentacled monster. This one, I think. He asks to see my book, and doesn't give it back after class. That night, we get a call. The next day, my mother is in the principal's office with me and the vice principal... And I can't remember if Mr. Mental was in the room. But, long story short--the religious private school that this atheist attended kindergarten through twelfth grade decided that those books (which,...

I haven't watched many made-for-tv movies for this blog. ( 12:01 comes to mind as one I did watch, 12 Dates of Christmas another.), but they almost have an immediate excuse for their badness. The tv budget and, if the movie is old enough, the film quality just are not going to be anywhere near most films that were released into theaters. Mazes and Monsters has the added excuse of being based on a novel inspired by some bullshit paranoia--namely that playing Dungeons & Dragons can make you a) be a satanist, b) go crazy, c) kill yourself (or, per this movie, the worst possible option d) try LARPing). (I'll talk more about that paranoia tomorrow, maybe. Today I'm just going to enjoy the film.)           It's a bit simple (but not unrealistic) that Robbie (Tom Hanks) joins up with the Mazes and Monsters group because of the attractive girl Kate (Wendy Crewson). But, I like that immediately after playing with them the first time, we get a montage that...

Doing something different; since Mystery Science Theater 3000 actually covered Hobgoblins once (episode 908), I'm watching that. It's actually amusing when the silhouettes aren't talking, like the movie writes its own jokes, because, well, it does.           I was hoping the MST3K jokes might make the slow parts less slow. It's not really working. Mr. McCreedy showing Kevin around is still boring. And Kevin's relationship with Amy is still really strained. I'm pretty sure she hates him and wants him to be a misogynist asshole. He's a horny 80s movie guy, though he is hesitant to admit it, and he really wants to be that misogynist asshole. If only the hobgoblins had gotten near both of them at the same time, they might have had a more interesting relationship... and sex . Seriously, they apparently live together, but she is more interested in Nick, more interested in Roadrash, And calls Kevin pathetic after the guy with military training beats him ...

Hobgoblins is a good example for exploring why a bad movie is bad... Well, there can be many reasons, but this is a big one. Like the more (in)famous Troll 2 , Hobgoblins ' biggest mistake is not knowing what it wants to be... Or rather, failing entirely at being what it seems to want to be by not going far enough. Troll 2 , for example, leans toward serious sexual moments with Creedence but backs off before it goes too far. Instead, perhaps because it was made by Italians directing a bunch of Mormons, it aims at being quaint, being kid-friendly. Hobgoblins makes that same mistake. Phone sex worker magically shows up in person, but is there any sex? Nope. Amy secretly desires to be a stripper, apparently, but strips down to about the same amount of cloth you'd see in a Jane Fonda Workout take from this same decade. Sure, her lyrics are leaning toward explicit. Like that line about showing everyone she's not wearing any underwear, but then the hobgoblins turn everything t...

I'm watching a movie I've never seen before. It's called Hobgoblins . I wanted some ridiculous awfulness tonight. Starts simple enough. Old security guy at a film studio showing the ropes to a younger guy. Younger guy opens a vault he shouldn't hears some strange gurgling then... falls to his death? Off a stage? Inside the vault? What was gurgling? Did they not have the puppets that day of filming?           This thing cost only $15000, reportedly, and it shows. And, it is not apparent from the film so far what the plot is, or is going to be; this guy Kevin got hired to replace the dead guy, but then we left the studio lot to meet some of Kevin's friends--his girlfriend Amy (who seems more into Nick than Kevin), Nick who's in the military, Nick's girlfriend Daphne, and the (coded) gay friend Kyle. Kyle called a (G-rated) phone sex line for some reason, and now Nick is "teaching" Kevin how fight, and the music is all dramatic and now the van...

Marco Rubio just referred to Trump's strategy for Afghanistan, laid out in great detail in an amazing speech this evening as "good" strategy and an "excellent" speech. Which would be fine except I was lying about the great detail and the speech being amazing. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was a TelePrompTer speech so it had complete sentences and it made relative sense, but it was half Trump mansplaining the existence of ISIS, telling the same tired story about how Obama pulled out of Afghanistan too early and that's why ISIS exists, and then being really vague about what he's going to do about it. More troops. More war. No end. Last week it was nuclear war with North Korea, not a land war in Asia, next he's going to go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line. I kid because I'm tired and angry. This shit is distracting me from my movie tonight... Hell, it's making me want to draw direct comparisons. Hapless Americans pushing the...

It's the first half of Ishtar that is the problem. If you can just work your way through that, it gets better. The whole torture of that first hour, the awfulness of Rogers and Clarke's songs, their absolute lack of upward career trajectory--it even gets paid off when Clarke breaks down in the desert and asks, "What have I done with my life, Lyle?" And Ebert calls the desert sequence pointless. The desert sequence is the point. It's the answer to the question of the first half... Specifically, look at where the movie begins and ends. The same song in both places. Telling the truth can be dangerous business; Honest and popular don't go hand in hand. If you admit that you play the accordion, No one will hire you in a rock 'n' roll band. But we can sing our hearts out. And, if we're lucky, then no neighbors complain. Because life is the way we audition for God. Let us pray that we all get the job. It's trite. It's simplistic. But, it'...

The only time I saw Ishtar from beginning to end was on a plane. We were flying to England, I think [My sister tells me it was a trip to Hawaii.]. The movie felt longer than the flight. But, I have very little memory of the content from then. I've seen scattered moments from the film in the intervening years, but I have never sat down to watch the whole thing again. Supposedly, it's one of the worst films ever made; that's a superlative I should have sought out before now. Yet, here I am.           Twenty-two minutes before we get to the desert. I remembered none of that from seeing this before. And now, it feels like a different movie... And, I'm reminded of Spies Like Us , which also had a couple losers getting inadvertently involved in international affairs. Except, with better comedy, and, considering the timing ( Spies Likes Us came out in 1985, Ishtar in 1987), Spies Like Us made for a better twist on the tail end of the Cold War... Except I'm n...

Really, it is simple to understand part of it. Just because you're a bankable actor, or a proven director (having graduated from music videos to feature films), doesn't mean that your life is guaranteed, that you will always have money. Sometimes, you have to make bad movies, or at least not so great movies, to stay alive, and for your career to stay alive. Michael Caine, for example, quite famously said of Jaws: The Revenge , "I have never seen it... but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific." Not every actor can make $20 million a film, and even if they can, you cannot live on that forever if you plan to stay in the limelight. You gotta keep making movies to be able to keep making movies. And, they can't all be the greatest film ever, they can't all be Oscar-caliber, they can't all be blockbusters. For example, it's hard to find the original source for this (it's quoted all over the Inte...