the groundhog day project

Call this PART II of my Oscar predictions . Groundhog Day playing again, but I probably won't mention it again today. First up: Adapted Screenplay-- Call Me By Your Name The Disaster Artist Logan Molly's Game Mudbound --should go to Call Me By Your Name . It's the only Best Picture nominee here. Plus, James Ivory has been winning this one like it's a lifetime achievement award. Long shot goes to cowriter (and director) Dee Rees for Mudbound because the Academy might want to give that film something and this might be the only place it can. Original Screenplay-- The Big Sick Get Out Lady Bird The Shape of Water Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri --is an interesting contest because any of these could win. Really, it's between The Big Sick , Get Out , and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri , but that doesn't narrow it down much. The Writers Guild gave this to Get Out , as did Critics Choice, but the Golden Globes' single screenplay cate...

Nope, no slinky . Just nerds using science to be superheroes. Or maybe I should explain the slinky thing. Except, it's not a. Slinky thing. That name is misleading. The slinky was more important as a metaphor for big, shiny movies that more people go see. The first reason. But the second reason was really just why I chose to write about, or inspired by, Obit. instead of 2004's King Arthur . Watching Obit. I was reminded of how I used to write about obituaries early in the Groundhog Day Project . In retrospect, that came from two things: depression and one of the central conceits of Groundhog Day , the measure of a person. Which is also a necessary part of movies like the new King Arthur: Legend of the Sword , or Big Hero 6 , or The Fifth Element . Korben Dallas is measured and mankind is measured accordingly. King Arthur, especially in Hollywood films insisting on origin stories, must be measured as worthy of being king. (However, the sword-in-the-stone bit sets up a bit t...

If you're reading this, you've probably got a slinky somewhere in your house, or you have had one in the past. Maybe it was just some cheap plastic knockoff, the kind you get for a few tickets at Chuck E. Cheese, but still. Is a slinky useful? Barely. Does it do what its advertised to do? Maybe that one time you got it just right at the right distance from the top step in your house and you got so excited that it was still going after four steps that you jumped for joy and shook the step just enough as to send that fancy little coil off course and it settled into itself on the next step. But, just that one time. Otherwise, it goes a step, maybe two and then fails to go further. I bring up the slinky for two reasons. First, they mentioned the choice to run with the obituary for the guy who invented the slinky* in Obit. , which I saw in the theater today. You run that obituary because that there is that ubiquitous connection to so many people in the readership. You want the name...

There's an X on page 37 of Benesh (2011), but I don't want to talk about Benesh today. Still, I'll explain the X. By the way, there's a yellow tab labeled "self-awareness/Rita-awareness" on pages 37/38. Highlighted bit: "Phil responds, 'That's not true. I don't even like myself.' That is humor, perhaps deflective and defensive humor, but, like his calling Nancy by Rita's name, an unconscious revelation of a deeper truth..." "He may, at this point believe he sincerely admires Rita, but at the same time he is coming to the realization that he hasn't earned her" (p. 37). Then the X through the end of this bit: "Later his moral profess is confirmed when he states, as she sleeps (her sleep signifying he has, unlike before, neither means nor motive to impress her), 'I know I don't deserve you'" (ibid). Phil does not say that. When I was describing È già ieri on my second viewing, I would pause an...

The only time Harold Ramis ever worried about his career was in 1972. He was living in Encino, California with his first wife, Anne. He had $40 in the bank. He'd written a novel with Michael Shamberg. An editor sent back the manuscript alone with a copy of The Elements of Style . He recounts the story in GQ , July 2009. "My wife said to me, 'Has it occurred to you that you might not be successful?' She wasn't saying I wouldn't be. She was just posing the question. And I said, 'Oh man. It's occurring to me right now .'" The reporter, Brett Martin, asked, "How long did you beat yourself up over it?" Ramis responded: I swear this is true: At that moment, the phone rang, and it was the owner of Second City asking me to come back and produce the television show that reconnected me with Bill Murray [Ramis had covered the troupe in 1968 while writing freelance for the Chicago Daily News and had worked with Murray on The National Lampoon ...

Two things: Michelle and I were saddened to hear of the passing of Harold Ramis, one of America's greatest satirists, and like so many other comedic geniuses, a proud product of Chicago's Second City. When we watched his movies – from ‘Animal House’ and ‘Caddyshack’ to ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Groundhog Day’ – we didn’t just laugh until it hurt. We questioned authority. We identified with the outsider. We rooted for the underdog. And through it all, we never lost our faith in happy endings. Our thoughts and prayers are with Harold’s wife, Erica, his children and grandchildren, and all those who loved him, who quote his work with abandon, and who hope that he received total consciousness. and Harold Ramis and I together did the National Lampoon Show off Broadway, Meatballs, Stripes, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day. He earned his keep on this planet. God bless him. That longer one is from President Barack Obama. The shorter one is Bill Murray. But, I actually didn...

