the groundhog day project

I've written before about The Room --Days 609 610 611 --but I wanted the movie version of comfort food tonight. I considered a bad horror film, but the one I picked just happens to be about the only movie unavailable on my various means of watching movies. Anyway, The Room starts out nicely enough, establishing shots of San Francisco (bought on the cheap, I'm sure) and it feels like a good indie drama. But then Tommy Wiseau has to get the first line of dialogue--"Hi, babe"--and the bad acting gets going. Then, the various "actors" compete to see who can be the worst. And, something I always liked when I was watching Groundhog Day day after day was when a new detail would jump out. Tonight, watching The Room , I got stuck on a line from the song during the first sex scene, you know the one that comes in the first five minutes of the film when we've barely had any way to get to know these characters and certainly have no reason to care about them or...

No recap as we get into Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth . The plot just gets going. A note as it starts, though: I was surprised to see talk of this film in Shadows in Eden ; I hadn't thought that Clive Barker really had anything to do with this film. I have always thought of the first two as a British... thing, and this one the first... American entry in the series. We're introduced first to JP Monroe (Kevin Burnhardt), who buys a redesigned... the movies never call it this, but apparently, it's called the pillar of souls. That thing with all the faces on it seen at the very end of Hellbound . Anyway, JP buys it for a small bit of cash from an updated version of the creepy homeless guy--who actually isn't all that creepy. Kind of has a Kris Kristofferson vibe. Then, our lead--Joey Summers (Terry Farrell)--a reporter stuck with a hospital with nothing happening. Boring night, cameraman Doc (Ken Carpenter) leaves to cover a better story and then the Hellraiser bit arriv...

There is at least the one female Cenobite. So, we could assume there's some civil war kind of split in among the denizens of hell, and Julia serves Leviathan and brings him Channard to be his body, in which case the homicidal joy in the last act of this film is not on Channard as much but on Leviathan. Structurally, Channard does serve as a sort of pseudo-Christ-Figure--and, not I'm not about to get into some Cinematic - Christ - Figuring ; don't need to. The guy willingly sacrifices himself, quite literally gets himself some stigmata, and has a giant penis attach itself to his head... Wait, that last one is not part of the Cinematic Christ - Figure . But, that penis is important to this third discussion of Hellbound: Hellraiser II because-- Actually, I've got to interrupt this entry because Kirsty was just telling Detective Bronson about fairy tales, and rather than thinking she's got no reason to connect the events of the first film to any fairy tale but jus...

Drifting away from the horror film itself for the moment. Room 237 is on instead of a second day with The Shining because I think it's important to understand why we do this. Why I do this. Why you read this, for that matter. These movies--they're just movies. We don't really need all the subtext to enjoy them. I would never argue that there is no subtext; in fact, I think there is always subtext. For example, maybe it's about the Tang cans or the Golden Rey boxes over the Calumet cans. Picking one detail out of many says more about you (me) than it does about the film. Day 113 , I wrote: Why am I doing this? Because someone needed to. Because every piece of art deserves to be studied and broken down. Every piece of fiction deserves to be dissected until we know not just what it means but what it can mean. Chuck Klosterman, reviewing Room 237 for Grantland , says, "It introduces a new way to experience and consider movies." I'm trying to rememb...

Where was I? Actually, I've got some time before I can return to the play-by-play of Poltergeist in order to (maybe) prove it's a feminist film. That entry yesterday only took me to the halfway point in this film, then my tournament downtime--of which I had very little--was over and I didn't get to the second half of the movie until hours later, on the drive home. Now, it's on again, but, per the blog rules, I gotta get through the first half of the film before I can get back where I was. In the meantime, I would note the peaceful music playing over the establishing shots of Cuesta Verde, and how deliberately pleasant it is. This begins as a simple story about a family living in a recently built suburb of Los Angeles. The mother and father get along fine, but the father occasionally falls asleep in front of the TV because fathers do that. The kids have the usual monsters in their closet... which just happen to turn out to be a bit real. (Sidenote: I just noticed th...

There's danger ahead. See, I want to run Hedwig through the Kozlovic-Black scale, but I know my arguments regarding 15.75 atonement might offend some. Or should . Anyway, let's just do this. Hedwig is quite 1 tangible and 2 central and an 3 outsider . 3/3 Regarding 4 divinely sourced , Kozlovic (2009) explains, "Christ-Figures usually arrive onto the scene through some form of deliberate outside intervention, sometimes by a distant God-figure" (p. 6). The stress there is mine because obviously Hedwig is not in America because of a distant God-figure. He's there because of Luther... who coincidentally shares a name with the founder of a branch of Christianity. There is outside intervention. 4/4 Hedwig's birth is not exactly a 4.5 miraculous birth but Hedwig is born from Hansel because of an accident. I'm driven to Merriam-Webster for what should be a basic concept-- miracle . The first definition is "an extraordinary event manifesting div...

Behind the more mundane details, like Malcolm serving as a surrogate for Cole’s absent father, M. Night Shyamalan likes to put big ideas into his movies. Sometimes he’s a little obvious about it. Hell, Lady in the Water basically invents an entirely new mythology just to play at something big. I’ve got Lady in the Water playing beside me right now as I write this, and I’d say this is the point at which Shyamalan really became… well, a joke. Despite many seemingly incorrect notions about comic books, Unbreakable remains a fairly good film, even if it tends to be lesser Shyamalan. Signs , despite an overtly (ridiculously) religious ending, still plays quite well. The Village , with a few minor changes, would be great, but instead is just mostly (that is, through most of the film) good and partly just awful. Lady in the Water --well, it is something else entirely, Shyamalan getting bigger than himself. News reports on war in just the first few minutes of the film remind me of the news...

