the groundhog day project

1. I saw Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets today, and while it had some awesome visuals, the overall plot was fairly standard fantasy fare. Entertaining, sure. But, nowhere as original or as memorable as, say, The Fifth Element . 2. While I have ended my obsessive, extended time with Sing Street , I don't plan to return to the dystopian films to finish out the month. Instead, I think I'm just going to go with whatever comes up. My summer classes are over and I've got time. 3. Despite that image. I'm not sure I want to write about Valerian , really. In fact, the links to Rogue One yesterday got me to thinking more generally about films. Like, what do I want from them> What do I expect from them? Why do I embrace them such that I could, in Fever Pitch -style, outline my life according to the movies I saw at certain times-- Cliffhanger on our senior trip to Maui; Say Anything (not the first time I'd seen it) in a motel in Los Angeles with my then-...

(A note before this gets perhaps a little philosophical... Was it my sister Brooke who once commented in regards to an early Groundhog Day Project entry that I had a self-help book in me? I've toyed with writing a sort of self-helpy, memoiry book out of that first year of the blog. I even wrote a good chunk of what might have been the first chapter last fall. But, I don't know if I believe it anymore, myself--that there's a self-help book in me. Or maybe I don't want there to be... That wasn't the note. The note is this: I didn't really plan out this month of feminist and/or female-centric films. I immediately had an idea of a few movies I had to include-- Thelma & Louise , 9 to 5 , 10 Things I Hate about You --for a little obviousness and a little variety. And, I wasn't sure what movie should come last, like the coda to the rest. What movie would tie things together before I returned to Groundhog Day again for a day then moved onto some new month I ...

Maybe Chris McCandless is insane. I mean, despite everything I said yesterday . Maybe we need to label it "insane" when someone can see the cracks in the veneer and the cracks in the facade of the world he or she has been born into and raised up through and in which he or she is expected to find a career and work and procreate and pop out another generation to do the same thing... ad infinitum. We've got to label that "insane" because what else are we going to do? Listen? See what he or she has got to say and risk seeing the faultlines ourselves? No. Fuck that. Watch your television, binge watch your Netflix and your Hulu and Amazon Prime , glue yourself to Instagram and Twitter and Facebook , check out of the real world except for (or maybe even during) those hours you are expected at your desk or the checkout counter or the garage or wherever the fuck it is that you work. If it gets to be too much, there's alcohol and medication and more of that telev...