the groundhog day project

Now, we let that madness go and return to childhood. I'm eight years old when Top Secret! arrives in theaters. It's absurdist visuals work for me very well. It's utter ridiculousness still holds up, unlike some other , similar comedies. I did write about Top Secret! in this blog before. But, no return to my childhood, and all the movies that were on regular repeat would be complete without this one. (In other news, I saw Rampage in the theater today. Not much to say about it but if you want to see it, you will probably enjoy at least some of it. Of note for this blog, though, as I'm sitting through the end credits, a name jumps out. Rick LeFevour. Actually, it turns out it, double checking on IMDb when I got home, to be Rick LeFevour, Jr. (Also a Matt LeFevour listed under stunts for Rampage , but while all three work for Midwest Stunts, I have not confirmed that Matt is related to the Ricks.) Anyway, Rick LeFevour was the stuntman who jumped off the top of the Pe...

          I often get lost as these old movies from my childhood play, but I didn't expect to get lost in The Pirate Movie as soon as it got started. But, "Victory" starts playing over pirate ship battle footage and I'm in. And then the main plot gets going pretty quick and Ninjas attack the pirate ship and it's on. This was what really got me when I was a kid, the action and the romance. I talked about the military side of An Officer and a Gentleman was just as much rooted in fantasy as the love story yesterday --but the actual action in something like this is an easy in for a kid. Pirate adventure, plus ninjas, and later cops, plus the romance and songs.           I had yet to see a production of The Pirates of Penzance when I first saw this film, though I would see it later, so I didn't know a lot of the basic specifics being spoofed. But, unlike some more recent spoof films, this one keeps a main plot that makes sense...

I've read in more than one place that Barney Miller was the most realistic cop show and Scrubs was the most realistic medical show. So, I come into the comedy The Shakiest Gun in the West with high hopes, looking for a deconstruction of the genre, touching on common tropes and putting a light on them by making fun of them. I hope. (Haywood (Don Knotts) offers up a graduation speech--he's graduated from a dentistry school and is going to head into the west to practice there--and reminds me that I should share this: Nothing to do with this month of Westerns, of course, but as you should know if you're here this blog was all about Groundhog Day for the first year, and I still come back to that film once a month. That right there was my cap today for graduation. Technically, I won't have my Master's degree until I defend my thesis in the fall but I participated in the ceremony now rather than wait until next June. All my coursework is done. So, there's no...