the groundhog day project

Explorers opens with Ben asleep with his TV on ( War of the Worlds is on), dreaming about flying over a Tron -ish circuitboard reality. He wakes and frantically draws a piece of his dream. Then he calls up Wolfgang to talk about it. As you do. A good dream. A good movie. You gotta share with someone, gotta talk about it. Or at least I do. This blog is some of the obvious evidence. The Junior High the boys attend here is Charles M. Jones... That is, Chuck Jones, the cartoonist. Not the name of the High School where they filmed, but chosen deliberately. Because the cartoon reference matters. This is a movie about creativity and imagination and I just found out that Wolfgang's house is not far from where I'm writing right now, and I love that.           This Island Earth is the next movie we see, after some science fiction magazines and books. But, per the movie later, the island is not isolated. Like the immigrants in yesterday's An Am...

In 2000, Fievel Mousekewitz was named an official icon for UNICEF for "promoting worldwide understanding and friendship among children." However much Roger might have dismissed the movie for being too depressing— he wrote, among other complaints, "The movie has such vague ethnic grounds... that only a few children will understand or care that the Mousekewitzes are Jewish. And few of those are likely to be entertained by such a tragic, gloomy story. —the film not only performed well—it was #2 behind Crocodile Dundee its opening weekend and #18 at the box office for all of 1986 (and it didn't come out until November)—but has also endured. A few sequels, a couple video games, a comic book, and some nice retrospective articles years after release. Regarding the latter, for example, Dave Trumbore, who credits An American Tail as the first film he saw in a theater, writes for Collider , 21 November 2016: What I once regarded as a darkly serious and sometimes sil...

I have not watched many kids films for this blog. Even when going through movie fixtures from my childhood, there were a few child-friendly films but few made primarily for kids. Today, though, we've got An American Tail and I do not recall the last time I watched it. Once upon a time I loved this movie and had all the lyrics to all the songs memorized. As I wait for the first song, I get sidetracked by the history. After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, some blamed Jews, and a series of pogroms followed. The Cossacks attack the town of Shostka because there are Jewish families there. The Mousekewitzes are just one. And, oh shit, I had forgotten that "There Are No Cats in America" begins with Papa explaining how his parents were killed. Damn, kids movie. And then other mice tell their sad tales in between joyful choruses. And, already I'm imagining the way a movie like this influenced me when I was just 10 years old. Refugees just looking for...

Waiter coded gay. Fritz a condescending ass pretending he's looking out for JC's interests. And that's where the sacrifice conversation begins. At the end of the film, JC insists she still doesn't want to make sacrifices, and yet she has already made most of the sacrifices that Fritz is talking about. She has a kid, has a house to look after, has a growing business. I don't remember if we see them, but she's got to have employees. Is she going to talk like Fritz later with her female employees? Steven doesn't like JC dreaming about a vacation home and sex with him takes seconds and he calls it incredible when she is clearly not at all satisfied. Feminism in the 80s still loves capitalism. JC's problem, Baby Boom would have us believe, is not her work ethic, even though 70-80 work hours a week will not fit with having a child. And JC is not satisfied with Vermont. Hughes rejects JC ostensibly because she has a child (but really because she bro...

Opening narration: 53% of the American workforce is female. Three generations of women that turned 1,000 years of tradition on its ear. As little girls they were told to grow up and marry doctors and lawyers. Instead they grew up and became doctors and lawyers. They moved out of the "pink ghetto" and into the executive suite. Sociologists say the new working woman is a phenomenon of our time. Take JC Wiatt, for example. Graduated first in her class at Yale, got her MBA at Harvard. Has a corner office at the corner of 58th and Park. She works five to nine, makes six figures a year, and they call her the Tiger Lady. Married to her job, she lives with an investment banker married to his. They collect African art, co-own their co-op and have separate but equal IRA accounts. One would take it for granted that a woman like this has it all. One must never take anything for granted. Of course the narrator will not return; it's one of those openings. Plus, you know, the usual b...

Under the opening titles, as Patti LaBelle sings "Something Special" we see different women in different outfits, in blocks that never show the whole person. Parts of women, parts of outfits, earrings, eye makeup, and yesterday (because I had completely forgotten the acting class angle of Outrageous Fortune , I thought for a moment this was going to be about women working in fashion. But no. Cut to theatrical fencing class and Lauren is, to put it mildly, overeager. And we learn that her ambition is to play Hamlet. Cut to dance class. A gay guy who asks her out "to do some serious research" and she turns him down. Cut to Lauren and friend talking about not dating actors. They find the flyer for Korzenowski's workshop. Cut to Lauren outside her parents house in need of money. And I find myself confused because she could just do her own production of Hamlet with the $5000 her father gives her. And, Lauren's idea that Sandy can't go into an audition for...

It's strange how some movies can be entirely familiar after decades, and some that were familiar once have slinked away out of my head. A few movies ago, I realized that somehow I had conflated Big Business and Outrageous Fortune as one big movie involving, I guess, two pairs of mismatched twins who also share a man and get involved with some sort of organized crime (I still can't quite recall what happens later in this film) and end up in the Mexican desert. Instead there's a genius acting instructor--Stanislav Korzenowski--and just two women (only one of them played by Bette Midler) who both audition for his workshop. And, I'm reminded of when I went to a Meisner workshop a couple years ago with my friend Christi from D&D, and it was fun but I had issues. For one, how the teacher described the way one plays as a child, becoming the thing you are playing at being, was exactly what I meant when I used the word "pretend" which was a semantic argumen...

