the groundhog day project

So, it comes down to this: what did I get from Grease 2 at six years old? And from all those many times watching it again over the next decade or more. I've already noted that 1982 may have been when I started to love musicals--three of them in my list of eight films for that year in this deconstruction of my childhood experience with movies. But, what else was there? For that matter, how do all these movies start to formulate together an explicit version of who I might be in the future? I'm looking at the list so far and wondering just how many of these movies suggest the very thing I've suggested is wrong with the Grease films--that you need to change who you are to get with the people you want. From Arthur to The Fox and the Hound , from Meatballs to Blackbeard's Ghost , so many of these movies involve people either having to change who they are to be accepted, that the world demands you to be one way, and you better be that way or you will be shunned, you will ...

Today it is 1957. Watching I Was a Teenage Werewolf .. Was reading the other day about how this movie was a bit controversial when it came out (not sure where I read that so I cannot quote anything), and right away it starts in with a fistfight that escalates to Tony (Michael Landon) grabbing a shovel. The cops show and Tony seems a lot like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause two years earlier; he wants to fight everybody. Some classic 50s stuff going on when Tony comes to take Arlene (Yvonne Lime) out and her father has a talk with him. The party they go to is odd--a little bit beat , a little bit Elvis. Vic (Ken Miller) is more interested in playing his bongos than dancing with Pearl (Cynthia Chenault) (who, for some reason is dressed like a clown because she thought it was a costume party). A few pranks happen until Tony overreacts to one and punches Vic. Tony sees a doctor (Whit Bissell) because, well, his anger issues. Doctor drugs him and experiments on him because of his ...

Just one more note about her : though it's set in the near future, there is a certain style about the film, especially in the clothing, that makes it seem more like the 1950s. And, that got me to thinking about the costumes in Groundhog Day . Now, this isn't a film you'd necessarily think about having costumes. But, since the film is set on the same day over and over, I'm sure the costume department may have had several of each of Phil's shirts and ties, and Rita's blouse and vest and maybe even something like Doris' waitress outfit. A lot of the stuff with extras outside, like the Ned Ryerson bit, would have been filmed each version all in one day so costumes for the extras wouldn't have mattered much. Still, notable extras, like the ones I've called Pimp and Pimp's Boyfriend (also Earmuffs and Outdoor Yellow Hat Guy), also show up at Gobbler's Knob in the same outfits, so there was some consistency even with sequences that were not filmed...