the groundhog day project

I remember only a few specifics about Suspect even though I have seen it many times. One of the things I remember is who actually committed the crime, and who plays him, so I am going in with SPOILERS (which I will not share here, now). This was the first time I knew who Liam Neeson was, even though I had seen him previously in Krull and Excalibur , of course (and that's directed by Peter Yates, who also directed Suspect . Also of note, Cher would star in Moonstruck just two months later, but I will be skipping that film in this movie life list because I have already written about it. Still, it's interesting that aside from some passing knowledge of Sonny & Cher, there was a one-two punch here of Cher as defense attorney and then romantic lead [Which given the co-star I forgot--mentioned below--I guess she kinda is here, as well].           By the way, I forgot Dennis Quaid was even in this film. And, since I ended up having very little to ...

The HBO description for Running On Empty bothers me. The '60s are past, and the Vietnam War they struggled against is long over, but the Popes have been on the run from the FBI for fifteen years, choosing to live as [sic] family of fugitives rather than be separated. Now 17-year-old musical prodigy Danny Pope must decide whether to accept a scholarship to Julliard or deny his talent to remain with his family, as his mother did for him. Which, nevermind the missing article, this thing SPOILS so different parts of Act Three of the film. But, I didn't want to talk about HBO. I just happened to notice that description as I went to play the film tonight and it bugged me. What I wanted to talk about was the larger sort of message the film suggests to me. The problems of one generation put upon the next. In the case of the film, it's the criminal act of Arthur and Annie put upon their sons Danny and Harry. In the case of, you know, reality, it's systemic racism, cli...

RoboCop is a movie where I'm sure I didn't get all the satirical elements when I first saw it, but it was science fiction, and full of violence, soI loved it... And, I can't even start by reminiscing because, the news report and commercials that start the movie are amazing. The anchors talk about potential nuclear conflagration in Africa with the same cheerful tone as they talk about the President getting accidentally left in zero-g visiting a space station. And, then there's a commercial for branded artificial hearts. And, then they get to the news reports that will actually matter to the plot. Then armored cops, locker room, casually co-ed and before 11-year-old me can even be excited by the casual nudity, it's brought down by talk of strike and removing the name tag of the recently-killed Frederickson. Then we're off to a corporate meeting--but this is the folks running the police and that was a crazy idea to me even if I didn't fully understand its ...

To continue somewhere before I left off, I was not sent off to boarding school like Morgan. I just had private school, which meant very few friends in my neighborhood, and limited interaction with my friends outside of school, which limited my social life, I'm sure. Or maybe my introversion has other sources and it is just easy to blame the religious environment in which I grew up, and which isolated me from the larger world for a while. I definitely blame that upbringing for my attachment to film. I mean, why wouldn't I envelop myself in fiction as much as fucking possible when I'm being told on a regular basis that the world is ending? But then, I'm trying to come up with a comedic way to talk about the differing politics of my parents and me, even my oldest siblings and me. But, there's a pandemic and rioting and I am inclined to get into a serious rant instead... Or to focus entirely on the film today to avoid all that. As if that's possible. ...

Open on a poster for Zombie , drift down over more horror posters, and we know something about Morgan before we even see him. He has a specific area of interest and he overlaps his fucking posters, which most of the time, I'd say, is wrong, but there was a time in my early 20s, still in a small bedroom in my parents' house, that I had to overlap things on my wall in order to put up everything I wanted up. My room was very small. Not sure if I've shared images before. Well, let me backtrack. As a kid, I had a race car bed that was in the dining room of all places, not because we were particularly poor but because there were a lot of us. I had six older sisters. The oldest two got married in the early 80s and then I got a very small room to myself upstairs. Barely long enough for a twin bed and only a couple feet wider. Third and fourth sister moved out and the remaining two each got larger rooms while I kept the small one. When they both left for college--the same year, ...

It's weird that a film that wasn't very kid friendly and was so tied into the Cold War was something I liked. Even when I saw it the first time in the theater. The movie: White Nights . In my "movie life" list, I've had to jump ahead. The next five movies on the list were films I have already written about in this blog: Silverado 692 The Legend of Billie Jean 752 753 Real Genius 736 Better Off Dead... 772 773 Commando 530 531 532 533 534 535 536 I mean, it starts with a dance number, and ballet not musical, which by 1985 I'd not had much experience with musicals, but I would soon come to love them. And, honestly, watching this dance opening today, it is awesome. Mikhail Baryshnikov is great. And, now for the first time I look up what that show was. Le Jeune Homme et La Mort , about a man driven to death by his faithless lover. Which that one scene of it conveyed so well I'm wondering what else might be involved in the plot. ...

After talking about names , we need to move on to something more about identity in Annihilation . HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. Annihilation , which structurally echoes films like Event Horizon or The Arrival , or an under appreciated tv show from a few years ago called The River , or most any explorer adventure story. It harkens back even to Conrad's Heart of Darkness , except Kurtz and Marlow are on the same trip into the jungle. Or there have been many Kurtzes, including Kane (Oscar Isaac). This is a trip into the unknown taken by characters who are all dealing with loss, with grief, with the universe turned against them. And, in response, they explore because what else is there? They could wait to figure out who they are, or they could act, and hope that in action, the become someone recognizable in the mirror. The film relies on an understanding of the psychological underpinnings of depression but doesn't make much effort to explore them explicitly. Emily Yoshida at Vulture c...