The penultimate viewing of Groundhog Day has ended only minutes ago (as I start writing this entry). I (mostly) sat and just watched the movie rather than type this entry as it ran. I guess I owed the movie a good (mostly) uninterrupted viewing. I don’t know if I have a lot to say tonight. But, I think I have something to say. I was reading the Day 365 entry for the Lawrence/Julie & Julia Project earlier today. I am not on my final viewing just yet—that will happen at the party tomorrow—but I like how Lawrence Dai writes, “As I reflect upon this past year, I have found it increasingly difficult to pinpoint what today’s final viewing really means.” I get that. I’m not sad about being done with Groundhog Day , but nor am I happy to be rid of it. In fact, I intend to watch the movie again (relatively) soon… It occurs to me that, even parenthetically, that “relatively” doesn’t make sense. For me , relatively soon, would probably be sooner than a month from now, you know, since I...

Tonight, another milestone was reached in the Groundhog Day Project --I killed one of my copies of the movie. My blu-ray copy has been "laser burned." It will no longer play. A moment of silence, please.               That is enough of that... except, with the DVD copy I can no longer see all the fissures in Phil's face. I can be alliterative, though, it seems. No biggie. I have certainly run that disk a lot of times. Now, to kill the DVD. Of course, starting next week, I'll be watching the copy on my iPad a lot while I am out of town. But, anyway, today is not a day to lament the loss of a blu-ray disk. Today is a day to come at Benesh's (2011) Becoming Punxsutawney Phil: Symbols and Metaphors of Transformation in Groundhog Day hard. I've got a deadline . I was just looking at the screen and... I miss my blu-ray. Whatever definition this is, it is a sad sad simulacrum of a much more enjoyable (read: clear and crisp) version of this film. S...

Hopper's helping Andrea deal with Eddie's body... I don't remember them talking about Eddie previously. I think he's Andrea's ex-partner. Oh, he's alive. Day Break again. But, I'm also most of the way through Groundhog Day for today already. I was cheating a little. Limited time because I was judging at a high school debate tournament most of the day and then went out to dinner with two of my kids. Got home and just had to watch the season premiere of Game of Thrones but don't want to stay up until all hours of the night because I have plans tomorrow. New resumption on Day Break . But, I was telling the story about Game of Groundhogs ; that is to say, I turned on Games of Thrones on one screen and Groundhog Day on another. Now, I could have simply ignored Groundhog Day and claimed I had watched it, but no, I did my best to pay attention to both and got some awesome moments out of the juxtaposition. For example, as Phil talked to Larry about his...

Day Break episode three is entitled "What if he lets her go?" Benesh's (2011) next section is about "the respiration metaphor." These two things probably don't go together. Oh well. "This is the day that changes everything" instead of that bad day line from episode two. Good recap, though. Oddly, the episode begins by calling this "Day 1." I don't think they did that before, but maybe this episode is going to cover a whole lot of days. Hopper wakes with the bullet wound but it's fresh, just open. He sneaks into the bathroom and bandages it. Meanwhile, Benesh fits a few details into the respiration metaphor: Phil as a "blowhard," Phil blowing smoke at the Tip Top, Phil blowing a bubble while learning piano, and Phil performing mouth-to-mouth on O'Reilly (p. 101-2). She also includes Phil performing the Heimlich, because that "restores breath to Buster." Hopper's package he had to get has a small h...

The second episode of Day Break is called "What If They Run?" The cliffhanger ending, remember, Hopper and Rita were heading out of town, but trucks were waiting. Phil Connors never had to deal with this. Even when he managed to get out of town in the original screenplay--a narrative mistake, I think--there were not men waiting to kill him. (There's a handy intro setting up the repeating day before the second episode, though the opening line is a bit cheesy--"You think you're having a bad day?") Benesh (2011) talks about eating--the digestive metaphor--and makes some good points. I've written before about food (even mentioned Benesh, though at the time I was still avoiding reading her). And, I know these two things don't connect in any obvious way, but it occurs to me Hopper ate nothing in the first episode, just as Phil barely eats anything in Groundhog Day . And, I argued before, of course, that Phil doesn't have to eat, at all. Doesn'...

Warning: I am in the mood for meaning, apparently. Predictions show a steady low, You’re feeling just the same. But seasons come and seasons go. I’ll make you smile again. If you don’t believe take me by the hand, Can’t you feel you’re warming up? Yeah, I’m your weatherman. They say it’s gone, say winter’s done That don’t mean a thing. ‘Cause I’m the one that moves the sun For you I’d turn it into spring So when you’re feeling lonely, try to understand, Baby, I can warm you up ‘cause I’m your weatherman. The lyrics to Weatherman heard just before and after the bit inside the van on the ride to Punxsutawney. Benesh (2011) says it just "masquerades as a pop romantic love song" (p. 90). She thinks there's more to it. Obviously, the lyrics themselves give us a metaphor, winter for a low mood, spring for being happy. Benesh's take is interesting, since if we choose to link the song to the characters, we would presume this is Phil talking to Rita; he's the weatherm...