{"id":6181,"date":"2011-12-15T11:00:53","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=6181"},"modified":"2017-04-22T20:12:27","modified_gmt":"2017-04-22T19:12:27","slug":"all-time-top-10-films-no-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=6181","title":{"rendered":"All-Time Top 10 Films (No 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The second film in this very personal list of my All-Time Top 10 Films is the annoyingly brilliant &#8216;<strong>Groundhog Day<\/strong>&#8216;.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ylGrQVL774k\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The most annoying thing about this film is the casting of\u00a0Andie MacDowell.<\/p>\n<p>I dislike her.<\/p>\n<p>Her face has magical powers, in that it makes the palm of my right hand itch whenever I see it.<\/p>\n<p>I want to slap her.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Murray, however, is the perfect foil &#8211; the most wonderful antibody &#8211; to combat Andie MacDowell&#8217;s <em>faux<\/em> goofiness and all-too-real sickliness.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Murray makes this film; the gradual transformation of the character &#8216;Phil&#8217; from a curmudgeonly, shallow, self-invested individual to a person who engages with every level of society, and who grows to show genuine compassion, where &#8211; before the change &#8211; he would have walked away, plays out against a series of almost slapstickesque scenes, and against some delightful dialogue.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s easy to miss the big picture and just enjoy the spectacle of the film.<\/p>\n<p>I enjoy both aspects of Groundhog Day.<\/p>\n<p>The irony that I could watch this, a film about the repeated hell of one person living the same day over and over again, on almost continuous repeat, is not lost on me.<\/p>\n<p>Groundhog Day is more than a fantasy, it is also a clever commentary on aspects of life as most people live it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?<br \/>\nRalph: That about sums it up for me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If you want to examine this film deeply, there&#8217;s a lot going on beneath the surface.<\/p>\n<p>But you can always just relax and let the story flow over you.<\/p>\n<p>And remember, next February 2nd it&#8217;ll be&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Groundhog Day!<\/p>\n<p>ps: Want to know where Harold Ramis got the idea for the script from? Go and read &#8216;The Gay Science&#8217;, by Friedrich Nietzsche.<\/p>\n<p>pps: The original screenplay had Phil living his life on a loop as a result of a &#8216;This will teach him a lesson&#8217; spell, cast by an ex-girlfriend (Stephanie). These details were dropped from the shooting script.<\/p>\n<p>ppps: The original screenlay had Phil trapped in his Groundhog Day for over 150 years.<\/p>\n<p>pppps: I know far too much about this film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The second film in this very personal list of my All-Time Top 10 Films is the annoyingly brilliant &#8216;Groundhog Day&#8216;. The most annoying thing about<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}