the groundhog day project

There's a problem and an unexpected benefit to continuing researching articles and essays about Groundhog Day . For example, yesterday I mentioned an Irish Papist piece by a guy who calls himself Maolsheachlann . For those of you who don't click through any of my links, his piece is called "Why Groundhog Day is the Best Movie of All Time..." and its from August 2012. The problem: I find sometimes that other writers say stuff I intended to say or even have said. But then, I highlight a line anyway, thinking I'll quote it sometime. For example, Maolscheachlann says, "Strangely enough, I think a film about a man caught in an unexplained time loop reflects more of [a] universal human experience than any of those classics." Those classics, by the way: Citizen Kane , Casablanca , The Lord of the Rings -- (He calls that one "a great film," singular. I could nitpick one of two ways; I could point out that the film(s) he means are three films, none...

At his darkest, Phil Connors certainly paints a gloomy picture: “I’ll give you a winter prediction,” he says. “It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be gray, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.” But, I’m not sure he ever has it as bad as Evan Treborn in The Butterfly Effect . Of course, Evan’s plight is not a time loop, per se. Instead, it’s a regular rewriting of his own history (damaging his brain as he goes) to set things “right.” It’s like Quantum Leap if Sam Beckett had a really fucked up childhood and was leaping into himself in every episode, not just “The Leap Home.” SPOILERS ahead, obviously. Ashton Kutcher’s Evan deals with murderous adolescents, pedophile fathers, baby-killing explosives, burning dogs, and in the original ending (now available with the Director’s Cut), he eventually strangles himself with his umbilical cord in the womb. So, it’s not really a light-hearted film, and certainly not a comedy like Groundhog Day . Still, there’s a certain similarity in t...