the groundhog day project

Heaven Can Wait can wait. Because today was an awesome movie day. I had an unplanned class cancellation, so I made it to a couple movies in the afternoon ( Marshall and then Professor Marston and the Wonder Women ), then in the evening I took my daughter to see Happy Death Day because 1) she wanted to see it and it turned out to be a good horror film and 2) it's always fun to watch a time loop movie a second time. If you are out of the loop... And that wasn't a pun. If you are out of the loop, regarding Happy Death Day , think Scream ( 387 388 389 390 391 393 394 ) crossed with Groundhog Day ( 1 ... 365 + so many other entries)--except don't because Quentin Fottrell over at Market Watch seems to either think that mix is Hollywood out of ideas, because reusing one idea with another, and adding your own bits is bankrupt Hollywood at its finest, or some such bullshit. I mean, I think most remakes are cynical cash grabs from, yeah, a Hollywood out of ideas, or at l...

It's actually earlier in 1978, now. I neglected to get all of these movies in exact release order. Apologies. Anyway, the movie is Heaven Can Wait , a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan , and not a remake of the previous film called Heaven Can Wait . Warren Beatty reportedly wanted to cast Mohammad Ali and do a straighter remake--the protagonist who comes back was a boxer--but Ali wasn't willing, Beatty stepped in himself, the protagonist became a football player, and well, Heaven Can Wait happened. Now, I saw this a lot as a kid, but I don't remember liking it much until I was a a bit older. I found it kind of boring when I was really young. I think the guy's death just a few minutes in amused me, though. Riding his bike through a mountain tunnel, and some van with surfboards on the roof is trying to overtake a truck with a camper, so both lanes from the other end of the tunnel are occupied--CUT TO BLACK. At the weigh station in the clouds--which of course, has a Conc...

As I start writing today's entry, I'm not sure if I'm going to watch Ice Castles one more time. I've got a 48-hour rental, so I could watch it a third time, really boil down what it taught me when I was a kid, but it's mostly going to be something simple and cheesy... like It taught me about perseverance and love and the importance of having people around you . Obvious crap like that. One thing it didn't teach me was that being blind is fine because you can get right back up and... skate. Again. I don't skate. Not only was that never my calling, I rarely roller skated, and often did it wrong, and have only ice skated like twice ever. But, that's beside the point. My calling when I was young (not as young as where I still am with this deconstruction thing. Older, able to have dreams about what I wanted to do with my life.) was writing, then filmmaking. I could write without my sight, I suppose. But, filmmaking... And, more importantly, filmwatching--thi...

Ice Castles is almost necessarily cheesy and sentimental. This particular story cannot be told any other way. At the core, there are two threads to the story--young girl, Olympic hopeful on the rise, loses her sight, then fights through near-complete blindness to skate again; and same young girl separated from her longtime boyfriend, cheats on him and only though her own struggle with that other story thread can she get her shit together and be with that longtime boyfriend again. It's a basic romance with a Cinderella sort of sports story over the top of it. As for that basic romance, I love Roger Ebert's take on this film... Have we grown so desperate for vicarious cheap thrills that the simple love story is done for? Is it no longer possible to have a movie in which two young people meet in the first reel, smooch in the third, get married in the seventh, and disappear into the sunset as we disappear down the aisles? I must interrupt because any film out of Hollywood wor...

Changing gears. After watching Halloween for a week, my daughter saw the movie that's on and asked "what's this got to do with Halloween?" I think she thought I was doing horror films for October. If we're lucky, I'll get to another horror film before the month is done but, no, I'm still deconstructing my childhood, watching the movies I saw often when I was a wee lad. This may mean some abrupt turns in theme or style, like today. From the beloved Halloween to a film I actually only remember portions of, and don't really know if it's any good (it has a 6.5 on IMDb, but sometimes you can't trust IMDb voters, of course). The film is Ice Castles . Notably, it's the actual plot I don't remember. Some obvious points--ice skater, olympics hopeful, in an accident, loses her eyesight, has to learn to skate again. Meanwhile, there's a romance. Maybe there's not much more, plotwise. Plenty more story right away, though. Lexie's (L...

Killers wandering the streets. Young people dying when they make the wrong choices. Doctors and sheriffs ineffectual. And, evil never dies. This is the world introduced to me by Halloween when I was a kid. Long tracking shots. Deliberate use of the background and the foreground. POV shots to both put us in a role of the killer and to manipulate us into feeling him approach. A simple but evocative score. This is the cinematic marvel introduced to me by Halloween when I was a kid. It gave me something to be afraid of, and it gave me something to love.           One observation, and it only just occurred to me. Who was coming to look at the Myers house? Laurie leaves keys under the mat for her father because people are coming to look at the house. Did they ever show up? Did Michael kill them, too? Or did they get lucky because he was loitering outside Haddonfield High? Later Brackett and Loomis get into the house because the front door is unlocked. Mayb...

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...