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.

When obsessions collide: Cary Grant and Bill Murray

Separated at birth?

Walter Ecklund (Cary Grant) and Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) are both alcoholic sea captains with emotional baggage and silly hats. Bill Murray will be on Turner Classic Movies "Under the Influence" tonight talking with Elvis Mitchell about his role model, Cary Grant. My obsessions have not collided in such an interstellar way since Murray got on stage at a Bob Dylan concert.

Edit: well the interview was dull as paste, but I am usually bored with interviews with my favorite actors. On top of that Bill seemed a little spaced out and he roundly denied taking any influence from His Girl Friday, though he talked about North By Northwest. This puzzled me since Cary Grant's character, Walter Burns in HGF, is a prototype for the half heel/half hero types that Murray occasionally plays. (See Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters and Phil Connors in Groundhog Day).

One bright spot in that Bill looks more like his brother Brian Doyle did in the 80s, which made me want to re-watch the Razor's Edge. "Ohhh Piedmont. Fresh meat!"

I'm Obsessed Thank You Very Much

Quick 80's movie nerds, (aka Neoclasicists), what movie is the headline a quote from? Hint: a booga, booga, ah, ah ah!

I've been obsessed with movies since I was a kid. Star Wars was probably my first true obsession, but my disorder didn't fully kick into high gear until I hit puberty. The year was 1985 and I found myself working in a video store checking out three movies a night and watching HBO and WTBS whenever I had the chance. I fell in love with Cary Grant. I became obsessed with Bill Murray. I went completely bonkers for Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights, so much so that I recorded dialog from the movie onto a cassette which I played in my Walkman. (That was sorta like a big clunky iPod, kids. Ask your folks.)

I began to kick old school in a big way in college, taking film classes and occasionally ditching out of work and real-life to watch movies in the library basement. I built the first iteration of my Shrine to Cary Grant. After college I started working a desk job and began to play around building web pages. In 1995, I launched the first ever web site devoted to Cary Grant and a few years later I was contracted to write a book about him called "Cary Grant: A Life in Pictures." Two more books followed on Grace Kelly and Bob Hope and I became a founding member of the E-mail Warbrides, the first mailing list devoted to Cary Grant. Since then, I have attended Caryventions and even hosted one in Minneapolis.

In 2002 I got married and began a new obsession shortly thereafter: Jane Austen and more importantly, film adaptations of her books. Sci Fi was not forgotten and the Star Wars pre-quels loomed large in this time in my life. My love of Old Hollywood of the Turner Classics variety has never waned and new obsessions have been added almost yearly to now include: Michael Redgrave, Gary Cooper, Powell and Loy, Irene Dunne, Gregory Peck, Barbara Stanwyck, Jimmy Stewart, Alfred Hitchcock and the list goes on. I'm always on the look-out for the obscure from those stars that I follow, so if anyone hears of a showing of early and out of print films with these stars, I'd be much obliged if you'd let me know in the comments section.

I plan to post regularly on the films I'm currently watching and especially provide goodies, like "The Eye Candy of the Day" with awesome photos of pretty people in the movies.