the groundhog day project

Filmmakers steal ideas all the time. Even if not on purpose. Every storyteller does. George Lucas wanted to make a Flash Gordon film before he couldn't get the rights and went ahead with his own story-- Star Wars . It shouldn't be much of a surprise that his story, a space fantasy designed like an old serial would bear some resemblance to Flash Gordon (even if this film ended up taking long to get made, remember, characters in Flash Gordon. Which is another reason I'm still sad that Prince Thun was just a black guy with a big hat instead of a furry lion man. I mean, if Lucas could have Chewbacca, Hodges should have been able to have a more visually interesting Prince Thun. And, a Prince Thun with a bigger part of the story. And maybe he could be applauded at the end of the story, and Chewbacca could get a medal along with Luke and Han (or maybe every pilot who survived that assault on the Death Star should have gotten an award, not just the MVP(s)). We've got moons her...

The big problem I've got with Heaven Can Wait is that so much of it plays as just too easy. Joe dies, and he's the only dead person who doesn't want to get on that Concorde at the way station? He gets to inhabit (temporarily) the body of a rich business man, and he can reverse all the bullshit corporate norms that just happen to be awful in reality with one board meeting? The first woman he meets in his new life just happens to be the love of his life? This one is really part and parcel of the point of the film, but he buys the Rams and they rush him and rush him to let him know they don't want them there and one successful pass and they're already turning around? Tony is setting up to kill Leo (Joe) a second [correction: third; I forgot about the ceiling mirror collapsing onto the bed] time and the film has set up the cannon firing when they take the flag down at the end of the day, so that detail is fine as a coverup of the gun noise, but Joe just happens to stan...