I was thinking about westerns today, you know, as one does. And, about war films, and cop films, and all those ex-soldiers killing far too many bad guys in the 80s, and there was a clear trend about (mostly) lone white men fighting all levels of evil, this specifically American (but surely understood in many another culture as well) fantasy about how much one man can do on his own (or with a small band of similar heroes). And, while recently we have drifted back into the same fantasy with the prevalence of superhero films, there is an interesting gap through the 90s--full of aging versions of too many of those 80s heroes and young heroes raging against fascist governments--that makes me want to do a serious study, a la Wright's Six Guns and Society or Nowell's Blood Money , but focused on the thesis that all these various types of action films are variations of one genre, not multiple. That westerns and those grungy cop dramas from the 70s, those big buff soldiers (some damage...

Interesting movie connection, since I also watched The Jerk ( 1185 1186 1187 1188 ) for this childhood deconstruction phase of the blog: Steve Martin was supposed to play Rooster in Annie but he and Bernadette Peters had recently broken up, so he opted out. Interesting movie connection: when Annie, Grace, and Daddy Warbucks go to the movies, they see Camille . First of all, the lyrics to the original-for-the-film-version song "Let's Go to the Movies" actually SPOIL the ending to Camille -- "and Greta Garbo is probably crying while Robert Taylor is locked in her dying embrace. --but second of all--and probably the reason Camille is the film used (even though, its class-divided romance plot relates to Annie somewhat)-- Annie 's supervising editor Margaret Booth also edited Camille back in 1936. The classist stuff of Annie is interesting, despite mostly being a shallow layer of flavor. By boiling down Little Orphan Annie to just her rags-to-riches or...

Coming on the heels of On Golden Pond , the central premise of Annie --that the presence of a kid will inject some life in an old man (though Daddy Warbucks is not as old as Norman Thayer, Jr, of course) is quite a cliché, but Annie is built of different stuff--a shallow surface of classist structures and a rags to riches plot that might as well be a romantic comedy (a little bit Pretty Woman ). Oddly enough, it is also a big departure from the comic strip. Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks was not even always a regular presence in the comic. In the place of Warbucks' secretary (or whatever her title is) Grace Farrell (Ann Reinking), there's a Mrs. Warbucks in the comic, and she is not the nice woman Grace is. She doesn't like Annie and sends her back to the orphanage more than once. (An orphanage run initially by Miss Asthma and then by Miss Treat.) The first time she tries to return Annie, a "society friend" sees her and she keeps Annie instead. Then Oliver ret...

Escape from New York didn't teach me anything about "white flight", of course . Its premise builds on the concept but the plot doesn't really play with it. Notably in how we never see what life is like for those outside the prison. In 1968, the Kerner Report warned, "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal" and "cities will have Negro majorities by 1985 and the suburbs ringing them will remain largely all white unless there are major changes in Negro fertility rates, in migration settlement patterns or public policy" and argued, "The alternative is not blind repression or capitulation to lawlessness. It is the realization of common opportunities for all within a single society." This entry will not all be so dense and full of historical quotes, but it will, as feels inevitable when spending time with Escape from New York , be political. I mean, of course someone like The Duke would rise up ...

Both Brigsby Bear and Dave Made a Maze , about which I have been obsessing a bit of late-- Brigsby Bear Dave Made a Maze day 1229 - dreams and imaginations to help us escape day 1230 - it means something day 1231 - the best version of yourself day 1243 - i wanted to make something day 1244 - it's a little on the nose day 1245 - get the story to come off the page day 1246 - everything we've got to work with day 1247 - people are gonna want to see this shit day 1248 - everyone is assholes --deal in a fundamental need to (1) complete something meaningful (2) with the help of friends (3) in order to move on to some semblance of a normal life. In both cases, (4) the process ends with the destruction of the world... sort of. In Brigsby , in the film within the film, the entire universe has to be reset (reminding me of one of my favorite movies ever, The Fountain ) for Brigsby, and for James, to have a new beginning. In Dave , the labyrinth has to be completed and then d...

SPOILERS. Let us just get that out of the way immediately. I do not aim to SPOIL specific elements of the latest Star Wars but, inevitably, a meaningful discussion about The Last Jedi will entail SPOILERS. (Also, I saw the movie last night and again this morning, and by one of the only rules I have for this blog, I must write about the movie today (or never focus on it at all). (At least until I see it again... Which, given my multi-day thing with The Force Awakens --which you really must read because it was fucking amazing--arguing against claims of all its plot holes (and you can find those entries here and here , but also and especially here , here , and here ) and the usual practices of nerds on the Internet (which, on a typo, just autocorrected to internment and I almost wanted to leave it because that feels so damn appropriate sometimes) I expect I might be forced into this film again later. But just in case...) Again, SPOILERS are coming. I'm already involved in ...