the groundhog day project

Before I get into the topic for today, the first recap of the new iteration of this blog: (By the way, here are links to all six recaps of the first year—the Groundhog Day year: Day 62 – for your information Day 121 – how else could you know so much? Day 180 – it would be great to stay for some of the other events Day 240 – it’s your choice. so what’s it gonna be? Day 300 – round and round and round we go Day 363 – and you’d be an expert ) Phase Two of this blog began with a week of The Ring . Day 1 (366) – seven days established the new format for the blog while, in trying to generally review The Ring I got stuck on the “message” of the movie regarding television. That topic continued into Day 2 (367) – i hate television and into Day 3 (368) – how far down do you think it goes? Then, I got into the “anti-romanticization” (though I didn’t coin that term yet) of the small town in Day 4 (369) – everything sheltered, protected and comfortable . Day 5 (370) – she just wanted...

Before I get to the topic I intended for this, the seventh day of The Blair Witch Project , there’s something a detail I’ve left behind. When Heather, Josh and Mike find the “cemetery” with the seven rock piles, Heather mentions a story Mary Brown told them about a pile of rocks. We were not privy to said story. As Heather explains in her journal in the Dossier , “I cannot FUCKING remember what she said about that because I was freaking out trying to keep the interview to two mags” (p. 161). Given the brief (but important ) bit we get in the movie with Mary Brown, it’s hard to believe that the interview came anywhere close to two magazines (mags). The CP-16mm took 400 foot magazines and 400 feet is 16 minutes, so that would mean Heather would have been trying to keep the Mary Brown interview shorter than 32 minutes. We only see Mary Brown for maybe 1-2 minutes total (I haven’t timed it). Gotta wonder, in the reality of the film, what else they got from Mary Brown. Anyway, a potential ...

There are two things that need be covered today, and they will connect at least in part, but mostly they may up tangentially passing each other in the night. They are an old standby—feminism, sexism , gender roles , whatever you want to label it for simplicity’s sake—and something relatively (I covered, somewhat, the same area two weeks ago, while writing about The Ring Two ) new—the sequel and what it does to the original. I watched Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 last night after finishing yesterday’s entry . As it got going, I actually thought it was interesting and I wondered why I had horrible memories of watching it before. Then, it got further in, and I knew why. The movie is a mess. GoodBadFlicks makes a pretty good argument that the film should have been far better than it is; you can see his video here: (Or click here because that video embedding doesn't seem to be working.) The movie was supposed to be something... else, for sure. But, it probably still wo...

The shot also suggests the “immediacy” of video with the shakiness of the camerawork, which implies that someone has picked up the camera spontaneously, creating or reinforcing the sense of liveness... (Tryon, 2009, p. 43) The concept of the found footage film is fairly simple: someone—someone real, mind you—filmed the events in question, and now we are privy to that footage. With the found footage horror film, in particular, we can guess someone has probably died. The opening titlecard for The Blair Witch Project informs us that these three students disappeared. Paranormal Activity gives us a similar titlecard at the end, informing us that Micah’s body was found but Katie disappeared. The text mimics that we might see at the beginning or end of an actual documentary, which (minus selective editing) is supposed to present objective reality. (By the way, my daughter Saer apparently thought this movie was real, still. She has just claimed that I ruined her childhood by showing her...

Or , maybe I won’t get to found footage films just yet. There is still more to say about how The Blair Witch Project overflows its own boundaries, not just to the Dossier but to a couple other (fake) documentaries. Before I get to them (and as the film, primary, plays on the TV), a little behind-the-scenes information: I’ve already written about the website— blairwitch.com —at least in passing. The website was conceived along with the film; it wasn’t something added after the fact. Artisan did update the website after buying the distribution rights to the film (Owczarski, 2007; McDowell, 2001; Telotte, 2001). But the site was already there. In fact, Myrick and Sanchez conceived of the whole fake documentary setup from the beginning, when they were in film school back in 1992. Myrick explains: The basic idea was those old documentaries; those old “In Search Of” episodes that came on in the ‘70s. We just watched those shows as kids and it really freaked us out. And so we thought it...

”Anybody worth their salt around here knows this area has been haunted by that old woman for years.” – Bob Griffin VanDerWerff (2014) writes: “What’s hard to remember now about Blair Witch … is just how much of the story about the film was all of the material surrounding the film.” VanDerWerff goes on to suggest, “The idea of Blair Witch , as it turned out, was ultimately far scarier than anything the film could sell.” That might be better phrased, given VanDerWerff’s apparent point, as, the idea of the Blair Witch —the idea of the Blair Witch was bigger than the film itself, bigger than the Dossier I referenced yesterday , bigger than the promotional website. The question then: who was the Blair Witch and what goes into her legend? Let’s piece together the details: The basics (from page 101 of the Dossier ): February 1785 Several Children accuse Elly Kedward of luring them into her home to draw blood from them [“with some pinpricks” according to a video in the 1970s partial...

Because I wrote yesterday ‘s entry before watching The Blair Witch Project last night, by the campfire, in the dark, in the woods, I didn’t get to write about the experience, watching the movie like that. It was as you might expect—though not as scary for me as it might be for a lot of people; I’ve seen the movie numerous times before and seen more horror films than I can even remember. There was one particular moment, though—when Heather and Josh and Mike hear children’s voices outside their tent and then whatever’s outside the tent—clever rednecks, the witch, those children—starts beating on the sides of the tent... it occurred to me, sitting maybe 10 yards from the tent in which I had slept the night before and would be sleeping in again soon thereafter, and you know, regardless of supernatural stuff, a bunch of voices outside the tent would be pretty freaky. Someone attacks the outside of my tent when I’m sleeping (or trying to sleep) inside... I’m not sure what I’d do in respon...

Three years after student filmmakers Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard disappeared in the forests of Maryland's Black Hills, law enforcement authorities finally released all of the evidence they had discovered in the case to the students' families. Among the items returned were several reels of black-and-white film and close to a dozen videocassettes that had never before been made public. (Stern, 1999, p. ix) So goes the premise behind The Blair Witch Project . I've already quoted Segal by way of Martin (2009) before regarding one of the best aspects of The Blair Witch Project --i.e. that it "relies on the mind to conjure its own demons" (p. 41). (I quoted that line regarding Ringu / The Ring , I'm pretty sure.) You don't see the witch or any other killer in the film. Hell, after the first 15 minutes or so, you don't see anybody except for Heather, Mike and Josh. The film is, weirdly, both entirely streamlined because of thi...