the groundhog day project

Winter quarter starts next week, but I had to go to campus today to sort out some stuff. Ran into fellow TA Brian in the parking lot and then fellow TAs Wesley and Alex in the office. We hung out there for a bit--after getting that stuff sorted out. Then, we decided to go. See Star Wars The Force Awakens . Third time for me, of course (previously blogged: 1 2 ), second for Wesley, first for Alex and Brian (and Brian may not have even seen the previous films-- I know . That's just awful). Anyway, so we head off and we the film and get some dinner afterward. And, I told them all they could write something for this entry. Only Wesley took me up on that. His bit will come later. Meanwhile, Alex loved it and wondered aloud how he would keep it to himself until his brother saw it. Brian liked it and amusingly, had comment after I brought up my primary complaint with the film upon seeing it the third time: They've been flying together for like forty years, and Han has never fired Ch...

It's strange that Jonathan Safran Foer (Elijah Wood) is almost a cypher in his own story. He drives the plot, sure but he is not really changed by anything here... well, not very much. There is, arguably a change in that at the end of the film he not only makes a bag for someone else (Grandfather) but also empties his own bag of dirt from Trachimbrod onto his own grandfather's grave. (We don't actually see this happen, but the film cuts from the dirt in Jonathan's hand to dirt in Alex's hand at Grandfather's funeral, implying that Jonathan will let that dirt go.) He changes enough to give up an item from his collection to connect these two men. (To be fair, we have no particular reason other than presumption to think he has not given up an item before.) The emotional beats in the story belong to Alex (Eugene Hutz) and Grandfather (Boris Leskin) and Lista (Laryssa Lauret). (Considering one of the deleted scenes, in which it seems that Sammy Davis, Junior, Juni...