the groundhog day project

1985 is behind me now. Again. In the 80s, I guess it was like any year I made it all the way through was awesome because The Day After and Threads had offered up some wonderful visuals for my overactive imagination and cult-induced apocalypticism. Better to be Phil, stuck in the same day again and again and again, knowing that world didn't fall apart that day, no big war began, no pandemic struck, no aliens invaded. Just small town problems, a natural death or two*, and that's all. (* if you think only the Old Man died in Punxsutawney my friends, I suggest you watch this deleted scene and picture what that truck would have done to that little girl and that puppy if Phil hadn't been there.) Quick sidenote: I'm watching on the blu-Ray and the subtitles not quite matching up with the dialogue (which I've still got locked in my head as well) is really bugging me, but someone's doing laundry, and I don't want to just blast the film to the entire neighb...

On the other hand , popular culture is a dangerous distraction. This week, they almost elected a racist pedophile to the senate in Alabama. Today, the FCC voted to get rid of net neutrality. Trump's still president... And, regardless of which side you're on in any of those things, it is easy to get distracted binge watching the latest Netflix series, watching the latest movie, updating your social media accounts. Our lives are not as streamlined as James' life is in that underground desert bunker, with just one tv show to watch, just a handful (literally, he names them later and you could count them on one hand) of friends online, and his parents. We've got larger families, more friends, jobs, school, obligations, a larger world to worry about. Bigger politics than a trio of people and one fantasy tv series--the politics of which he cannot control (except inasmuch as his interest might influence the way his father writes the show, but he doesn't know that, so it...

There's a poster on James' (Kyle Mooney) bedroom wall in his... captive home? It says: CURIOSITY IS AN UNNATURAL EMOTION If you could ever actually convince someone of this, you would certainly be able to imprison them and control them... And, yes, that was leaning into a rant about religion or politics, but instead I wanted to concern myself with something closer to the actual text (or at least its subtext) of the film today. James has been held captive since he was a kid, but he thinks his captors his real parents, he thinks the world full of toxic air so they cannot go outside without protection. He only knows the underground bunker in the desert where they have raised him, and the worlds of Brigsby Bear , the TV show his father has produced just for him over the years--25 volumes, 736 episodes. He has these on VHS and has watched them time and time again. They are, in many ways, more real to him than his own monotonous life inside the bunker--his Groundhog Day Effect, i...

Consider another angle. Maybe Michael isn't Laurie's id . Rather, Laurie is Michael's super-ego. Michael wasn't waiting for the opportunity to kill again. He could have done that at any time. He was waiting to be judged for having killed. This is why he follows Tommy first. He can feel a connection with Tommy. Tommy is just like him, a little boy full of imagination and potential. And, Laurie looks after Tommy. Like Judith didn't look after Michael all those years ago. This means Laurie's repression is even more important to the story than already suggested. She isn't free of Michael's violence (up to a point--and that point matters) because she doesn't have sex and do drugs (Notably, Michael probably has no idea Laurie was smoking in Annie's car. He's following them, but that doesn't mean he can see what's going on inside.) but because being that pure, virginal girl, she can pass judgment on him. He wants approval. He wants disa...

The weekend that Everything Is Illuminated was released was apparently in the midst of a dry spell for movie viewing for me. Serenity would be out two weeks later, Good Night, and Good Luck the week after that. The Constant Gardener was two weeks earlier. Everything Is Illuminated was #45 at the box office its opening weekend but, to be fair, it was only on 6 screens. And, I didn't even see it in the theater. I watched it on DVD months later. The 40-Year-Old-Virgin was #4 in its 5th weekend. I would see it on DVD. The Constant Gardener was #7. I had seen it a couple weekends earlier. Red Eye was #8. Saw that one its opening weekend, four weeks earlier. Wedding Crashers was #9. I would see that on DVD. Same with March of the Penguins at #10, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at #16, The Skeleton Key at #18 (hated that movie), and Broken Flowers at #19. Batman Begins was #25 in its 14th weekend. Saw that one opening weekend. More that I wouldn't see until DVD: Fant...

(note: mistakenly mixed up my year for The Ring with the release date for Ringu . So, the specifics in the first couple paragraphs here are 4 years off. The point about television ownership still stands, though.) …except, I don’t. I love television. I think television has it’s brain-frying downside, and a lot of people—like several of those in that Rear Window -inspired balcony scene in The Ring —use television to numb their minds, to yank themselves out of their dreary lives, to spy on the rich and famous perhaps, or live vicariously through reality game show contestants, or just to laugh at a good sitcom. In 1998, when The Ring was in theaters, there were 67,011,180 households in this country with cable television, and that was 67.4% of households with TVs… meaning 99,423, 116 (rounded off) households had television in this country alone, according to Nielsen Media Research . According to Infoplease , there were 102,528,000 households total in 1998 (again, in the United States). ...

Saturday Day 1 (366) There will be no mention of Groundhog Day today. No significant mention anyway. Inevitably, because I have watched that movie 365 days in a row, and because I’m (at least for now) still going to be posting what I’m calling Phase 2 at the same URL and using the same Twitter and Facebook page , I will probably mention Groundhog Day from time to time, use it as a baseline for comparison, the film by which to measure all others. But, not today. Today, I have two things to do here. 1) I must generally review The Ring . 2) I must establish new “rules” for this blog. For ease and confusion, I will cover #2 first. The plan: I will not repeat myself, per se. I will not just choose another movie and watch it for 365 days. But, I think my old movie review blog had no formality to it that kept me reviewing movies regularly. And, though I rather like some of those reviews, I imagine that looking at a film more than once… Oh, who am I kidding? I know that looking a...