the groundhog day project

It's the first half of Ishtar that is the problem. If you can just work your way through that, it gets better. The whole torture of that first hour, the awfulness of Rogers and Clarke's songs, their absolute lack of upward career trajectory--it even gets paid off when Clarke breaks down in the desert and asks, "What have I done with my life, Lyle?" And Ebert calls the desert sequence pointless. The desert sequence is the point. It's the answer to the question of the first half... Specifically, look at where the movie begins and ends. The same song in both places. Telling the truth can be dangerous business; Honest and popular don't go hand in hand. If you admit that you play the accordion, No one will hire you in a rock 'n' roll band. But we can sing our hearts out. And, if we're lucky, then no neighbors complain. Because life is the way we audition for God. Let us pray that we all get the job. It's trite. It's simplistic. But, it'...

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...

"When a narcissist's sense of control is challenged, he feels threatened, and responds as if his survival is at stake," writes Kristina Nelson in Narcissism in High Fidelity (2004, p. 19). This is Rob Gordon's existential crisis--his girlfriend has just left him and he turns inward because, basically, who is he without his conquest, without his companion, without his distraction... depending on his mood, of course? He looks back at his top five all-time breakups like they are the building blocks of his being. Well, them and all the music he's got catalogued in his head, in his record shop, and on the shelves that crowd his apartment. And, he's not wrong. There's a realism in the horribleness of Rob Gordon. His obsession with music, his obsession with his sexual (and non-) partners, his obsession with himself--there is familiarity and believability there. His excessive voiceover is our ticket to something that rings true and may even ring biographically. I...

The thing is, we like assholes. In film, I mean. (I considered Liz's (Joan Cusack) great line as the title for this entry, but "Fucking asshole!" as a title seemed like it might get the wrong sort of attention.) (Rob's (John Cusack) "I am a fucking asshole." would have worked, too.) Rob Gordon is an asshole. Han Solo is an asshole. Peter Venkman is an asshole. Katniss Everdeen is an asshole. Phil Connors is an asshole. Pretty much every action hero ever, any cad from any romantic comedy... Anyone whose story is worth telling on film is probably an asshole in some way. They have to be. That is who gets things done. At least in any form that can be covered in like an hour and a half. Take the new movie Sleight for example--Bo (Jacob Latimore) deals drugs for the sake of getting by, mutilates his body for the sake of magic, and is willed to violence a little too easily long before the climax of the film-- (This not being a review, I won't bother with...

The last recap was Day 942 - what we got here is a little game of show and tell . Today is Day 1000. So, how about a quick reminder of where we've been lately. Day 943 - the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth took Murder in the First as its jumping off point, ended the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon month and was maybe the thematic end to this blog because that's where every movie was every other movie and the message was on repeat. Day 944 - i'm going out to punxsutawney was a thing I wrote for class about my pilgrimage to Woodstock, Illinois and meeting Danny Rubin, and Danny Rubin later sent me a lovely message about it on Facebook. Then I drifted. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them 945 946 947 The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him 948 949 950 The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her 951 952 953 The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them 954 955 Antichrist 956 The Squid and the Whale 957 958 959 Mrs. Doubtfire 960 961 ...

"Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known." - Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters Today I mostly finished a draft of my thesis. Gotta add a couple things tomorrow, check some formatting, then hand it off to my committee for comments. Officially, I turn it in in two weeks. Defend it a couple weeks after that. So, today, I was writing about how a blogger can deliberately manipulate their public identity, become the words. High Fidelity , which is really just a placeholder as I get to tomorrow--Day 1000 as well as the end of the main part of my thesis writing. It's a big day. I imagine my world without this blog and me not being a blogger. I think about labels. Online, I can label myself whatever I would like to label myself. I can play the information game and control what you know about me. I can do my research to talk about a film thoroughly, make myself look like I know what I'm talking about even when I don't. And,...

Rob Gordon lives in Apartment 2B. I don't know if that's from the book--I can't be bothered to check--or if it's even on purpose. But, I noticed it and noticeable things matter. Echoes of "to be or not to be" or maybe I'm reaching. But, in a story about a guy trying to figure out who he is, it makes sense. A corny, on-the-nose sort of sense. And then there's the deus ex machina of Laura's dad dying, without even the setup of him being sick. (The script tries to cheat by mentioning that her dad never knew she and Rob broke up because he "wasn't up to it.") Kinda ruins the movie the more I watch it. I mean, it was a lame bit of plotting in the first place. But, it gets more offensive with each viewing. But, I keep viewing anyway, because... (And, really, he just compared Charlie to 'Nam? That's gotta be offensive to someone.) Seriously, what is Rob's problem? You don't own every woman who's kissed you. Sex isn...

