the groundhog day project

Opening narration: 53% of the American workforce is female. Three generations of women that turned 1,000 years of tradition on its ear. As little girls they were told to grow up and marry doctors and lawyers. Instead they grew up and became doctors and lawyers. They moved out of the "pink ghetto" and into the executive suite. Sociologists say the new working woman is a phenomenon of our time. Take JC Wiatt, for example. Graduated first in her class at Yale, got her MBA at Harvard. Has a corner office at the corner of 58th and Park. She works five to nine, makes six figures a year, and they call her the Tiger Lady. Married to her job, she lives with an investment banker married to his. They collect African art, co-own their co-op and have separate but equal IRA accounts. One would take it for granted that a woman like this has it all. One must never take anything for granted. Of course the narrator will not return; it's one of those openings. Plus, you know, the usual b...

All that being said, I don't have much of a problem with violence in film. Violence can work really well (if done well) in film. But, I do think that Bloodsport has a cheap structure in building the story around its violence. From the stereotyping in the opening montage of fighters to Chong Li being the villain in the third act because he beat Jackson. It's simple. In fact, as the film is starting, I should mention because 1) I think it is rather silly that everyone turns away from Chong Li when he kills another competitor on the runway, that 2) the first thing we hear about the Kumite (when Jackson is approached while hitting a punching bag) is that you could get killed there. Later, Janice says she heard the Kumite was "unnecessarily brutal" and she compares it to a cockfight. It is silly, by the way, because the only rules we are ever told for the Kumite is how to win--knock out your opponent (unconscious, and dead should certainly qualify), knock your oppo...

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 ...

I don't really want to rehash the inherent sexism in a family film made in the 70s--that's just par for the course, another sign of the times that were. At some point, you must take a film on its own terms, let it have its timely biases and its timely treatments of men, of women, of people of color, of varying ethnicities. What then can you take from The Apple Dumpling Gang ? It's an entertaining film. It's funny. It's got heart. It's plot is simple and easy to understand, and Donavan and Dusty ending up a couple is a good ending to the story as offered. That Amos and Theodore ride off with the happy couple and their kids is icing on the cake. But, what really stands out watching The Apple Dumpling Gang after so many years--and I have seen it in the intervening years, probably most recently in the last 10 to 15 years--is just how well put together it's plot is. (Except for one detail.) The Hash Knife Gang--Amos and Theodore--and their antics are barely c...

Sing Street --and, I think I'm about done with this film, I swear--begins with Conor playing guitar and making up lyrics on the spot, mostly basing them on the phrases he can hear his parents Robert and Penny yelling from downstairs. Then you get a news report about poor folks from Ireland migrating to England to look for something better. Then, Robert and Penny gather their three kids together to announce that they're having money troubles and Conor has to transfer schools. He was going to a Jesuit school but now he's headed to the Christian Brothers (Catholic) school, Synge Street. In passing, we also learn that Brendan has dropped out of college. In the first three minutes, we know so much about what's to come. It's a great example of how to set up the status quo quickly. Conor is a musician. His parents' marriage is coming apart. Brendan is a slacker. And, Conor is headed to a new school. The plot is in motion. That opening bit with the singing and parents ...

One thing about Big Hero 6 --the reason the film works well despite whatever flaws it might have--is that its structure is basically textbook feature film. You've got your small catalyst at 10* minutes in--Hiro meets Tadashi. Dyer (2010) specifies that the small catalyst be something that "happens to the protagonist, and not... an action that the protagonist takes. We've already got the setup of the status quo. Now, we're moving into what will change it. Notably, it was not getting arrested that turns Hiro around. It was seeing that there were better things that he could do with his intelligence (just as his brother suggested). Dyer also suggests that a character should state the theme of the film early on, and there are important lines the clearly set up the plot, all from Tadashi. He asks Hiro, "When are you going to do something with that big brain of yours?" He asks Hiro, "What would mom and dad say?" And, after offering Hiro a ride, he tel...

Before Sunrise begins on June 16. Some might know that day as Bloomsday, a celebration of James Joyce's Ulysses , which takes place on that day. I, however, am one of those people who tried reading Ulysses and never got very far. But, I can read about Joyce and have done so. Did so again today. The following is--because, as Luke McKernan puts it in his film blog , 19 July 2014, "Richard Linklater's Before trilogy is more subtly and rewardingly Joycean than any literal transcription of his work to the screen"--me mapping Before Sunrise onto the structure of Ulysses (which itself is mapped onto the structure of The Odyssey ). (Admittedly, some of these will be stretches.) Ulysses is told in eighteen episodes. As I understand it, the labels for those episodes were not included by Joyce but he used them in his letters and offered them to his friend Stuart Gilbert, who later published the schema. Episode One: Telemachus , named for Odysseus' son, in my mapp...

