the groundhog day project

Jim & Andy is entirely real. There is some debate. You probably haven't seen the movie so you'll have to trust me on this. Reviews mention it. There's at least a couple different Reddit threads about the possibility. Whether the in character bits are staged for this documentary or did Jim Carrey really remain in character so such a deliberately obnoxious degree two decades ago and we're only just hearing about it now--this is a question people have. In his review at rogerebert.com , Brian Tallerico puts it like this: Reportedly, Universal then demanded that the footage be buried because they were worried Carrey would "come off as an asshole." They had reason to be concerned. Or did they? It will vary as to exactly when, but there will likely come a moment for each of you when you question exactly how much of "Jim and Andy" is 100% accurate. Did Carrey stay in character constantly, or just in these bits, filmed by Andy's ex and writing part...

Call this PART II of my Oscar predictions . Groundhog Day playing again, but I probably won't mention it again today. First up: Adapted Screenplay-- Call Me By Your Name The Disaster Artist Logan Molly's Game Mudbound --should go to Call Me By Your Name . It's the only Best Picture nominee here. Plus, James Ivory has been winning this one like it's a lifetime achievement award. Long shot goes to cowriter (and director) Dee Rees for Mudbound because the Academy might want to give that film something and this might be the only place it can. Original Screenplay-- The Big Sick Get Out Lady Bird The Shape of Water Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri --is an interesting contest because any of these could win. Really, it's between The Big Sick , Get Out , and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri , but that doesn't narrow it down much. The Writers Guild gave this to Get Out , as did Critics Choice, but the Golden Globes' single screenplay cate...

What's the point of Kiss Me Goodbye ? I mean, sure, it's entertaining. Sure, it deals (quite shallowly) in themes of love and loss and moving on-- The first thing we hear in the film is the song "But It's a Nice Dream" which includes the following lyrics: We'll go away Make love all day You'll never stay But it's a nice dream Just me for you Our whole life through It won't come true But it's a nice dream And... I'm sorry that it went so fast Our future has become our past Too good we couldn't last And our first images of Jolly are flashbacks and his painting, which is him from behind, looking over his shoulder. And, something I never got as a kid is that Jolly it just there to help Kay move on. As a kid, I always thought he showed up simply because she moved back into their townhouse, and the timing with her upcoming wedding was a coincidence. I probably figured out otherwise somewhere since, but I remember the film being more ...

Roger Moore died today. Last night, a bunch of people died in Manchester. I'd rather think about the former than the latter. So, I'm watching For Your Eyes Only . I grew up on this movie. Roger Moore was my James Bond. This one, Octopussy , A View to a Kill --I've seen these movies far too many times considering I never made a deliberate effort to watch them repeatedly (as I obviously have with other films). For Your Eyes Only , especially. It was on one of those first VHS tapes my family had. It was one of the movies we watched regularly. It has been a while since I last watched it, though. This very 80s (or really, 70s) music as Bond goes after Blofeld (who I never really had much context for when I was a kid and we'd watch this; he was just some bald guy who randomly tried to kill Bond and then Bond murdered him, and that alone is also so very 80s. Then the music video opening credits with vaguely naked women dancing in silhouette. (Visuals that meant very differen...

I watched Beginners for this blog before . It was during my ""six degrees of Kevin Bacon" month. It was one link in a chain of connected films... But, as per the usual line here, every movie is such a link, and the chain just keeps getting longer. The movie begins quietly enough, without much pretense. Oliver (Ewan McGregor) cleaning up after--as it will turn out--his father Hal (Christopher Plummer) has died. No voiceover at first. Though there will be plenty more later. Good voiceover, by the way. I made that point before. Like in Mills' more recent 20th Century Women , the voiceover and the cutaways offer "real characterization instead of simple information we could better receive another way" (which is how I put it last February). (It's been a while since I saw his Thumbsucker but I think it did something similar as well.) Then fireworks after the cleaning. Then Oliver talks to the dog, gives him a tour of his apartment and whatnot. Then ...

Something that bothers me less the more I watch High Fidelity : that Laura's father dies as a deus ex machina third-act turnaround for Rob and Laura. I mean, in terms of story structure, it is a cheap trick, an easy out. Make Laura too tired to keep rejecting Rob and Rob doesn't really have to reform himself, he just has to sorta imply that he might want to. He is our narrator, after all, so we're on his side. Whether we're on his side or not. I've complained previously about Laura's father's death being such an easy out but, here's my thing today: this isn't a story about Laura's father dying. We don't even know how he died. [Barry's invented song later 'The Night Laura's Daddy Died' implies he had angina.[Also, Rob listens to a voicemail from Laura's mother about her father's angina, but I somehow didn't hear that during many viewings.]] This isn't the tale of Laura's dad dying slowly from some delibe...

