the groundhog day project

Started the day with Blumhouse's Truth or Dare , finishing it with The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human , after a nice game night. Will probably return to Top Secret! tomorrow. In the meantime, thoughts.... Regarding Truth or Dare , the idea works, but the execution drags a bit. Oddly, I think it would work better in a longer form, let the events--and characters--breathe a bit. And, not bother with jump scares; it's not that kind of horror film but it insists on having a few anyway. In context of the Truth or Date game going on, jump scares can literally have no affect on the plot, and do have no affect on the plot. So, they feel cheap. I imagine a Netflix miniseries instead, but the characterization and depth I imagine really wouldn't be the thing that usually comes from Blumhouse. Mating Habits , on the other hand, might end up being good. But, I am instead thinking that this week has been very strange here at the Groundhog Day Project . Jim & Andy got me h...

Perhaps it is a creature living in perfect symbiosis with a host of other creatures. Perhaps it is “merely” a machine. But in either instance, if it has intelligence, that intelligence is far different from our own. It creates out of our ecosystem a new world, whose processes and aims are utterly alien—one that works through supreme acts of mirroring, and by remaining hidden in so many other ways, all without surrendering the foundations of its otherness as it becomes what it encounters. (p. 191) That's from Annihilation , the novel. To be fair, I got it indirectly from a Master's Thesis by Audrey Peterson (2016), SUNY . Audrey writes about the entire Southern Reach trilogy (the film Annihilation is built only from the first) so I might not comment on or cite much from Peterson. Except for this, since the identity of the individual is a central idea within the film: "The women are also introduced by their function, and not by name" unlike In the film, where they s...

After talking about names , we need to move on to something more about identity in Annihilation . HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. Annihilation , which structurally echoes films like Event Horizon or The Arrival , or an under appreciated tv show from a few years ago called The River , or most any explorer adventure story. It harkens back even to Conrad's Heart of Darkness , except Kurtz and Marlow are on the same trip into the jungle. Or there have been many Kurtzes, including Kane (Oscar Isaac). This is a trip into the unknown taken by characters who are all dealing with loss, with grief, with the universe turned against them. And, in response, they explore because what else is there? They could wait to figure out who they are, or they could act, and hope that in action, the become someone recognizable in the mirror. The film relies on an understanding of the psychological underpinnings of depression but doesn't make much effort to explore them explicitly. Emily Yoshida at Vulture c...

In the opening scene of Annihilation , which I saw for the second time today, Lomax (Benedict Wong) asks Lena (Natalie Portman) "What do you know?" She has no real answer for him. The film cuts back to him questioning her a few times throughout, and the more she tries to explain things, the less he probably understands. The lack of conclusive answers throughout the film, though, is fundamental to appreciating it. As Elizabeth Bruenig writes in the Washington Post , the story's central drama concerns the protagonists' efforts to come to terms with something they can't, as mere humans, understand. It certainly leaves a confusing impression: It was only a few days after seeing "Annihilation" that its curious moral logic began to creep, fungus-like, across my conscience. I've begun to think that the particular character of that formless, nameless danger--its eerie, morbid bounty--makes it an excellent villain for our moment. Additionally, like many a...

I've mentioned before in this blog the sound effect I call Wilhelm's Car Horn. I'm watching This Is Us right now (the episode after the Super Bowl one--I got a little behind on tv with classes starting and then olympics stuff to watch) and they just had a Wilhelm's Car Horn. Randall is learning to drive, almost runs a STOP sign and a delivery truck swerves out of the way while honking. Try that some time. Swerve your car abruptly while honking. Even if you could manage to do both at the same time, you wouldn't. Not in the moment. This sound effect was already on my mind because I was thinking about writing about the movie I saw this morning-- Game Night --and their use of Wilhelm's Car Horn was just one of the little details that annoyed me. That movie isn't bad. The plot moves along nicely, and there are a few good laughs. But... And, here is where an interesting thought struck me. I wrote last week about Black Panther , and I said the movie "is...