the groundhog day project

Feel like drifting. No school. No teachers. Just an old movie that might not even be any good. The   Legend of Billie Jean . I remember enjoying it years ago, but I'm watching it because right after I mentioned it a few days ago I happened to see the DVD for sale cheap. Can't pass up coincidence. I was just reading about how in the commentary track (to which I have not listened), Helen Slater and Yeardley Smith didn't remember how the movie ended as they were watching it years later. I, too, do not really remember where this movie is going. I know something's gonna happen to Billie Jean (Helen Slater, no relation to...) and her brother Binx (...Christian Slater) kills someone-- Which is happening now as I type about not remembering the details. So, Hubie (Barry Tubb) stole Binx' scooter and Pyatt, Hubie's father (Richard Bradford) just tried to rape Billie Jean, sort of, rather than pay the money she demanded for the damage done to the scooter. Now, they'...

Imagine, if you will, that the Western is a living thing. It was young once and it had fun [ Stagecoach ]. It didn't worry about some of its racist or sexist undertones [ The Searchers ], or how readily it reified and reinforced patriarchal and imperialist/colonialist notions about how the world worked. It sometimes sang (and I'm sorry I didn't start this month with an earlier, musical Western) and it sometimes glorfied violence. It had its adolescent period, figuring out what it was about, dealing in post-war storylines [ 3:10 to Yuma ] to deal with a (different) post-war world. When President Kennedy was killed not long after Liberty Valance was, the tone of the Western changed a bit. Like it needed to exorcise its own violent tendencies [ The Wild Bunch ]. But, it was also coming to understand more of the world outside itself. Violence was all well and good, and it did get things done [ How the West Was Won ]. But, violence was also destroying the world, had already ...