GroundhogDay Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Harold Ramis is the comedy writer and director everyone's cribbed from, from Sandler to Apatow. After leaving "Second City TV," Ramis went on to write, direct, and occasionally star in comedic touchstones like Animal House, Caddyshack, Stripes, Groundhog Day, and of course, Ghostbusters, which have starred a slew of loveable losers fighting to get their sh*t together in the army, on the golf course, or in the middle of a war with supernatural beings. After taking a few years off, Ramis is taking it back to the beginning with this summer's Year One, which stars Jack Black and Michael Cera as loveable loser cavemen who, when Black's Zed accidentally burns down the village, find themselves in the middle of a very familiar holy war. Read on and find out what the big daddy of buddy movies had to say about evolution and self-improvement, male full frontal nudity and the lack thereof, and what the heck is up with Ghostbusters 3.

Year One opens nationwide this Friday, June 19th.

Cinematical: How much more stressful is it to deal with marketing a summer blockbuster and competing with the other movies that are out?

Harold Ramis: You know, it's the same level of stress every time you make a movie, because you've pinned all your hopes and dreams on it and you've fantasized what success will be like, but at the time you can't escape fantasizing what failure will be like. [laughs]

I conceived this movie on a big scale, to do a Biblical epic comedy. I knew it was ambitious and when the studio said "Yes, we'll do it," and it became real, I thought, "Oh my God!" [laughs] It's one thing to fail small, but to make a big movie that doesn't work is so risky.

Terminator: Salvation hits theaters today and to commemorate that we're looking at films that veer into the fourth dimension (that's time for us non-technical folk). Time travel is a story device with all kind of possibilities built right in. If I could travel back to 2005 and locate Jennifer Aniston would I be able to convince her that making The Break-Up was a really bad idea? I can dream, can't I? Anyway, here are seven of my favorite time travel movies.

Back to the Future (1985)
Between constant reruns on basic cable and just being a pretty awesome flick is there anyone in this world who hasn't seen Back to the Future? Eccentric scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) while demonstrating his Delorean-mounted time machine sends Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) back to the 1950s. Marty's return to 1985 must be timed to the split second to coincide with a lightning bolt that will power the Delorean's Flux Capacitor, but in the meantime Marty disrupts the event that got his parents together thus threatening his very existence. Before he can return to his own time Marty needs to put his folks back on the path to marriage, put a bully in his place and invent the skateboard all set to the music of Huey Lewis and The News. This movie is just plain fun. The following year Lea Thompson who plays Marty's mom graduated from coming on to her own son to putting the moves on a cranky water fowl in Howard the Duck.

I've been meaning to promote both of these shiny new buckets of coolness for a couple days now, and I'm finally getting around to it now. First up, yours truly was a recent guest on the Film.com podcast, where I chatted up all things Superbowl trailers, summer movies and the future of film criticism with the very cool cats who run the show over in that neck of the woods. So if you want to kill time and have the desire to listen to my thick New Yawk accent for a little bit, I highly suggest you truck it on over to Film.com and give it a whirl.

Speaking of things you can listen to, our good friends over at Slashfilm recently recorded a commentary track for Groundhog Day ... alongside the very awesome character actor, Stephen Tobolowski, who played the annoying-but-lovable Ned Ryerson. And since there's got to be tons of you Groundhog Day fanatics out there (I'm totally one of them, so don't be afraid to pipe up), you'll want to sync this sucker up next time you're in the mood to chuck The Murray into your DVD player.

That's it, all done. I shall leave you with ... a scene.

This month has been absolutely dismal for new movie DVD releases. In revolt, I'm giving you two re-issues of great, classic flicks.

Groundhog Day -- 15th Anniversary Edition
It's hard to believe that this comedy came out 15 years ago. Coincidentally, it came at the end of Harold Ramis' 15-year reign in comedy -- starting with Animal House in 1978, and following with the likes of Meatballs, Caddyshack, Stripes, and Ghost Busters. Bill Murray stars as a weather man who was sent to cover the whole Groundhog Day phenomenon and finds himself in a time loop where he keeps living the same day over and over and over again. It could've been bland, as the man learns how to be a better person, but with Murray's exasperation and snark, it was a sweet and beloved comedy that's even ranked on IMDb's Top 250 Films (#184).

The DVD features imports from the last disc offered to fans, plus a featurette about Ramis' recollections about the film, deleted scenes, and a feature on the marmot.

DVD Particulars from Christopher Campbell | Buy the DVD


Monty Python's Life of Brian -- The Immaculate Edition
Ah, Monty Python. It's John Cleese before Wine for the Confused, Terry Gilliam before Parnassus, Eric Idle before Not the Messiah...you get the picture. One of the Python classics, which Idle's recent live performance piece comes from, Life of Brian handles the story of the Jew named Brian who is born in a stable right next to the big JC. Later, he joins the People's Front of Judea, gets in trouble, and gets out of it by faking religious chatter and becoming a reluctant, and cursed, Messiah. Graham Chapman's Brian, the classic and insidiously catchy "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" -- it's all good, even 29 years later.

