the groundhog day project

The opening shot of Back to the Future is almost perfect. All those clocks, the slow pan. That one clock that foreshadows the climax of the film. All of Doc Brown's morning routine--the radio and the clock, really?--and the automated machinery. Plus The plutonium is set up and gets a mini-pay off already with the end of that tracking shot. The opening scene, if you move into the next bit, with the giant amp and Marty's particular style of "rock and roll", also sets up both a defining characteristic of Marty McFly--he tends toward too much --and a particular problem in what is often considered to be a flawless film. Seriously, people study this screenplay as an ideal example of screenwriting. (Nevermind, of course, the multiple drafts it took to get to the final product.) And it is fantastic in terms of structure, in terms of setup and payoff. Every scene serves a purpose. Characters and events all interact just so. But--and I've written a bit about this, for ...

Perhaps it is a creature living in perfect symbiosis with a host of other creatures. Perhaps it is “merely” a machine. But in either instance, if it has intelligence, that intelligence is far different from our own. It creates out of our ecosystem a new world, whose processes and aims are utterly alien—one that works through supreme acts of mirroring, and by remaining hidden in so many other ways, all without surrendering the foundations of its otherness as it becomes what it encounters. (p. 191) That's from Annihilation , the novel. To be fair, I got it indirectly from a Master's Thesis by Audrey Peterson (2016), SUNY . Audrey writes about the entire Southern Reach trilogy (the film Annihilation is built only from the first) so I might not comment on or cite much from Peterson. Except for this, since the identity of the individual is a central idea within the film: "The women are also introduced by their function, and not by name" unlike In the film, where they s...

It barely matters that The Man from Snowy River is Australian; the messaging fits right in with American films of the time--a lot of masculinity on display in various levels of toxicity, men being men, women being submissive to those men even when they're not. Seriously, Jessica stands up to her father, he hits her, and she runs away and falls off a cliff to be rescued by Jim. (And, to be fair, as I have learned just now online, Australia also had a part in Vietnam, and in the 70s was undergoing a wave of nationalism.) And then, there's the overdramatic musical cues which almost ruin the lovely music everywhere else in the film. Brumbies arrive and the music lets us know their dangerous if we can't figure that out from the exposition-filled dialogue. The new Colt gets spooked by a dog and the dramatic musical cues jump in. The Stallion leader of the Brumbies tramples over Jim and we not only get overdramatic musical cues, we get insane freeze-frame closeups. And, ther...

My first thought upon turning on The Idolmaker is that even more than we watched the movie when I was a kid, we listened to the soundtrack. On vinyl. And, that gets me thinking about other soundtracks we listened to a lot. Somewhere in Time 's soundtrack was one of them, and I don't think I mentioned John Barry's score at all last week while watching that one. There was the soundtrack to Grease 2 , which will come up in this deconstruction sometime in the next month or two, probably. (The pace of this thing is not out of hand, exactly, but it is increasingly slow.) And plenty I'm forgetting. I remember a 45 single of "All Time High"--that's the theme to the James Bond movie Octopussy , which is also going to show up in this deconstruction at some point. And, outside of movie soundtracks, there were musicians from the 50s, stuff my parents liked. And, seriously, Tommy Dee (Paul Land) starts singing "Here Is My Love" and I still know the lyrics....

But, then there’s that music... However dated some of Snowball Express ' content may feel, it's got a brilliant effortlessness to it. Like the bit with the snow falling from the eaves that leads to a snowball fight. The Baxters seem more like an actual family than four actors working. And some pleasant music plays. (The same pleasant music works as a nice clue for the audience that Baxter won't be seriously injured skiing Nightmare Alley.) That same effortlessness affects the plot in a... Not a negative way, but a horribly, cutely convenient way. The Baxters open up the rundown Grand Imperial. The water heater explodes. So they can't get a rope tow engine. Instead, they get the donkey engine. They can't get any guests, but then Wally inadvertently sets off an avalanche that blocks a passing train, and they've got guests. But then the donkey engine crashes through the hotel and the guests leave. Johnny and Jesse race in the Silver Hill Winter-National and com...

