the groundhog day project

I turned thirteen the year after Josh did. He got the big city fantasy, the cool job (though inside two months it's feeling less cool by the time he leaves), the girlfriend who (eventually) plays along with his childish ways, the great apartment with the high ceilings and open spaces (I wanted Josh's apartment so much when I would grow up. I mean, how could I not think about the things I would want as a grown up when I'm watching this movie. I've said in this blog time and time again before that when I was younger I didn't think too seriously about the future, because, you know, late - Cold - War World War III fears coupled with cult leanings into the end of the world meant I was bombarded regularly by the idea that I would never actually have to adult. Certainly wouldn't grow up to have some corporate job, fun or not. And, I was a sad, overweight, late - bloomer, so the idea of a girlfriend who put up with my shit or not -- that was a bigger fantasy than most...

Backing away from the serious angle, I must admit, I don't really understand Reverend Whirley's plan. Teaming up with the pornographer so they can keep their dispute constant and both profit off of it is actually an interesting plan. Except, that is not the Reverend's plan. That is what it seems like his plan is, and what the pornographer thinks the plan is, but then, no the police commissioner is in on whatever it going on as well, and they're going to kill the pornographer because... reasons. Seriously, what does killing Jerry Caesar get the reverend? Bait Magazine will likely still continue. It's been around for 25 years, so it's most definitely a corporate entity far bigger than Caesar. And, there are other, similar magazines out there; will the reverend kill each one of those magazines' owners as well? Is this going to be an overt, and even publicly acknowledged, war on smut, as it were? And, if so... What is the purpose of the P.A.G.A.N situatio...

To continue somewhere before I left off, I was not sent off to boarding school like Morgan. I just had private school, which meant very few friends in my neighborhood, and limited interaction with my friends outside of school, which limited my social life, I'm sure. Or maybe my introversion has other sources and it is just easy to blame the religious environment in which I grew up, and which isolated me from the larger world for a while. I definitely blame that upbringing for my attachment to film. I mean, why wouldn't I envelop myself in fiction as much as fucking possible when I'm being told on a regular basis that the world is ending? But then, I'm trying to come up with a comedic way to talk about the differing politics of my parents and me, even my oldest siblings and me. But, there's a pandemic and rioting and I am inclined to get into a serious rant instead... Or to focus entirely on the film today to avoid all that. As if that's possible. ...

Stand By Me still hits, emotionally. Even right off, the score is not particularly powerful, certainly not famous, but I recognize it immediately, and I know who Christopher Chambers is in that newspaper headline. I didn't know that first time I saw this movie what that headline was about. And, I also didn't realize that Castle Rock shouldn't be in Oregon, but I guess when they were adapting the novella, the only other marker of geography was Portland and Portland, Oregon was more well known than Portland, Maine. I didn't know Castle Rock at all. (Though it is part of The Dead Zone , which had already had a film version, I wouldn't see any of that movie until one night in a bed and breakfast in Dublin, Ireland in 1987. I wouldn't get to reading stories like "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut", "The Sun Dog", "It Grows on You", Cujo , The Dark Half , or Needful Things until at least a year or two later. That last one I would read on our...

I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch and write about Highlander another time. I felt I had little to say that wouldn't take me past some breaking point where I might have to obsess, you know, build a blog or a movies-by-minutes podcast around it, dig into each and every detail. I wanted to write more about White Nights the other day, but a) I got to that movie on the 1st of the month and on the 2nd I return to Groundhog Day , 2) it would be awkward (at least in my head) to write about White Nights , step away from it, and then come right back to it after a day away, and d) what I wanted to say about it had to do with the present; I mean, White Nights is okay, but it ain't a great film, but there was something about the dancing, especially some of the stuff Baryshnikov was doing in that cold open, serious strength moves that I was a little envious of because I'm sitting here by my couch, overweight, drinking an adult beverage and lamenting that I can't do th...

For a movie that hinges on some rather exciting sequences, Iron Eagle starts out with some really slow, boringly scored footage of jets flying. Like we were all going to get off just seeing jets flying... which maybe we were in 1986. I know there were these books in our school library that were basically just visual and technical guides to military vehicles and it was like pro-America propaganda and war porn wrapped up in a series of... I guess they were Time Life books, but I was never as into them as a couple friends of mine were. But, give me a good action movie with Americans taking on Communists or Arabs for, you know, whatever reason, and surely I cheered like anyone else did in the theater. Iron Eagle was, of course, one of a string of jingoistic action movies in the 80s that offered an extra bit of fun for a kid--the protagonist was not some stuffy adult, was not some guy who follows all the rules (And, how was it so fucking common for protagonists in so many 80s films,...

It's weird that a film that wasn't very kid friendly and was so tied into the Cold War was something I liked. Even when I saw it the first time in the theater. The movie: White Nights . In my "movie life" list, I've had to jump ahead. The next five movies on the list were films I have already written about in this blog: Silverado 692 The Legend of Billie Jean 752 753 Real Genius 736 Better Off Dead... 772 773 Commando 530 531 532 533 534 535 536 I mean, it starts with a dance number, and ballet not musical, which by 1985 I'd not had much experience with musicals, but I would soon come to love them. And, honestly, watching this dance opening today, it is awesome. Mikhail Baryshnikov is great. And, now for the first time I look up what that show was. Le Jeune Homme et La Mort , about a man driven to death by his faithless lover. Which that one scene of it conveyed so well I'm wondering what else might be involved in the plot. ...

I wrote about Footloose --my first film for 1984 in this childhood deconstruction--once before in this blog. I used it to begin my Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon -inspired month back in February 2016. And, speaking of tying things together--the title of that entry, taking its title from a line from the film, was " all of our lives are ties up with each other "--the film begins with random pairs of feet dancing to the titular Kenny Loggins tune. No characters, no faces. It's deliberately universalizing in its fun. Those feet could be anybody, any of us. And then, there's the preaching, and then high school girls being bad (and doing dangerous things; at least Ariel (Lori Singer) risk serious injury, anyway). I wrote before several attempts to link the characters to The Tempest through the name Ariel. I didn't write much about religion, but religion is all over this film. From Reverend Moore's (John Lithgow) opening sermon to the oppressive atmosphere all over the...

I have seen parts of Halloween [6]: The Curse of Michael Myers many, many times. I worked in a movie theater when this thing was out. (I must interrupt this introduction to point out the lazy screenwriting and/or direction in having the doctor call her “Jamie Lloyd” when telling her to push. We’ll figure out who she is soon enough.) I saw parts of this movie—especially the beginning and ending—a few times a day when I was working, which was a few days a week. (Not two minutes later, call her Jamie again, you know, just in case the audience doesn’t get it. It might actually play better if we have to figure this crap out for ourselves.) I believe I said before that Halloween 4 , 5 and [6] work together pretty well. The thorn setup, while certainly not what the audience wanted , makes retrospective sense. Michael tensed up a the beginning of 4 when his niece (which we can assume he didn’t know about previously) was mentioned... more on the cult stuff as it comes up in this film. ...