the groundhog day project

I am not going to argue that Kevin McCallister is a Christ-Figure. Let us just get that out of the way right off. He’s closer to the Satan-Figure, really, but I’m not sure anyone has set criteria for that. Instead, I will be dealing with a character with a lot less screentime—Old Man Marley. Once again, I will be using Kozlovic ‘s scale... actually, I will probably deal with my Kozlovic-Black scale, taking into account Larsen’s (2013) insistence on a sense of atonement . Now, on with the Christ-Figuring. For those of you new to this process, Kozlovic lays out 25 structural elements for the cinematic Christ-Figure. I tally the Christ-Figure ness out of 25 (probably with a bonus point if Larsen’s atonement is present. 1. Christ-Figures must be tangible. Simple element, and Old Man Marley fits it. 1/1 2. Christ-Figures are the central protagonists of the story. Old Man Marley is not , so he’s already down a point. 1/2 3. Christ-Figures are outsiders. As a rumored mass murdered, Ol...

Immediately I must wonder if Kevin is as bad as Doyle from Dutch . Or he will be, as he is already prone to violence. Despite his badness, though, the movie does a good job of setting everyone else against him. It’s his fault, but you can almost forgive him because he is a kid. As for the movie, Home Alone is not a movie I would normally equate with having much depth... Then again, neither was Planes, Trains & Automobiles or Dutch or just about any of the slasher films I watched in October. But, I suppose the point to this blog, quite often, is that every film has depth. Even the most shallow-seeming, simplistic piece of entertainment tells us something about us for watching it, if nothing else. I am not suggesting that Home Alone is the most shallow-seeming film. There are plenty of films shallower. This film does a great job of setting up later scenes early on. The old guy with the shovel is introduced right away, as is one of the wet bandits, posing as a cop. When Kevin ...

Roger Ebert tells me Hannah and Her Sisters is the best Thanksgiving film. I have never seen it. I mentioned a while back that I am not the biggest fan of Woody Allen. I’ve seen a few of his films, I can appreciate what he does, but I’m just not all that enamored with it... with them. Similarly—and I think I share this with Ebert—I can appreciate what Peter Hedges is doing in Pieces of April even though I think the final product is flawed. In a way, it might be because that film is inherently flawed that it is also quite endearing. Like family, like Thanksgiving, the twisted heart within the happy occasion is the horribleness possible when family get together in large numbers. None of us is perfect. And, family or not—blood being thicker than water and all that—get us together and insist on hanging out as if our relations have not been strained time and time again by arguments and disagreements, as if some of haven’t disowned others (or wanted to), as if we haven’t had numerous in...

I We start Dutch in the parking outside the mansion where the party’s going on. We’re out with the attendants. Then, we rise up over the action and CUT TO inside, we’re still hovering. Like spies, like we shouldn’t be there, and we shouldn’t. The people who should be at a party like this just won’t be watching this movie. And, that’s ok. As long as we like class division to perpetuate itself... I’m reminded of Levine’s (1992) piece about the “Folklore of Industrial Society.” Popular cinema divided the masses. Levine cites Gans’ (1962) research into the television-viewing habits of 1950s Italian working-class families in Boston’s West End; Gans found that, “Although the television was on constantly, actual viewing was highly selective and was structured to filter out themes inimical to the life of the peer group and to accept those characters and situations that confirmed the group’s values” (p. 1380). We don’t just accept whatever culture throws at us. We are selective, often to re...

I find it interesting that Dutch Dooley and Del Griffith are both men used to being on the road. Neal Page and Doyle Standish, on the other hand—they aren’t used to it. For them, the road is a foreign place, somewhere beneath them. Neal’s house isn’t quite as big as the Standish home, but both are definitely a class or two above the likes of Dutch Dooley or Del Griffith. Speaking of class, the classist overtones in Dutch are quite deliberate. Consider the opening sequence at the fancy party. Not only is it strange that Natalie was invited after she has been divorced out of the club for a while now, but it is strange that she would show up when they did invite her. Really, there is no reason for her to be there in-story; rather, she is there simply so we can get some awkward information dumping out of the way quickly. Natalie is not really high-class, she got knocked up into it. So, there’s hope for Doyle—who Tim at the Antagony & Ecstasy blog says John Hughes “absolutely detest...