The thing about Baby is, she is already is someone who wants to make the world a better place. Maybe despite her parents—it's a little presumptuous to think they aren't all for her plans—she wants to join the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps had only recently begun. The first group of volunteers started training in June 1961. She references monks burning themselves in protest—Thich Quang Duc famously did so June 11 1963. Right before the film starts. And, she "wants to send her leftover pot roast to Southeast Asia" (sort of) and she plans to major in "Economics of Underdeveloped Countries"— (I find it odd that Neil tells her that he is "going to Mississippi with a couple of busboys, freedom ride." With a different tone, it could be a sarcastic response to her Peace Corps plan, like he doesn’t buy that a rich Jewish girl like her would deign to do that. Except, the actor playing Neil doesn’t say it that way. He says it like he means it. His reference ...

I want to say coincidence, but I'm guessing there's something more involved than just chance. But, anyway, weird coincidence that Dirty Dancing came out just a month after Adventures in Babysitting and they both* begin with The Ronettes' "Be My Baby". (* This isn’t true but for whatever reason “Be My Baby” sounded just like “ Then He Kissed Me ” in my head and then even as I realized the mistake I was already writing.) Which at least distracted me momentarily-- trying to see if there was a producer or someone in the music department that worked on both these films --from the voiceover narration that lasts all of three sentences. The worst kind of narration, the useless opener because someone involved, probably the director, couldn't think how to establish place and time succinctly. That was the summer of 1963, when everybody called me "Baby" and it didn't occur to me to mind. That was before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatle...

Jericho "Action" Jackson is a Cowboy Cop (on TV Tropes ). Captain Armbruster is Da Chief . Except neither of them really are. See the thing is, however poorly Action Jackson is executed, it seems to be trying to be something more interesting than just another rulebreaking-cop movie. He's a loose cannon, but DAMMIT he's the best we have! That's the Cowboy Cop . Furthermore: Sure, our society may be built upon rules and procedures, but they usually make for bad television. Sometimes you have to bend the rules, rough up the suspects, moon your supervisors and shred the Constitution to get stuff done. Jackson very much used to be that. As the two officers in that too-long cold open play him up as a bogeyman for criminals: Kornblau: Yeah, some say he didn't even have a mother. That some researchers created him to be the first man to walk on the moon without a space suit.  Lack: Mm-hmm.  Kornblau: Others says his mother was molested by Bigfoot, and...

I am breaking with the rules today. Instead of a fixture of my childhood as the movies have been for the last "year" of the blog. When I was figuring out where to stop the childhood deconstruction process, drifting out of my actual, you know, childhood, I discovered a few movies I had inadvertently never put on my list (And there are surely others. Still forgotten.) and figured out which of the ones still ahead on the list needed to be gotten to. Put the list together, decided on a whim to jump ahead to the end and work backward, and, depending on how this movie turns out today--it has a 5.5 on IMDb--(un)fortunately, I asked Sarah for suggestions for 80s movies I might've missed. Not that my deconstruction was entirely about the 80s; I mean I began with 1968's Blackbeard's Ghost and worked forward from there (mostly in release order, but mistakes were made) and I made it to 1992/1993's Strictly Ballroom and am working my back to 1985 again to end the...

There's a thin line between the romantic pressuring we see in romantic comedy and stalker behavior. Riding that line is the premise of a lot of stories, from shows like Netflix's You , which pushes right over the line in its opening scene and keeps pushing, to simple moments like when Charlie says please after Harriet turns down his proposal in So I Married an Axe Murderer . The romantic comedy way is simple: if at first she says no, keep pushing, invade her space, make her realize she can't live without you by defying her to take out a restraining order. Pressed up against the baseball plot here, the romantic comedy plotline between Jake and Lynn can be taken as an extension of the main idea. Their relationship failed a few years back. The Indians' relationship with Cleveland (at least the way Mrs. Phelps sees it) also failed... well, more than a few years back. The problem is that we can see the Indians' players improving (maybe not why they're improving ...

I actually watched Major League --today's movie in my childhood deconstruction's confused final weeks--just last year. As a movies-by-minutes podcaster, I participated in a charity trivia contest, and along with UHF , Major League was the topic one of the rounds. The final round was live at a movies-by-minutes get together in Portland, Oregon in August. This year's event has been cancelled because a pandemic makes such events problematic. This year was going to be in Philadelphia. I don't think I've ever been there. Maybe next year. Meanwhile, Rachel Phelps wants to move the Cleveland Indians to Miami, so she has called for some very specific recruits for this year's team, slackers, nobodies, has-beans, weirdos. Jake Taylor is hungover in Mexico when he gets the call. His knees are shot. But, he' supposed to be a catcher. Rick Vaughn is in prison when he gets the call. Eddie Harris has to put, among other things, snot on the ball, to pit...

Opening shots are of Quigley's cowboy implements. His boot. His bedroll. His saddle. His rope. His belt and cartridges. Plus, his hands, nails short. His knife. His rifle sliding into its case.Spurs going into a bag. His pocket watch. His hat. And then the map. The setup is simple enough. We've got a cowboy on our hands traveling to a faraway land, but the piecemeal shots maybe suggest a deconstruction at play. Reminds me of, at the same time, the gearing up sequence in Rambo: First Blood Part 2 and the fictitious magical costuming in Chaplin . One of the first things Quigley does, before he's even off the ship that brought him to Australia, is, on the behalf of an old woman, hit another guy between the legs with his gun. We've got basic masculine cowboy imagery, and then a nice hit to the balls to drive home the idea that... well, either we've got a serious man on our hands here, or we've got something very much else. Next thing he does is save Cora and s...