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...

At one point in High Fidelity , Rob says "that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like." On the one hand, I think it's both. On the other hand, yeah, I regularly measure people based on what they like. Do they like the same movies as me? (So many.) Do they watch the same TV shows as me? (Again, so many. The highbrow HBO or Netflix originals and the nerd-friendly CW shows. And, I totally understand if you don't like Banshee because a) you haven't even heard of it or, b) you can't handle the brutality of the violence.) Listen to the same music? (Actually, music isn't such a big deal for me. I'm not a one-type-of-music person, though I do obsess about one type at any given time, for sure. I don't need someone else to like what I like, though if you've got a thing for musicals and the occasional heavy metal, the occasional folk rock, we might get along.) Read the same books? (Again, not the most important thing. I mea...

I've got a theory, one minor part of my master's thesis, that among other things I do in this blog, I reference my knowledge of and experience with other films in order to 1) yeah, increase my credibility when talking about film, 2) obviously, to make my points using basic comparison and contrast, but maybe most importantly, 3) to manipulate the reader into thinking I know what I'm talking about, whether or not I actually do. Admittedly, that's just another way of saying #1, but the thing is, there's a certain clout to just having this blog, maintaining it for hundreds of days, watching movies day in and day out, that suggests to the casual reader that I must know something. #3 is supposed to be a negative version of #1. Like, yeah, I've got plenty of film knowledge, I've seen thousands of films, gotta brag about that from time to time, but I'm still just some blogger, a bit too full of myself sometimes, desperate for attention yet often actively avoidin...

Film School Rejects offers up five reasons High Fidelity is still culturally relevant. (In 2014, mind you, but I find the implication that a movie from 2000 wouldn't still be relevant a little odd.) Their #1 is what they call the--and I'm not sure this is a word-- listiclization of everything . Two years past their piece, how many clickbait articles offer up top ten reasons for such and such or the top 18 excuses for whatever, you won't believe what #14 is. (Meanwhile, teenage Rob is admittedly a jerk: "I wasn't interested in Penny's nice qualities. Just breasts.") Their #2 is about vinyl, and yeah, hipsters totally want vinyl to stick around. Their #3-- the rise of DIY creativity --which, yeah, YouTube and Vine and every other online platform for Joe Schmo to be famous. Their #5 (which doesn't get numbered in the piece--and yeah, I realize I skipped #4, bear with me) is your preferences are still bullshit . Political debates about Trump mixing...

[Rob Gordon's] Top five dream jobs Journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, 1976 to 1979 - Get to meet The Clash, Chrissie Hynde, Sex Pistols, David Byrne, get tons of free records. Producer, Atlantic Records - Get to meet Aretha, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke. More free records and a shitload of money. Any kind of musician. Besides classical or rap. Settle for being one of the Memphis Horns or something. I'm not asking to be Jagger or Hendrix or Otis Redding. Film Director. Any kind except German or silent. Architect Rob of course readily offers, "I'm not sure I even want to be an architect." Laura critiques his choices: "So you've got a list here of five things you'd do if qualifications and time and history and salary were no object? ... One of them you don't really want to do anyway." Rob proffers, "Well, I did put it at number five." And, Laura makes the point that matters. "Wouldn't you rather own your own record...

People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands, of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? - Rob Gordon (John Cusack), High Fidelity More importantly, do I watch too many movies because I have no life or do I have no life because I watch too many movies? Note, of course, I acknowledge there, it's "too many" movies. First, regarding the movie that's on right now-- High Fidelity --there is an excess of voiceover here, but this is one of those movies that knows how to use voiceover, how to use it to actually add to what's happening on screen. Plus, the voiceover is not quite voice over , rather Rob tends to talk to the camera, so it's voiceover plus fourth wall breaking. It shouldn't ...

Ultimately, it may seem like the point of Groundhog Day —taken especially as a romantic comedy—is that Phil must learn to love and be loved in return. Held up to scrutiny, there isn’t much evidence that Rita loves Phil in the end… but then again, we’re not bothering to scrutinize, are we? As I’ve mentioned before, we’re in this with Phil and on some level we think he deserves a happy ending so it is his ending that matters. It doesn’t matter necessarily if Rita is, or will be, happy (though she does claim she’s happy out there in the snow, doesn’t she?). But, there’s something bigger going on here. As a romantic comedy, as a film whose denouement comes with a couple getting together, we get a reification of the idea that we must be in a couple. That is to say, once again, Hollywood is telling us what it takes to be happy—though, to be fair, we’re not making much of an effort to object. In fact, as I already pointed out, we’re not only so invested in Phil that we want him to be happy...