the groundhog day project

I don't think that I will get to the second reason that I brought up the slinky mention from Obit. today. Instead, I have to take advantage of the film I had time to see today. See, today was a busy day, a Mother's Day thing at my sister's house, a few hours of D&D and then dinner and a movie with some of my D&D friends. Then home and it's after 10 o'clock already, and I've got a job interview in the morning and some driving to do, then the usual Monday stuff. But anyway... The film in question tonight: The Fifth Element . Twentieth anniversary screening. And, I remember well seeing it the first time in the theater two decades ago. Only movie I saw that weekend. Not the only movie I saw this weekend. (Saw the new King Arthur and Obit. of course.) And, honestly, there isn't much to say about The Fifth Element that hasn't likely been said many times before in the intervening twenty years. What is worth saying, in terms of recent points I...

I forget to begin as The Fifth Element involves the ancient from 1914 Egypt. We'll jump the the future soon. First, some adorable aliens? cyborgs? robots? (They're not German.) Tiny little heads, giant bodies, and they waddle like penguins. And the madness of The Fifth Element begins. It should be no surprise that so much of this film was in the director's head when he was young. This is like every kid's crazy version of science fiction and fantasy writ large. You've got absolute evil. You've got monsters. You've got a brave hero, a beautiful heroine, comic relief. You've got fantastic visuals and profound concepts shoved into tiny, easy-to-understand boxes. You've got black goo that come out of folk's foreheads when the big evil... thing approaches. Hell, you've even got (briefly) Luke Perry. Okay, maybe Luke Perry is not a part of the quintessential science fiction fantasy world of every (pre-)adolescent.... (Pardon the sexism, but I...