I'm reminded of Feuer (1995): "The musical, technically the most complex type of film produced in Hollywood [though, really, Hedwig was filmed in Toronto], paradoxically has always been the genre that attempts to give the greatest illusion of spontaneity and effortlessness" (p. 447). Hedwig and the Angry Inch , though it involves plenty of camera setups, some rather involved (with the live performances and whatnot) and animated sequences, still comes across quite spontaneous. Roger Ebert calls the filmmaking as "free-form as such movies as 'Pink Floyd the Wall.'" And, that's sort of the point. At any given moment, we could be staring at an outlandish live performance, watching a profoundly simply designed animated sequence or enjoying a painful flashback. That's what makes the film more real. Like life, it doesn't all flow neatly start to finish. Sometimes, life gets bogged down in moments from the past, in flights of fancy... And yet, t...

(A blue bird and an orange bird. Joel wears blue pajamas. Clem has her orange jacket (and orange hair, though when they first meet (for the second time) she had blue hair... a symbolic remnant of Joel on her head, perhaps. To be fair, Joel also wears a lot of green in the movie, not just blue (and certainly not just those pajamas). Between her coat and her hair, Clem wears a whole lot of orange.) Structurally, I'm starting to wonder about the three-act structure we usually attribute to movies. Kristin Thompson, in her book Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (which I have not actually looked at directly, except for a few bits in Google Books ), suggests a four-act structure--setup, complicating action, development, climax and epilogue (those last two are together). These four acts are roughly equal in length. Go back to Syd Field, or most any film out of Hollywood, and the three-act structure is fairly basic--setup, confrontation, res...

I feel like talking about the script. I mean, Home for the Holidays hardly has a plot. Not an obvious one. There are subplots all over the place, but really, it is almost like a stream of consciousness kind of storytelling. Stuff just happens. There is only an obvious throughline because we are stuck with Claudia for nearly the entire film; seriously, there are only a couple shots that do not include her. I will try to note those as I go. In the meantime, going back to Dyer and Marshall (both of which I have cited more than once, but especially when I broke down the script of Groundhog Day over one two three days a while back… but Marshall’s piece doesn’t seem to exist online anymore). I remember I was sick when I started that breakdown, writing my handwritten notes when I could barely breathe. I am reminded of the sick thing because of Claudia’s “24-hour bug” here. Anyway, Home for the Holidays is over 100 minute with its end credits, and just under, without. So, when Dyer sa...

When I broke down the filmic (nee screenplay) structure of Groundhog Day over the course of three days ( 1 2 3 ), I outlined a couple versions of where the act breaks might be for the film. But, generally, speaking, Act One is about 35 minutes long, Act Two is 30 minutes, Act Three the other 33 minutes or so (then the credits). But, Benesh... And, that's going to be a thing for a while, isn't it? I'll start by nitpicking Benesh then maybe get off on a tangent of my own. There are things in Benesh that I like, of course. It's not all wrong. But, I figure the easiest way to be critical, when it will not be all at once, is to nitpick first, explore our agreements later. Or maybe I could try to alternate. Like the rest of the time with this blog, I am mostly making it up as I go. I've got plans for certain topics, or certain days, but often from day to day, I'm deciding on my topic as I sit down to watch the movie. When I read the rest of Benesh's dissertati...

So, 2 out of 3 acts down, 6 out of 8 sequences, 4 out of 5 key moments. The screenplay breakdown of Groundhog Day continues. Where were we? Phil was changed by the second act. I mean, that thing broke him down, killed him... a few times, and then there was god day. Dyer doesn't break down the third act much. It's all "buildup to resolution" for him. More specifically, the protagonist "should now be so changed by everything that he has gone through that he can no longer be satisfied living the way he did before." I get that. This past summer, living in my tiny apartment alone, there were a lot of quiet, empty moments that demanded change. From an outward perspective, I maybe didn't change too much, either. Change doesn't need to be big to be drastic. I still watch a bit too much television sometimes. I still watch movies when I can--honestly, though, watching this one particular movie every day has put a slight damper on my spare movie time of late...