The 2-disc edition holds a ton of features (both new perks and old ones from the Criterion edition) including -- an animated menu, deleted scenes, an hour-long documentary, 2 commentaries featuring the likes of Gilliam, Idle, Jones, Palin, AND Cleese, radio spots, and a script read-through from 1977.

DVD Particulars from Scott Weinberg | Buy the DVD


Other New DVD Releases (January 29)

El Cid -- 2-Disc Deluxe Edition or Collector's Edition
The Invasion
King of California
Trade
Bordertown
The Nines
Rocket Science
The Comebacks
Canvas

Check out Peter Martin's Indies on DVD for even more new releases.

On a day like today, when it's cold and hailing in the city, I wish that it was Groundhog Day already. I wish that little Punxsutawney Phil would come out, not see his shadow, and Springtime weather would be imminent. But it's not even technically winter yet, and so I'm just sitting here listening to the ice bricks hitting my porch, glad that I don't have to really leave my apartment today. Now all I need is a good movie to watch, and what better movie to watch when it's icy outside than Groundhog Day? Unfortunately, all we're stuck with currently is the same old special edition DVD version we've had for the last five years. Now I'm at least wishing that it was January 29, 2008, the date that a new 15th Anniversary edition of Groundhog Day comes out on disc.

Never mind that the fact Groundhog Day is 15 years old makes me feel old, this is exciting news. Groundhog Day is one of the best movies of the '90s, let alone best comedies of the '90s, let alone best Bill Murray comedies of the '90s. And this new DVD features some great bonus material, including "newly discovered" deleted scenes. I'm not one for always watching deleted scenes (they're cut out for a reason, right?), but I'll definitely be checking these out -- especially if they feature my beloved Stephen Tobolowsky. Also, director Harold Ramis has supervised a digital remaster of the film and recorded a commentary. And of course, it comes just in time for a marathon viewing (haven't you ever appropriately watched it on repeat for a whole day?) on Groundhog Day.

Jonathan Kesselman wrote and directed The Hebrew Hammer, a comedy about an Orthodox Jewish Blaxploitation hero (Adam Goldberg) who saves Hanukkah from the evil offspring of Santa Claus (Andy Dick). The film has become a cult favorite, and you should add it to your holiday viewing list this year. In addition to being a successful screenwriter, Jonathan teaches Writing Comedy for Film and Television at Yale University. He has some great tips for aspiring comedy writers.

Cinematical: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

Jonathan Kesselman: I always loved writing. When I was in the 5th grade, I was pulled out of my class and put onto the 12th grade yearbook staff writing copy. For a while, I thought I wanted to be a journalist. In college, I majored in Psychology -- neuroscience was my field. I realized that I didn't like slicing rat brains. I remember really searching for what it was that I wanted to do with my life. And I had always been obsessed with movies. I remember having this existential crisis pre-graduation, and then seeing a documentary on Your Show of Shows, and it hit me that I was put on this earth to make fun of people.

Cinematical: So you threw the rat in the air triumphantly...

JK: I ate the rat -- tasty! Yeah, I graduated, and decided I wanted to go to film school. I eventually went to graduate school at USC for film production.

According to the trailer for the documentary Stephen Tobolowsky's Birthday Party, the scene-stealing actor Stephen Tobolowsky, "has been in more movies than Tom Cruise," and, "is linked to more movie stars than Kevin Bacon." His name isn't all that familiar, but his face and voice are both distinctly recognizable. Not so much for being the lead singer in an early band featuring Stevie Ray Vaughn or for co-writing True Stories, but for his stand out appearances in a number of films, most of which he hardly features in more than one scene. Most people would probably place him first in Groundhog Day or Single White Female, where he played the similar-sounding characters Ned Ryerson and Mitch Myerson, respectively. He also features prominently in Memento, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Thelma and Louise, and many other films.

His best part, though, has to be Dr. Werner Brandes in Sneakers. In the film, which stars heavyweights Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, David Strathairn, River Phoenix, Mary McDonnell and Ben Kingsley, his character is not only significant to the story, but the actor's voice is even more vital to the plot; in my opinion, it's one of the best purely vocal pieces of scene-stealing in the history of cinema. In an attempt to enter a high-security office, which requires voice-identification, Robert Redford's crew sends in McDonnell on a date with Tobolowsky, where she must get the man to say the following words: "Hi, my name is Werner Brandes. My voice is my passport. Verify me." Only she has to get the words through casual conversation, so he doesn't catch on to her reason for needing them -- Redford's crew can stitch the out-of-order individual words into the pass-phrase; the way McConnell gets Toblowsky to say "passport" is the best part. Later, when the edited recording of these words are played to gain entry into an office, Tobolowsky's voice is immortalized forever. More than any other scene in the film -- and there are some great ones in there -- I always remember Tobolowsky's and McConnell's scene together the best.