Taking the music teacher (not that Dewey Finn was supposed to be a music teacher) a little more seriously today with Mr. Holland's Opus . We start with Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfuss) conducting an imaginary orchestra, playing the titular opus. Conducting music that isn't there (an important idea for what's coming). Like Finn, Holland didn't intend to be a teacher. He got stuck with it. Not the most positive portrayals of being a teacher. At least John Keating seemed to have become a teacher on purpose. Classic teacher mistake, going to the textbook that early on day one. Me--the textbook is just support material; if the students read it they'll do better on the final, but if they just show up and listen/respond to my "lecture" they'll do just fine anyway. (For now. Being a graduate teaching assistant, I've been stuck with a preexisting syllabus and book, and a final exam primarily written by someone else. The situation could change once I ...

Skip past "Girl" and jump into "Hold Me Tight" and you wouldn't necessarily take Jude as the lead character here. That song juxtaposes not really Lucy and Jude but Lucy and Molly (Jude's girlfriend in Liverpool). Plus, the American Bandstand style of Lucy's high school dance and the club scene (with Beatles stand-ins) in Liverpool. The film starts us with these two worlds clashing not because the film will necessarily be about that , but because the film is about various cultures colliding, breaking, and exploding. Hell, just now as I typed that, an army truck full of soldiers drove past the football game where we meet Prudence. The nice wholesome high school scene--about to be interrupted for us by the introduction of homosexuality--is first interrupted by that army truck. And that interruption is a pleasant one. The army guys whistle at the cheerleaders, the cheerleaders and football players cheer on the army guys. The movie does not play for us the ...

Sample lyrics from America from West Side Story : STAGE: SCREEN: Puerto Rico You ugly island My heart's devotion Island of tropical diseases Let it slip back in the ocean Always the hurricanes blowing Always the population growing And the money owing And the babies crying And the sunlight streaming And the bullets flying And the natives steaming I like the island Manhattan Smoke on your pipe and put that in I like to be in America OK by me in America Ev'rything free in America For a small fee in America Only minor changes, but it makes the movie version just a little nicer to Puerto Rico. Sandoval-Sanchez (1999) is not as kind as I am; he writes, "In the film version, this scene, which, in the original text is a racist and defamatory articulation toward Puerto Rico, was revised in order to soften the negative attitude toward Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican immigrants" (p. 72). Elsewhere, Sandoval-Sanchez seems to be arguing that the film, like the play, makes q...

Quiet... Like silence, but not really silent... Just that still sort of quiet Like the sound of a page being turned in a book, Or a pause in a walk in the woods. Quiet... Like silence, but not really silent... Just that nice kind of quiet, Like the sound when you lie upside down in your bed. Just the sound of your heart in your head... (Lyrics from the Matilda musical by none other than Tim Minchin who is purportedly working on a Groundhog Day musical) I wonder how much noise pollution there was in Punxsutawney circa 1993. I’m guessing not a lot. Except that they’ve got electricity so there would be the hum of transformers and whatnot. It’s midwinter so the crickets might not be making the noise they’re making outside right now as I write this. The rooms at the Cherry Street Inn do not all have their own TVs, so Phil probably wouldn’t hear the neighbors’ TV like I do right now, either. In the Global North, we don’t much have actual silence anymore. In Uttar Pradesh, so-called “...

The opening track on the Groundhog Day soundtrack is “Weatherman” written by Harold Ramis and George Fenton. It’s “a cheesy pop number” just like Ryan Gilbey calls it in his critique of the film. Its lyrics are so on the nose, it kinda loops back around to being awesome. Lyrics like this: Predictions show a steady low You're feeling just the same But seasons come and seasons go I'll make you smile again If you don't believe take me by the hand Can't you feel you're warming up, yeah, I'm your weatherman The best line, and perhaps most indicative of Phil Connors being a god, is this one: “For you I'd turn it into spring.” Of course, the film starts with track 2, “Clouds,” a rather unassuming bit of music that dares you to get distracted away from the film. Then, of course, Bill Murray gets on screen and your attention is back. Next comes the obvious, “I Got You Babe” followed by “Quartet No. 1 in D – The Ground Hog” which is the nice pleasant music playi...