the groundhog day project

Man, are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon. Watched Primer before Groundhog Day today. It’s a very low budget exploration into time travel and its consequences… except I don’t think it deals too well in actual (morally) bad consequences. It demonstrates a lot of the complexity Phil Connors might have to deal with, though, in repeating the same day if he wants things to seem normal. In Primer , Aaron (played by writer and director Shane Carruth) uses recordings of the original conversations through a certain day, for example, so that when he returns to that day he can keep one earbud in and follow the conversation how it is supposed to go. Tying back to yesterday’s entry about Run Lola Run , the way tiny differences can be a problem (or not) is demonstrated when Aaron has a conversation on a basketball court; he misses a shot in the resumption that he made previously, so the dialogue on the tape differs from the new reality. But, that doesn’t really lea...

Watching Tru Calling again, and Luc and Tru have known each other for more than a month now according to dialogue but Tru's brother and Tru's best friend only got together like once according to dialogue, even though those things happened a day apart if anyone would bother with actual continuity. Groundhog Day doesn't have this problem, but imagine a Groundhog Day TV series... like Day Break minus the cops and criminals or Tru Calling minus the talking dead people. It would end up having a whole lot of continuity problems. Unless they had an entire crew of writers and producers responsible for nothing but continuity. Continuity is good. Groundhog Day doesn't have much in the way of continuity errors. The Phil Sign Girl's disappearing friend is the big one. That the DJ banter and the street scene outside don't have quite the same timing from Day 1 to Day 2 would be a little one. (I've gone over errors before , so let's not linger.) Continu...

Day 52 - if you only had one day to live --that's an entry I've brought up several times since I wrote it. It's the one with the jelly beans. It's definitive proof I write stuff as cheesy as some of the stuff in The Fault in Our Stars --which I saw recently. Edge of Tomorrow --or Groundhog Day with guns--the other movie I saw recently, has no real sentiment to it except for one scene... SPOILERS. Tom Cruise's Cage and Emily Blunt's Rita sit in a barn well past the frontlines. We (and she) think(s) this is the first time they have made it this far. But, Cage finds some coffee and knows that Rita takes it with three sugars. She (and we) figure(s) out he has already gone through this scene. He's stalling their getting into the helicopter they have just found because he knows that every time they have tried to take the helicopter Rita ends up dead. He doesn't want to see her die again. On the next resumption, he goes to meet Rita (for the first time), but...

Not much to say tonight. Instead, a few images as I start sorting screencaps… Actually, first, a bit of an addendum to my discussion of Time Freak two entries ago : Here’s a few shots of Stillman’s timeline diagrams… Think back on my discussion of another short film, Tango and the complexity in planning that out. And, relate that to Phil’s final day in the time loop… Here’s what I listed for that day before: his report from Gobbler’s Knob (after presumably picking up pastries and coffee again for Rita and Larry) spending some time at the Tip Top Café (remember, it’s Doris who gets him up on stage for the bachelor auction) buying a whole bunch of insurance—“whole life, term, uniflex, fire, theft, auto, dental, health with the optional death and dismemberment plan, water damage”—from Ned a piano lesson with Mary fanning the flames of Debbie’s passion for Fred finding Wrestlemania tickets somewhere in town fixing Felix’s back saving the kid (Zacchaeus) falling out of the...

Backtracking just slightly, I can't believe I neglected to mention, in regard to #24 ("verbal tags") yesterday , that Ned also says, "Oh God! It is so good to see you." Foretracking back into the present--no, foretracking isn't a word, but it should be--I just watched Time Freak (2011) again. It's an Oscar-nominated short about Stillman, a guy with a time machine who has spent 3 days (real time) and year and a half (his time) going back in time to yesterday. Just yesterday. See, he had a run in with the dry cleaner because the shirt he planned to wear for photos in Ancient Rome wasn't ready. So, he went back to try it again, and again, and again. He tells his friend he was just trying to change his reaction to the situation. Since you probably won't ever see the film unless you find me and ask me to show it to you or you buy a copy yourself on iTunes, I'm going to get right into SPOILERS. He ultimately (that time) ends up hugging the dry c...

I just noticed that kid at the bottom right last night. That was Day 76 and there was still something new to see in Groundhog Day . (And, sorry the screencap is so blurry. The copy I've got of the movie on my iPad is not nearly as clear as the DVD copy I'm watching right now. If I remember, I will replace that image later) Things to note: He's wearing blue , even has a blue sign. He's facing away from the camera, which at first I thought was awkward. But, then I figured it was a way of getting in the shot without being too obvious about it But, then I thought, what if he's not even a real boy? What if he's a ghost? Or a Ted Danson cutout? Another supernatural element wouldn't be too out of place, after all. I mean, aside from the obvious supernatural bit... the time loop, there's also the devil in the red hat at the Tip Top Cafe and God serving drinks at the local bar. And, if you don't get those references, that is so very very sad... fo...