There's a force in the universe that makes things happen. All you have to do is get in touch with it. Stop thinking. Let things happen and be... the ball... Find your center. Hear nothing. Feel nothing. That's Chevy Chase as Ty Webb in Caddyshack . I get the impression from quotations in articles or interview clips that Harold Ramis was a bit zen like Webb. He didn't "want to be the Buddha," though, he told Perry Garfinkel of Shambhala Sun . "I just want to admire him." Brett Martin, writing for GQ in 2009, calls Ramis a "sympathetic, though nonpracticing, Buddhist." With that one character in Caddyshack , with his own understated performance as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters , and most obviously with the entirety of his cinematic masterpiece Groundhog Day , Ramis infused his films with a relaxed sort of zaniness that makes them hold up quite well long after the fact of their releases. Despite his success, he didn't particularly buy in...

I neglected to mention one particular media use of "Groundhog Day" yesterday. Al Logan Slagle, aka Allogan Slagle, according to his biography on UC Davis ' website, ...was a member of the United Keetoowah Band of the Cherokee of Oklahoma and worked as an attorney for the Association of American Indian Affairs (AAIA) in Washington, D.C. Prior to that he worked for the California Indian Legal Services in Oakland. He was the co-author of the book, The Good Red Road (1987). He completed his doctorate at Loyola University and was admitted to the California State Bar in 1979 then beginning his career in defending the rights of Native American tribes. His research included making use of National Archives Indian rolls, family genealogies, tribal records, and other documents to write petitions for Native American tribes seeking official legal tribal status. He was also a regular contributor to News from Native California magazine . I've found his column as far back as 199...

(Before I get into today's topic, I would like to point out that Martin Manley's website (the one he put together leading up to his suicide which I've mentioned before here and here ) has apparently been taken down... at least the original version. On a memorial blog "set up to allow Martin's family and friends to share stories and memories of his life" it says: Yahoo has taken down MartinManleyLifeAndDeath.com. There are however several mirror sites working at this time. Here is a partial list ... http://eulopedia.com/home_page.html http://martinmanley.org/ http://www.ussolutions.net/martin/backup/index-2.html http://martinmanleylifeanddeath.com.nyud.net/home_page http://www.zeroshare.info/ The first one seems to be most complete. It includes the U.S. Financial link that the others missed. The martinmanley.org link was set up by Anonymous and has a timed intro message that you can read. To bypass that message go straight to http://martinmanley....

Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. - Ernest Hemingway I was asked recently, "What the fuck is with this Groundhog Day thing?" I was also asked, less crudely, if I had laid out in this blog what I would do if I was stuck in a time loop. I've mentioned some things before, and there are things that would go in my "adolescent" phase that are more personal than I care to disclose at this time. I think I'd get to my "good deeds" phase pretty early, but mostly because I'd be conscious of the similarity to Groundhog Day and I'd want to manage more lives saved in one day, not that I could get that into Guinness... except maybe I could, as long as I was committed to a) saving those same lives every day on the off chance is was the end of the time loop and b) getting a Guinness Adjudicator (or at least someone with a video camera-- (Apparently, the ...

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #423 Love is a Quantum Event We experience love as an emotion, but the feeling of love, the desire to be close to the beloved, is actually an unconscious expression of the dynamic nature of sub-atomic particles eternally trying to regroup into the singularity that was their primordial state before the Big Bang blew them apart. While this knowledge helps to explain almost all human behavior, it is completely useless for writing song lyrics and Hallmark cards. Don’t even think about it for marriage proposals. Despite that titlecard getting my attention last night, I was thinking about not just love but death after yesterday’s entry . And, that—and noting the three times I’ve dealt with obituaries in this blog in my recent recap —got me to thinking about one of my favorite books—a comic book actually— Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá. From the back cover of the collected version: WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT DAYS OF YOUR LIFE? Meet Brás de Oliva Do...

I’ve dealt with obituaries before in this blog— Jane Catherine Lotter , an author who wrote her own; Martin Manley , a sportswriter who planned and blogged about his suicide; and even Lucina Paquet Gabbard , who played a small part in Groundhog Day —so I thought it worth bringing up this bit from an obituary I saw online today: Marianne Theresa Johnson-Reddick born Jan 4, 1935 and died alone on Aug. 30, 2013. She is survived by her 6 of 8 children whom she spent her lifetime torturing in every way possible. While she neglected and abused her small children, she refused to allow anyone else to care or show compassion towards them. When they became adults she stalked and tortured anyone they dared to love. Everyone she met, adult or child was tortured by her cruelty and exposure to violence, criminal activity, vulgarity, and hatred of the gentle or kind human spirit. It reminded me of Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead , in which a Speaker spends time with and interviews those wh...

I intended to write a bit about marriage today, but I’ll save that for tomorrow maybe (even though it was a logical third part to the last two days on romance and love . Instead, I wanted to explore something else today because of something I just learned about on Facebook —this particular angle on this topic and where I think I might go with it seems like it will work better fresher, without too much thought or research. The title above will give away my topic, of course. Suicide. Which Phil Connors commits at least three times, and presumably more if he’s been in the repeating cycle for decades as some suggest. Keep in mind, Phil does say he’s “been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted, and burned.” We only see one of those on screen, when he drops the toaster into the bathtub at the bed and breakfast. The others must be suicides or accidents also, though, because the people of Punxsutawney don’t seem all that homicidal. I’ve written about Phil’s depression and sui...