the groundhog day project

Two things: 1) after getting all serious yesterday with Barthes and punctum , today I'm going with a movie I remember as fairly ridiculous and 2) for a ridiculous movie, this opening music and closeup on Scott Howard (Michael J. Fox) all sweaty and about to shoot a free throw is, well, far too serious, and a little full of itself. It has been a good long while since I'e seen this movie but "pretentious" is not at all a term I might be using watching it again. Anyway, Teen Wolf . I'm figuring this is going to be all obvious with the metaphor (like Ginger Snaps )--lycanthropy as puberty. (Or vice versa.) In a DVD extra with (I think) the third Ginger Snaps film-- Menstrual Monsters --Tanya Krzywinska, Reader in Film, Brunel University, references "old myths about transformation into animal form, and [how] a lot of those myths are about what it is to become uncivilized." In terms of the puberty metaphor, it is the hormonal teenager who is uncivilized. ...

Dr. Benjamin Stone (Michael J. Fox) is headed for Beverly Hills. Another doctor, one who will not be seen again in this movie, critiques his choices because cosmetic surgery is clean and no one dies... apparently medicine is only meaningful when it is a matter of life and death. Oh, watching Doc Hollywood before Groundhog Day today. If you haven’t seen it, think Cars minus the cars, and Lightning McQueen is a doctor instead of a professional racer. Apparently it’s based on a book—”What? Dead... Again?” Who knew? I’ve seen this move numerous times and would not have expected an actual source... not to imply that all book sources involve some clearly noticeable depth. Anyway, like Phil Connors getting stuck in Punxsutawney, Dr. Stone is about to get stuck in Grady after he gets off the main road to avoid traffic and ends up crashing his Porsche convertible into a fence. Problem is, the local judge built that fence, so Dr. Stone is sentenced to community service. Initially, only 1...