the groundhog day project

It's 11pm as I start writing this entry. I've got an episode of That '70s Show on in the background. The house is quiet otherwise--kids are in South Carolina for a week visiting relatives. Earlier this evening, I had a nice dinner alone and then I watched Room . I'm not sure that I have much to say about the film. Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay are fantastic, and the film has several moments that are painful to watch. In case you don't know the film, the premise is that Ma (Larson) was kidnapped seven years ago, and has been living in a locked shed every since--the titular room. Five years ago, she had her son Jack (Tremblay) and now that he's five she finally explains to him that there's a world outside the room. And, they escape--that isn't really a SPOILER, the revelation of why they're in this room is plot point one and the escape is at the half way mark, and really, them learning to live outside the room is the point. The film has a great sense...

Let us switch gears after that rant yesterday . Today, I saw Krampus in the theater, and first thing: I am glad for a family-oriented horror film that embraces the PG-13 rating and allows scary things to actually happen instead of just being silly. In fact, while I was wary of the... SPOILERS, of course. (Just skip the next paragraph.) While I was wary of the inevitable reset that had to come after the plot of this film--and hoped it wouldn't happen--I actually rather liked the way the reset finally came and was also countered with the apparent memory of everyone involved (including the family dog). Weta's practical monsters were amazing (as usual), and the level of violence in the film was remarkable, again, for a family-oriented film. That should be the end of the SPOILERS. I'm not interested today in a lot of words... Maybe to counter yesterday. I'm also not interested in a review of the film so much as a review of... I guess it is the holiday itself, the sens...

The Heathers evolved into the "Plastics" and, I've only seen this movie one time. Cady (Lindsay Lohan) is like Roger Ebert ( yesterday ) going into a high school movie. Her inability to fit in and her lack of knowledge about how the school works means the movie starts on a reset. It can accept whatever high school movie tropes it wants to accept and reject whichever it wants to reject. It's a good position from which to deconstruct the genre. (To be fair, since I've only see the movie once, I cannot recall just how much it is going to do this.) "Pretending that nothing was wrong turned out to be surprisingly easy." That's an interesting line given the subject of teenagers. All performance and face, rarely the reality. You are who you pretend to be in high school (especially, movie high school). Cady's problem, here, in fact, is that if she hangs out with the Plastics enough, she might actually understand them, even like them. (Sidenote: th...

When I was looking up information on the USC Shoah Foundation yesterday , I happened upon an interview with Steven Spielberg from USA Today with a (mis?)quotation as its title-- 'This is what I was put on earth to do' - Steven Spielberg Maybe he said that to the interviewer, but the only line I can find in the actual text of the interview that is similar to that is this (with a little context): When young people come up to me and instead of saying they liked my last movie, they say, "My grandparents gave testimony [to the foundation] in 1995." Hearing that make me feel I was put on this earth to make a difference, not just in the lives of movies audiences. The testimonies help others hear stories that are not easy to tell or listen to. I'm not going to talk about the holocaust again today, or the whole poetry after Auschwitz thing. Let's leave Adorno behind, maybe even leave Everything Is Illuminated behind for the most part. Today is Day 729 of this ...

A couple mishaps but we just rolled with it. That’s the short description for the Day 365 party. The waffles didn’t work out, pretty much because I hadn’t used my waffle maker in a while and forgot about getting the surface oiled just right (and I probably needed to compensate for the blueberries added to the recipe with some dry ingredients). And the projector, which I had tested out twice at home—even watched Groundhog Day projected big on the living room wall last week—decided not to work when darkness fell and it came time to watch the movie. But, we crowded into my sister’s living room instead and watched the movie on DVD—the easiest way to roll with the punches is to be prepared with a DVD copy in your bag… (Well, that may not apply to all punches.) Anyway, showed off my LEGO Gobbler’s Knob, ate some good food, flapjacks made by my daughter Hayley, sticky buns, white chocolate cheesecake, fudge, and chocolate pie with almonds and marshmallow topping (thus being a Rocky Road p...

A few things: I am considering something permanent to celebrate a year of Groundhog Day . A tattoo. This would be my second. I have one small one already. I finally got these videos in a format I could use. When my kids were out of town a month ago, my son sent me these. The first is my daughter Saer (who recently wrote most of an entry for this blog) reciting a certain bit of poetry from the film… The second is my son Kieran and my daughters Saer and Hayley paraphrasing a bit of god day … My screening of Groundhog Day for today is nearly done—he’s hugging Ned right now. I spent a good portion of the day working on an unrelated short film project and a card game—making Groundhog Day The Board Game and buying the blank cards I used for it (and a good many extra because they came in a box of 500), not to mention my obsession this summer with tabletop games, got me in the mood for making games. I won’t say much because a) it’s nothing to do with Groundhog Day and b) I don’t w...

