One year anniversary, plus eye candy

"Dr. Venkman" and the Groundhog go for a little drive.

Hey, I just realized last week was my one-year anniversary! A whole year of blogging just about every movie I've watched.

Here's a movie I watched, with my son, Robert who is obsessed with Ghostbusters, so much that he now wants any movie with Bill Murray, or as he calls him "Dr. Venkhman." We saw this at Cinema Rex at the scifi Con which is a great place to see a movie like this: appreciative audience, comfy couch, and most importantly, free snacks.

Andie MacDowell didn't annoy me as much as she usually does, this time through. I used to shout, "thanks for ruining Groundhog Day" everytime I passed one of the Andie MacDowell "Got Milk?" billboards. Maybe I'm just lightening up in my old age.

I am still amazed that Bill Murray can say schlocky lines like "when you stand in the snow you look like angel" with complete sincerity and make me buy it. Though the best scene in the film is his "driving lesson" with Puxatony Phil, the love scenes in this sweet romantic comedy are both funny and romantic, often at the same time, which isn't always so easy.

There are some inspired short bits in the movie: the day that he shows up dressed like the Outlaw Josie Wales with a cigar and a sombrero. He gets in line to see the family movie "Heidi," saying "I've seen this film over a thousand times." In another scene he goes to visit the town psychiatrist who looks like he's about 25 years old, just out of college. He is clearly in over his head with Bill Murray's rather large psychiatric problem, especially after a few minutes when his new patient starts punching himself in the face with a pillow.

I wondered just how many days Phil Connors has to repeat in the movie. Screenwriter Harold Ramis said he had in mind that he was stuck in that one day for ten years. The premise is a useful way to look at the way we repeatedly fail in the same way in life. Connors makes the same mistakes with women, in this case the same woman. He is always working an angle, saying what they want to hear and trying to appear more than he is. He also treats people generally like crap. Over the course of the movie, he undergoes a Scrooge type transformation from malevolent egoist to obsessive do-gooder. Murray is great at making both incarnations of his character believable and funny. The big change is that he works on himself. He reads more, picks up hobbies, and in doing so he quits trying to impress Andie MacDowell so much. This is actually pretty good advice for anyone looking for love. The minute you stop trying so hard and focus on finding what it is you love to do, the right person usually comes to you.