the groundhog day project

It's remarkable sometimes how the silliest of films can work just as well as the best of them to bring me back to long ago, you know, happier times, when I was a cute little kid without a care in the world except for, well, the second coming of Jesus, Armageddon, the apocalypse, and everything* that I've ever cared about ceasing to be. (* except for my loved ones, of course, but damn it, what about my toys? What about these movies I loved? What about books? Games? The important stuff in life.) No cares but the biggest. And, Top Secret! , in particular, plays on some of that biggest stuff. Late in the Cold War... And then I got to wondering about exactly when this film takes place. I mean, Nick's music is very Elvis. So, I paused on the Billboard Top 40. Nick Rivers has #1 #2, & #4, with "Skeet Surfin'", "Skeetin' USA" and "Skeet City", respectively. He also has #3 in a duet with Tammy Wynette on "You're Skeetin' He...

I made the mistake--and, in this case, it was a mistake [it made hating this thing even easier]--of reading Roger Ebert's review of The Natural before I pressed play on the film tonight. I remember this film as a weird sort of film noir that somehow involves a baseball player. And, it opens now with Robert Redford (who we will find out later is playing a character called Roy Hobbs) waiting for and then getting on a train, not useful dialogue, not characterization effort, just Redford. CUT TO: flashback montage, Roy as a boy learns to play baseball while his father says some lines that someone thought were philosophical when they wrote them... A storm. Montage of sports pennants in the flash of the lightning. Then the tree out back gets struck, Roy carves a bat out of its trunk and I get something Roger says. Roger explains: As for the baseball, the movie isn't even subtle. When a team is losing, it makes Little League errors. When it's winning, the hits are so accurat...

Joan Wilder's life isn't normally like her books. Great romance. Adventure. Life and death. Revenge. She lives alone with her cat (named Romeo), drinks alcohol from the little bottles you might have gotten on a plane back in '84. Romancing the Stone begins as she finishes writing her latest romance novel. And the premise of the film, in case you're some unfortunate millennial who has never heard of it, is simple--Joan's brother in law is murdered in Colombia, but not before getting a treasure map in the mail for Joan (Kathleen Turner). Then Elaine (Mary Ellen Trainor), Joan's sister is abducted and Joan heads for Colombia, hooks up with Jack Colton (Michael Douglas), who coincidentally resembles the shadowy Jesse from her novels--think cowboy with a modern twist. The film is basically Joan's fantasy coming true. And, for the audience, it's a nice adventure fantasy as well. And, I only just learned that this was screenwriter Diane Thomas' only fini...