Change in the world comes from individuals, from the inner peace in individual hearts. Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects. --Dalai Lama, Facebook , 16 May I think we ought to be personally responsible...I think if you can take care of yourself, and then maybe try to take care of someone else, that's sort of how you're supposed to live. --Bill Murray, Squawk Box (CNBC) And I have very little to say for myself today. The mood in the room right now is sedate. Two of my kids are in their rooms, minding their own business. The third is taking her last final exam of her spring semester, her first year at college. They've all got bags packed because they are heading out of town for a week to visit their grandparents and their aunt and uncle on the other side of the country. I will miss them but I am not sad. My mood is actually pretty good. I took a break from studying today. Made a g...

This evening I read a short play my daughter Hayley’s reading for class— Sure Thing by David Ives. It’s about “Bill and Betty, both in their late twenties” who meet in a cafe. As simple as that sounds, it immediately made me think of Groundhog Day because, well, when the conversation between these two turns sour, a bell rings and the conversation resets back a bit. It plays a bit like the “date night” sequence in Groundhog Day (even more like the original trailer ‘s version of the “date night” with the alarm buzzer). For example, the first time, after Bill asks Betty, “Is this chair taken?” she tells him it is. Bell rings and Bill’s back to asking if the seat is taken. Another time, Bill’s been explaining how much he loves Faulkner and Betty tells him she thinks The Sound and the Fury (which she’s reading) is boring. Bell rings and Bill’s asking her what book she’s reading again. Mel Gussow at The New York Times describes the play: In this delightful little one-act..., the man.....

I saw About Time again today, and I was reading over my entry here about that film, and I noticed an error. POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD… Taking the protagonist’s do-each-day-twice methodology and twisting it together with Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, I suggested the following: 1) live each day as if it were the specific day you had time traveled to, as if it's the most important day you have and 2) do with that day only things you would be willing to do again and again and again. I'm certainly not suggesting that eternal recurrence is real, but it's a great way to look at the present. If something isn't worth doing again, why do it once? And, no, that’s not the mistake. I still like the idea of that now, about five weeks later. And, considering this blog (and Groundhog Day is so often about the passage of time, it’s remarkable how recent that blog entry seems to me. But, anyway, I do think the day can be so much better if you both relax into it and make the effort...

So, 2 out of 3 acts down, 6 out of 8 sequences, 4 out of 5 key moments. The screenplay breakdown of Groundhog Day continues. Where were we? Phil was changed by the second act. I mean, that thing broke him down, killed him... a few times, and then there was god day. Dyer doesn't break down the third act much. It's all "buildup to resolution" for him. More specifically, the protagonist "should now be so changed by everything that he has gone through that he can no longer be satisfied living the way he did before." I get that. This past summer, living in my tiny apartment alone, there were a lot of quiet, empty moments that demanded change. From an outward perspective, I maybe didn't change too much, either. Change doesn't need to be big to be drastic. I still watch a bit too much television sometimes. I still watch movies when I can--honestly, though, watching this one particular movie every day has put a slight damper on my spare movie time of late...

As I write this, it’s Day 2 for Phil Connors on the DVD and my daughters are in the kitchen making a cake to celebrate Day 100 for me... photo should be below. The movie Phil had seen over 100 times (or so he tells Laraine) was Heidi II . It’s a “family classic” according to the Alpine Theater’s marquee. But, as I’ve mentioned before, it doesn’t exist. Originally, the movie that Phil could see every day if he wanted to do so was It’s a Wonderful Life . Danny Rubin’s ego—and this is his suggestion, not mine—made him believe Groundhog Day “a timeless quality and had the potential to become a film that could work for audiences for a very long time.” So, he put another such film on the marquee. But, “even believing that Groundhog Day was a potential classic, [Rubin] never was thinking of comparing it to It’s a Wonderful Life “— (I’d say putting that title on the marquee was Rubin deliberately comparing the two, but maybe that’s just me.) . Rubin continues: “But the similarities bet...

Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. - Ernest Hemingway I was asked recently, "What the fuck is with this Groundhog Day thing?" I was also asked, less crudely, if I had laid out in this blog what I would do if I was stuck in a time loop. I've mentioned some things before, and there are things that would go in my "adolescent" phase that are more personal than I care to disclose at this time. I think I'd get to my "good deeds" phase pretty early, but mostly because I'd be conscious of the similarity to Groundhog Day and I'd want to manage more lives saved in one day, not that I could get that into Guinness... except maybe I could, as long as I was committed to a) saving those same lives every day on the off chance is was the end of the time loop and b) getting a Guinness Adjudicator (or at least someone with a video camera-- (Apparently, the ...

Well, it's Groundhog Day ... again. Actually, and weirdly, the movie hasn't gotten old just yet. Watching it on DVD the past week, because I've been away from my apartment, has allowed me to notice a few new things (e.g. black people ) and figure out some old stuff (e.g. locations ). My current schedule, with the added classload of grad school (as opposed to the freedom of summer break), coaching forensics, and staying with my kids at my wife's place while she's away, has pushed my viewing time into the late night. But, I kinda figured that might happen just because of school, hence the 6am rule . (And that rule makes total sense for this movie anyway.) And, it's nice having something relatively consistent in my schedule day-to-day. Plus, I have an excuse to share stuff like this bit from the Dalai Lama today on Facebook : Mentally, physically and emotionally we are the same. We each have the potential to good and bad and to be overcome by disturbing emotion...