the groundhog day project

The last few weeks haven't been the best for me but I just reinvent myself each day as someone doing better. I go through the motions of work. I put up with the worst of my students, enjoy the best of them. I watch television, I watch movies--and write about them here--and I play D&D when I can. I was already in a bad mood Saturday when I got to watching I don't feel at home in this world anymore . Hours later I watched Jim & Andy ... Full title for that last one: Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond: Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton because the premise of the film is far bigger than just Jim & Andy , just Jim and Andy, Just Jim and Andy and Tony. The premise of the documentary is Jim Carrey getting so much into character as Andy Kaufman and as Tony Clifton while filming Man on the Moon that he sort of lost himself... Or found himself, I guess is the point. And, after a tough time lately in terms of my mental health, it was an...

                                                                                                   

There's a poster on James' (Kyle Mooney) bedroom wall in his... captive home? It says: CURIOSITY IS AN UNNATURAL EMOTION If you could ever actually convince someone of this, you would certainly be able to imprison them and control them... And, yes, that was leaning into a rant about religion or politics, but instead I wanted to concern myself with something closer to the actual text (or at least its subtext) of the film today. James has been held captive since he was a kid, but he thinks his captors his real parents, he thinks the world full of toxic air so they cannot go outside without protection. He only knows the underground bunker in the desert where they have raised him, and the worlds of Brigsby Bear , the TV show his father has produced just for him over the years--25 volumes, 736 episodes. He has these on VHS and has watched them time and time again. They are, in many ways, more real to him than his own monotonous life inside the bunker--his Groundhog Day Effect, i...

Roger Ebert ends his review of Joe Versus the Volcano with a great bit: What's strongest about the movie is that it does possess a philosophy, an idea about life. The idea is the same contained in "Moonstruck": that at night, in those corners of our minds we deny by day, magical things can happen in the moon shadows. And if they can't, a) they should, and b) we should always in any event act as if they can. First a note: Roger references Moonstruck because John Patrick Shanley wrote both and directed Joe Versus the Volcano . Second, though, I love especially that last line. That we should always act as if magical things can happen is one of those ideas that so many movies put forth--from the eternal recurrence of Groundhog Day to the hyperrealism of American Psycho , from the time travel of About Time to the deliberate fantasy of Moulin Rouge . And, yes, Moonstruck . Joe Versus the Volcano takes place in a reality where miracles can happen, where desk lamps ...

Once upon a time there was a guy named Joe Who had a very lousy job... I worked office jobs in my 20s. The opening scene of Joe Versus the Volcano is amazing in its satire (and it's awesome that both Lloyd Bridges and Robert Stack (who played it relatively straight in Airplane! are in this), workers all dressed in black, trudged through a muddy parking lot, turnstile doors, a zig zag walkway, all to enter a factory that makes medical devices and leaks exhaust into the air. The lighting inside makes everyone look sickly, the hat rack doesn't even work right. It's no wonder that Joe Banks (Tom Hanks) feels like he's always sick. Effectively, he is . His job drains away his life. Or as he tells DeDe (Meg Ryan) (regarding his shoe), "I'm losing my sole."           Strictly speaking, Joe Versus the Volcano is not a bad movie. But, I'm going to end this month of bad movies with it because 1) it was one of the first movies recommended when I asked...

Marco Rubio just referred to Trump's strategy for Afghanistan, laid out in great detail in an amazing speech this evening as "good" strategy and an "excellent" speech. Which would be fine except I was lying about the great detail and the speech being amazing. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was a TelePrompTer speech so it had complete sentences and it made relative sense, but it was half Trump mansplaining the existence of ISIS, telling the same tired story about how Obama pulled out of Afghanistan too early and that's why ISIS exists, and then being really vague about what he's going to do about it. More troops. More war. No end. Last week it was nuclear war with North Korea, not a land war in Asia, next he's going to go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line. I kid because I'm tired and angry. This shit is distracting me from my movie tonight... Hell, it's making me want to draw direct comparisons. Hapless Americans pushing the...

I was writing today about the choices we make as bloggers. Or, as people on the internet more generally. Papacharissi (2009) Calls it an "information game." But for the moment I cannot talk about that. I've been stuck on High Fidelity because I find a bit too much of myself in Rob Gordon (John Cusack). Tonight, I'm checking out the deleted scenes before I get into the film proper, and I just watched one that surprised me because who else plays Rob's father but Harold Ramis. And, I'm done. I mean, to loop back around like that. Andie MacDowell's real first name is Rosalie (my mother's name) and now Harold Ramis is playing the father of a guy named Rob (my name, you inattentive passerby). Everything loops back to Groundhog Day , eventually. Every movie is every other movie. I intended to talk about white male privilege today, I want to talk about punctum, but here I am talking about links back to Groundhog Day because every blog entry is the same, e...

Warning: I am in the mood for meaning, apparently. Predictions show a steady low, You’re feeling just the same. But seasons come and seasons go. I’ll make you smile again. If you don’t believe take me by the hand, Can’t you feel you’re warming up? Yeah, I’m your weatherman. They say it’s gone, say winter’s done That don’t mean a thing. ‘Cause I’m the one that moves the sun For you I’d turn it into spring So when you’re feeling lonely, try to understand, Baby, I can warm you up ‘cause I’m your weatherman. The lyrics to Weatherman heard just before and after the bit inside the van on the ride to Punxsutawney. Benesh (2011) says it just "masquerades as a pop romantic love song" (p. 90). She thinks there's more to it. Obviously, the lyrics themselves give us a metaphor, winter for a low mood, spring for being happy. Benesh's take is interesting, since if we choose to link the song to the characters, we would presume this is Phil talking to Rita; he's the weatherm...

This is from yesterday : [Benesh] writes about references to eating the groundhog--Phil says he "had groundhog for lunch" and he reports about how the people of Punxsutawney "used to take the hog out and they used to eat it"--and she adds one more: "In another reference to ingesting the Other, Phil Connors once proposes toasting [to] the groundhog" (Benesh, 2011, p. 88). I don't know how it works in Benesh's circles, but whenever I have been present for a toast, we have not then eaten the person (or thing) being toasted. Still, there's a pink tab here labeled "eating groundhog." She continues: Phil Connors' desire to ingest the groundhog seems a parallel to his early hostile come-ons toward Rita, the allusion to his pelvic tilt, and to her sleeping alone and missing him, followed by his attempts to seduce her. (p. 88) Because, clearly, Phil wants to eat Rita... and I'm using "eat" in the literal sense. This is ...