Dutch is not an awful movie. I may have oversold its horribleness. Longtime follower of this blog, Maolsheachlann replied to yesterday ‘s blog: “This movie sounds truly awful, and looks awful, and even the title is awful!!” No, no, it’s just very much a movie of a specific time, a specific mindset. It deliberately offers us the character of Reed Standish (Christopher McDonald) just so the worst actions of Dutch Dooley (Ed O’Neill) don’t seem so bad. I mean, really, the whole kidnapping thing, the pellet gun shooting, the abandonment on the side of the road—Dutch means well. Plus, Doyle (Ethan Embry (nee Randall)) is a little jerk who in terms of what’s spiritually a 1980s film, deserves it. Doyle is the kind of kid who would grow up to be the villain in a whole bunch of 80s movies, the upper-class douche who thinks he’s better than everybody else. Dutch, whatever his style, is there to give Doyle some comeuppance. It’s notable that Dutch has only a 14% from critics on Rotten Tomato...

Ed O’Neill’s Dutch Dooley is a strange character. He used to drive a cement truck—Reed refers to him as a “truck driver”—but now he owns a construction company. That is not the strange part. He can cook a pretty good meal—I don’t know what it is he’s making early in the film, but it seems to be deliberately complicated and fancy just to let us know that he can cook, he’s better than the working-class schmo he seems to be. Later he’ll take Doyle to a greasy diner and even later proudly announce, “nothing burps better than bacon.” See, beyond the fancy cooking and the cigar smoking—which in ‘91 was more of a rich guy thing, right?—he is also prone to vulgarity and violence. He’s not above introducing a kid to pornography and he’s not above abandoning a kid on the side of the road in the snow. He’s also quick to offer a job to a guy in need. He’s kind when it fits the plot and rude when it fits, too. Stephen Hunter, in his Baltimore Sun review, says it well: But almost nothing is worked...

A lot of classist undertones (and sometimes overtones) in Dutch . Right away, we’re introduced to Natalie (JoBeth Williams), who’s ex husband has money and she’s a little out of place at a high class shindig. Meanwhile, her new guy, the titular Dutch (Ed O’Neill) working-class clothes and literally gets locked out of the mansion first time we see him. O’Neill here, is already a few years into Married with Children , so he is the epitome of working class American. Challenged by Natalie’s ex, what does Dutch do? Threatens him with violence. In addition to the classist stuff, there’s a lot of masculine posturing going on as well. Speaking of that ex, Reed (Christopher McDonald)—it’s amazing how by being a somewhat irresponsible asshole—not calling his son to let him know he won’t be available for Thanksgiving—he manipulates the situation so that Natalie has to break the bad news, making her the bad guy* while, minus a single phone call later in the film, Reed would be off with his new gi...

I was talking with Lane—she’s on the CSULA speech team—tonight, and I mentioned that tonight was my last night of Planes, Trains & Automobiles and I had nothing planned to write about. Her response: that I should write about how John Candy—and I hope I get the phrasing right—was fucking amazing. The problem, as I explained to her, is that she just covered that topic in one sentence. It seems wrong to write an entire entry about John Candy, but none about Steve Martin. Candy, and Candy’s characters, are a little nicer, though. In his New York Times obituary, 5 March 1994, Glenn Collins writes: “Mr. Candy was frequently cast as a sympathetic, stumbling, ordinary guy, and often played the slob.” His characters Freddie in Splash (on one of my family’s videotapes when I was a kid, along with Footloose and Romancing the Stone ) has one of my favorite lines in that movie (which might not make any sense out of context): Telephone. He was on the phone in ‘Nam when the grenade went off...

Nice shot of airport and city. Right at 5 minutes 58 seconds into the film, this clock switches over to 5:58. Love this insert shot of Del behind a cab door. Destination: Nowhere. As far as visuals go, this film seems pretty generic but there are some fairly interesting shots. Plus, other than his tie, Neal wears a lot of greys. Del, on the other hand, wears browns and yellows and maroons (and a blue coat and red gloves). In fact, his maroon matches Neal's tie. After they spend the night together, they actually match each other at breakfast... Speaking of breakfast, there's this shot: Neal the attacking bobcat, Del the cowering fox. Why spend the night? You're only 102 miles from Chicago, the car still runs. Why get a motel room you can't afford? Also, the flames are between them, and the smoke goes toward Del. Neal’s about to yell at him again. Can’t forget the STAY IN TOUCH billboard.

I think the reason the blog entries have been short this week goes beyond me being kinda busy. I mean, yeah, grad school stuff has gotten to a particular busy point, and I’ve got two classes I’m teaching now in addition to coaching forensics and all the work that goes with that, but I’m not complaining. The thing is, while I enjoy this movie, I don’t think I’ve really connected with it so far. So, it’s hard to get to my usual ramblings at least, if not something particularly meaningful. And, without some good scholarly (or even not-so-scholarly) articles to source on this one, there just hasn’t been a lot to respond to. I mean, maybe I could get an entire blog entry out of my decision to assume (despite his name being John here and not Tom) that Lyman Ward’s character at the beginning of this film was Ferris Bueller’s father, and that Kevin Bacon’s character (if you can even call him a character) chasing down that cab is Ren MacCormack from Footloose and Edie McClurg’s ticket agent ...

