the groundhog day project

I turned thirteen the year after Josh did. He got the big city fantasy, the cool job (though inside two months it's feeling less cool by the time he leaves), the girlfriend who (eventually) plays along with his childish ways, the great apartment with the high ceilings and open spaces (I wanted Josh's apartment so much when I would grow up. I mean, how could I not think about the things I would want as a grown up when I'm watching this movie. I've said in this blog time and time again before that when I was younger I didn't think too seriously about the future, because, you know, late - Cold - War World War III fears coupled with cult leanings into the end of the world meant I was bombarded regularly by the idea that I would never actually have to adult. Certainly wouldn't grow up to have some corporate job, fun or not. And, I was a sad, overweight, late - bloomer, so the idea of a girlfriend who put up with my shit or not -- that was a bigger fantasy than most...

There is a detail I love in Josh's carnival ride tragedy: though he is distraught at being too short to ride, Cynthia, the girl he has a crush on (who is there with another boy... who drives ), immediately says the height rule is stupid. She stand s up for Josh even as he is already too stuck in his own short - person head to notice. He Charlie Brown walks through the carnival and finds himself in front of that fateful Zoltar machine. And our setup is complete. He is a kid with chores, and a crush on a girl, and when he dares something scary -- and I went on a ride like the loop one he tries at a carnival once, and it was pretty frightening -- and gets close to that crush in line, everything falls apart. Hi s whole world comes apart, really. And, then gets twisted by magic into something else entirely. And, at the other end of the film, the trick is that it is not rejection that pushes him to change back, but something like the opposite. Billy brings him the location of the...

Nathan Steinmetz (2016), writing for Bloody Disgusting , breaks down the original Halloween simply: Halloween , the original Halloween , isn't about a lineage of evil, or psychic kids, or Druid cults, or live streamed haunted houses or even Busta Rhymes. Halloween is about Michael Myers and, perhaps most importantly, the concepts of fear and responsibility. It's about The Boogeyman. A specter of judgment and fear designed to scare children into behaving and punish those who don't. I think I can get behind that. Like the horror film version of Bentham's panopticon. Kids, don't go out at night and get up to no good things like smoking pot and having premarital sex, or a mindless killer just might find you, strangle you, slit your throat, or pin you to a kitchen cabinet with a knife, then leave you as part of a tableau of warning ... I've got so many different articles and blog entries, even a couple books on Google Books, open on my phone, plus a binder o...