Ralph has no story arc in the Them version of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby . We only see him once, when Conor brings him to Spencer's house and Spencer says hello. Ralph is, of course, the fish. In Them , he's just luggage with a name, a random bit of trivia. Spencer knows his name and maybe we find that odd, maybe it's just a passing confusions that doesn't seem important. But, Ralph has a life. Ralph has a purpose. And, damn it, Ralph serves a specific sort of role in this film... the Him version of the story. We first see Ralph when Conor goes for "a stroll" ostensibly to go home and check on Eleanor who is still in bed at 6:30pm. Conor feeds the fish before he crawls into bed with Eleanor. Ralph, then, is the first thought. A stand in for the dead child. Eleanor comes second. Ralph is Conor's preoccupation with his dead son. Ralph is responsibility aborted, responsibility perverted. Ralph is something that should be easy to take care of. Elea...

Long day. Oscar nominations at 5:30am. Some teacher stuff I had to do on the computer, while setting up an Oscars page on Facebook. Busy, busy, busy, as a Bokononist might say. Caught up on some TV in the afternoon, then Republican Debate. And that went overtime. Finally, just watched and livetweeted Galaxy Quest in honor of Alan Rickman, whose death was announced this morning. Great actor. Don't think I said enough about him when I blogged about Die Hard ( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ) a year ago. I figure I'll get back to Charlie Kaufman soon, maybe tomorrow... or I might watch a few of the Oscar-nominated films I haven't seen yet first. Thoughtful today. But, not feeling too wordy. (Especially after tweeting through the debate and a movie. Go read my tweets if you like.)

There is a person hidden in the wallpaper in Caden's kitchen in Synecdoche, New York. He's turned away. He's incomplete. He's a little Hitchcockian. Like Charlie Kaufman has inserted another filmmaker into his film to (not) watch over Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as he tries to direct something bigger than just a play, bigger than just a movie. He tries to direct life itself, and kind of succeeds... There are many reasons that I sometimes avoid certain films in this blog. For example, on the one hand, I would love to really break down how the differences between the multiple versions of Blade Runner in my boxset really create quite different (or maybe not different at all) films. On the other hand, however, I think I am afraid that so much has already been written on the subject that I might have nothing useful to add to the discourse... Which is somewhat contradictory of the ideas I write about here in this blog sometimes, and notions that are central to th...

Day 888. Eight eight eight. Like three infinities lined up next to one another. A good day to start in on another Charlie Kaufman film, one that deals in a fractal sort of reality, like that painting in Anomalisa . It also deals in depression and paranoia and hypochondria... But really, it deals in a universe where melancholy is the norm and walls burn incessantly and the colour of one's bowel movement is topic of everyday conversation. Synecdoche, New York is the film. Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman)--whose name exists somewhere between the alter ego of a superhero and some sad recluse of a man who barley belongs to the same notion of humanity as the rest of us... Actually, he's a bit too close to the latter to really be the former. Caden directs plays. In the first few minutes of the film, we see a production of Miller's Death of a Salesman and already we have a hint of what this is about. This is about death. In the opening sequence at home, Caden misread a h...

Where was I? Actually, I've got some time before I can return to the play-by-play of Poltergeist in order to (maybe) prove it's a feminist film. That entry yesterday only took me to the halfway point in this film, then my tournament downtime--of which I had very little--was over and I didn't get to the second half of the movie until hours later, on the drive home. Now, it's on again, but, per the blog rules, I gotta get through the first half of the film before I can get back where I was. In the meantime, I would note the peaceful music playing over the establishing shots of Cuesta Verde, and how deliberately pleasant it is. This begins as a simple story about a family living in a recently built suburb of Los Angeles. The mother and father get along fine, but the father occasionally falls asleep in front of the TV because fathers do that. The kids have the usual monsters in their closet... which just happen to turn out to be a bit real. (Sidenote: I just noticed th...

Parasocial relationships are not just for fictional characters. For example yesterday Wes Craven died. Numerous individuals online--myself included--posted about him as if they (we) knew him. As if his death matters on a personal level. But, we probably just saw his films over the years. Still, we form an attachment. We look forward to his new films... He hadn't directed a film since SCRE4M four years ago. A couple weeks ago , I got to thinking about Robin Williams dying a year ago. Back when I was still watching Groundhog Day every day instead of just once a month, I wrote three entries in a row ( 207 208 209 ) dealing with the death of Harold Ramis. And, it was personal to me. Groundhog Day was my life for a year, and it lingers still, not just in viewing it once a month but also in conversational references, in lecture references (I use the news clips from Groundhog Day in my public speaking class to talk about delivery), in the way I think about things, about life. Not ...

(Options for today: 1. watch Dangerous Minds to continue the teacher film theme (and because I indicated (though without specificity) I would be watching another true story today) and because today is the 20th anniversary of its release. 2. watch Good Will Hunting which I was going to throw in whenever I finish with the teacher movies because today is was the one-year anniversary of Robin Williams' suicide. So, I'm wary of the latter because it will be depressing, but I also don't want my themes to run too consistently or they might be expected; Phase Three of this blog is supposed to be mostly just winging it, whatever movie comes up comes up. I decided to go with neither, but also the second cause. I'm watching The Fisher King , a Robin Williams movie that is zany and fun, and horribly depressing on its own, without even talking about his death. I'm a glutton for punishment. Also, I've been wanting to talk about mental health at least on a personal, some...