Warning: this entry is short. If Planes, Trains & Automobiles must be set in reality, then it takes place in 1988, a year after its release. Though it’s a common cinematic thing to show the moon full, I choose to take the interior of the film at face value, and we definitely see a full or near-full moon, and the movie takes place over the course of three days, culminating on Thanksgiving. Now, Thanksgiving in 1988 was November 24, the full moon that month on November 23. In 1987, Thanksgiving was the 26th, but the full moon would have been weeks earlier on the 5th of November or a couple weeks later on the 5th of December. For those of you reading this in another country, Thanksgiving may not mean much to you. You might have an idea of what it is, but that’s all. It’s one of the few specifically-American holidays. And, it’s important, I think that this film takes place in the days leading into Thanksgiving as opposed to, say, Christmas—not a specifically-American holiday—or Inde...

Planes, Trains & Automobiles is a romantic comedy. I mean, structurally. Tripping over the trunk, accidentally stealing the cab, ending up next to each other on the flight—this is the meet-cute for Neal and Del. In Hinnant’s (2006) terms, this would be the courtship model that begins with “an atmosphere of bitter animosity. It involves the initial antagonism of an improbable pair of lovers who will only slowly come to appreciate in one another the sterling moral characteristics prized in the courtship novel” (p. 297). Now, for Neal and Del, it’s a little more one-sided than that. Del is the friendly one in this pair, Neal the standoffish one. Del just asked Neal, “You want to take a shower?” Neal misunderstood and thought Del wanted them to shower together. Or did he misunderstand? Seriously, just imagine Steve Martin’s Neal as a woman, like the Sally to Del’s Harry. They share a bed their first night together. And, Neal has to sleep in the wet spot. Dowd and Pallotta (200...

Neal is in marketing. Opening scene, waiting for boss or client to pick a cosmetics as layout. Staring at the options for hours then putting off the decision until after the holidays. This is important. He barely makes it to the airport because he has to fight for a cab, first by chasing after one (versus Kevin Bacon), then paying a guy to give one up. This is important. The lawyer Neal pays to get that cab says he has “no good nature.” This is also important. Neal’s daughter knows his news is a flight delay. This is also important. Neal’s run for the cabs, his run to the gate at the airport, the delay of said flight and his daughter knowing it—the entire setup for his disrupted trip home—this is all painting a picture of an American businessman whose life is constantly on the go. He works in a business built around selling products, a business dealing in appearances and first impressions. Neal has a wife, 2.5 kids (though, no white picket fence). He works in a business the really ...

It’s been a while since I watched Planes, Trains & Automobiles all the way through. I did speed through it several months ago, to find the sequence filmed in Woodstock, IL— this bit . For those of you not keeping up with this blog, Woodstock is where they filmed most of Groundhog Day . I find myself just sitting here watching. First day of seven, and as I said, it’s been a while. I must say, these two characters—Neal Page and Del Griffith—are drawn very clearly. The excellence of two actors well acquainted with improv and comedy coming through. Amazing thing about these two guys—the characters, I mean—is that Del is painted as the one with all the annoying behaviors, but he’s also the one who is clearly quite sure of and comfortable with who he is. Neal, on the other hand, he’s the straight man, our in for the action, but it’s fairly obvious that he’s also a bit high strung. Del’s got friends all over—the guy who owns the Braidwood Inn, for example—but I can’t imagine Neal havi...

I must admit I had nothing to write about today. So, I asked my daughter Saer to ask me a question about Groundhog Day and I would spend today's blog answering it. She asked what Phil Connor's favorite color is. But, an aside first: I kept busy most of the day, including cutting apart the deleted scenes from Groundhog Day for later use, skipping through Planes, Trains & Automobiles and all three of the Nolan Batman movies (because Bob Hudgins mentioned that the Amstutz Expressway in Waukegan, Illinois--which is where Phil talks to the trooper in the snow--was used in one of those... (I swear he implied it was the latest one, but it was in Batman Begins (and I started with the latest and worked backward) that I found the brief moment in which Batman drives the Tumbler on that highway.) Since I found it and all, here you can see the shape of the overpass (where the Amstutz deadends): Which is the same shape (but I'm fairly sure not the same bridge) as the one ...