the groundhog day project

Something interesting about yesterday's movie-- Can't Buy Me Love --and today's-- Lucas --that many people wouldn't notice is the opening shot. Can't Buy Me Love , you might remember, starts with Ronald on his riding mower, except not quite. It actually begins with a shot of cactus in the foreground, a little bit of sky above, then Ronald comes into view in that gap between the cacti. (There's a nice echo in that the movie also ends with Ronald on his mower, of course.) And, this movie begins with a closeup on a bug. The title character (Corey Haim) is fascinated by insects, of course. And, insects will be important at a couple points later in the film. But, also, these visuals make for some simple metaphors--Ronald (and his friends as well) is like cactus; other (more popular) people don't want to get close to him or be around him. Similarly, Lucas is an insect--most people just don't want to be around him. (Hell, his nickname is Leukoplakia, which ...

A subversive eye-candy explosion of Clueless, Heathers and Carrie gleefully detonated by sex bomb Rose McGowan. That is Crackle 's description for Jawbreaker . If you don't know the movie, imagine if the spiritual successor to Heathers had seen The Craft a few too many times but didn't like witchcraft, and just couldn't be bothered to be audience friendly enough to make Mean Girls . The Heathers, the Plastics, the Debbies (bonus points if you get that reference)--here, the Flawless Four. We begin with a little voiceover--gotta have some voiceover because the audience needs things spelled out--then it's the morning of the birthday of the nice one of the Flawless Four--Liz (Charlotte Roldan). The other three, disguised with masks and hoodies staged a kidnapping to surprise her. The titular piece of candy in her mouth and some duct tape over it and when they go to open the trunk of the car (oh, they also tied her up and stashed her in the trunk), turns out she;s...

Take Heathers as a metaphor instead of a dark comedy (or rather both) for the moment. In context, the deaths are real, but the point is not about life or death, not literally. Think in adolescent/teeanger terms, instead. This is about that life or death. Veronica used to be friends with Betty, still sort of is, but now she's with the Heathers, and that limits access. High school cliques, when they are clearly drawn--i.e. especially the cinematic incarnations of high school cliques--don't mix well. Watch that bit in... it's either 10 Things I Hate about You or The Faculty --or maybe both--where the cliques are spelled out in front of the school, and each one has its own space apart from the others, and it's all neat and discrete. The population of the school seems a little small, of course, with a singular popular girl clique, or a singular jock clique, or a singular stoner clique, but if movies dealt with public school student numbers realistically, there would not b...