the groundhog day project

Sunday morning, October 16, 1994, the underground theater in Old Town Pasadena. Officially, it's called the AMC One Colorado. Throughout the 1990s I would go there a lot. This time, I'm there for Pulp Fiction . I had only recently started my subscription to Entertainment Weekly so I'm fairly sure I knew about this film this weekend because I read the review in the Los Angeles Times that Friday morning, sitting in a classroom in Waite Phillips Hall. Discussion section of an anthropology class. I had the Times delivered daily back then, even made an effort to read it, especially the Calendar section. And, I made my way to Old Town for movies as often as I could. I wouldn't work at the United Artists Marketplace a block from the underground theater until '95. Thursday night, February 11, 2016, my living room floor. Groundhog didn't see his shadow last week so winter's over and it's been hot this week. Got a fan to my right, my son Kieran sitting in the ...

Quentin Tarantino's schtick doesn't work for me as it used to. He can still put together a good scene but he's got a self-indulgent streak that... watching Reservoir Dogs right now, I realize was always there. Hell, he even gives himself the self-indulgent dialogue in the opening conversation scene. Also gives a bit to Chris Penn. And of course Steve Buscemi. I do like that we start the film with like 7 minutes of dialogue that has pretty much nothing to do with the plot. (There's surely a bit of character setup in the conversation, but it's not as if the film would be broken without this intro. (In fact, the first time I saw the film--in the campus movie theater at USC--I walked into a screening late and missed the opening bit.) Unlike fictional Robert McKee from Adaptation. last week, I think movies are perfectly fine if they spend time outside the plot here and there. Plus, here, the abrupt change (through the opening credits) from cool conversation and over...