Hacker Cinema
Groundhog Day
1993 · Film · 101 min
Directed by Harold Ramis
A cynical TV weatherman, along with his idealistic producer and his sardonic cameraman, is sent to report on Groundhog Day in the small town of Punxsutawney, where he finds himself repeating the same day over and over.
29 positive2 negative51 neutralfrom 82 commenters
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87 comments on Hacker News
That's TV water torture (I gave up TV) even for the visionary Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents series.
How about Groundhog Day the movie? That's the premise. You live the same day over and over again until you "awaken"
There was an earlier HN post about this[0] no replies. It links to an article at Huffington Post. [1]
My own take (at pastebin) [2]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1364702
[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-groundhog-day-buddhis_b_162950
[2] https://pastebin.com/raw/kfGNp1ey
https://pastebin.com/kfGNp1ey
Hmm, the review makes me rather curious. While in the movies "Groundhog Day" and "12:01 P.M." the protagonists awake at the same place and time each day.
How do these book explain that the protagonist(s) can relocate to different places? Even if it would give a rationale for that glitch in the loop, it would be strange if you'd check into a hotel and appear to be there the next morning without the check-in?
When things reach a certain level of popularity they constitute "mental real estate". Your audience has heard of Groundhog Day, so there is an opening for a movie with that title to make money -- your film will start out already having name recognition and some understanding of what the movie is about.
Thus it is a writer's job not to make references they find appealing to reveal their good taste, but to know what references their audience will find appealing and use them to help communicate concepts. If this bothers you it's because they're insulting you by saying you might be part of the audience that watches Marvel, and you had hoped reading the New Yorker would signal that you aren't.
I'm mostly the same, I don't watch movies twice. But there are exceptions. Some movies are just beautiful or I like how they make me feel, so I want to rewatch them. Groundhog Day is an example.
Sorry I only know the spanish community. But the last years, the gamebooks (spanish) have been revival with a lot complex and interesting things.
For example loops, like as Groundhog Day (film), the book is https://www.puntodeheroe.com/elbucle.html
Or open worlds, like as modern RPG or GTA, the book is https://jose-tamayo.itch.io/la-leyenda-okiri .
Or Elite like gamebooks, the book https://sites.google.com/view/spacegom/inicio .
Plus, there are other new mechanics in other gamebooks.
"Best movie" lists tend to have films with both critical acclaim and audience appeal.
It got critical praise but was a flop at the theater. The home video market redeemed it (haha) with audiences. From the article:
"Despite its disappointing box-office returns, in what was then considered a risky move, Warner Home Video shipped 320,000 rental video copies throughout the United States in 1995. It went on to become the top rented film of that year. Positive recommendations, repeat customer viewings, and being well received by both male and female audiences were considered key to the film's rental success."
All 3 movies (It's a Wonderful Life, Groundhog Day, and The Shawshank Redemption) had critical praise upon their initial release. Groundhog Day was even a solid hit. But no one could've predicted what they became later.
It's funny - I watched the Shawshank Redemption for the first time a couple years ago, after hearing forever about what a great film it is, and thought it was so lackluster I wasn't sure if I was missing something.
"Did he die in the end? Was it a dream sequence?" But no, both the intention of the creators, and by far the most common interpretation from viewers, is that it's all literal.
I tried watching Groundhog Day just once, and couldn't make it though it because (I assumed) it had aged so terribly.
Your comment made me reevaluate this though. I assumed the main appeal of these gonna was just nostalgia, and I've missed a key window, but perhaps it's the repeat viewings and predictability that make these films comfort food.
The Shawshank Redemption has a similar story. Didn't do well when released. Its video release fared a little better, maybe because people could re-watch it at home. Then Turner picked up TV distribution rights cheaply and showed it again and again.
Now, just like It's a Wonderful Life, it's considered one of the best movies ever made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shawshank_Redemption#Critical_reassessment
Groundhog Day is like this too. Although it was a "modest" box office success its critical reputation grew massively as the years went by. To the point that again it's consistently on best-ever movie lists.
"[12 years later] Ebert raised his original score for the film from three stars to a full four stars [saying] that he had underestimated the film"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film)#Post-release
It's befitting that watching Groundhog Day again and again makes you like the movie more.
Btw I mentioned It's a Wonderful Life's copyright situation in my original post.
See also the films Groundhog Day and (especially) Edge of Tomorrow.
Also, this contemporary homage published recently on a British military blog: https://wavellroom.com/2025/07/25/defence-baltic-bridge-dreams/
> If you could always do it over, an infinite redo so to say, nothing would matter. Every choice and outcome would become insignificant, because you could just redo it until it was just right.
The movie Groundhog Day comes to mind.
I just put the alarm song from groundhog day as my alarm that way I can pretend I'm living the same day over and over just like the movie.
I fed the list to GPT and asked which ones the OP liked:
- *Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer (1984)* - Highly recommended, really trippy.
- *Groundhog Day (1993)* - The classic, loved it.
- *Run Lola Run (1998)* - Fun with lots of details on rewatches.
- *The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)* - Highly acclaimed anime adaptation.
- *Timecrimes (2007)* - Classic, intense, and worth watching.
- *Triangle (2009)* - Really good with unexpected twists.
- *Coherence (2013)* - A standout, very good.
- *The Incident (2014)* - One of his absolute favorites.
- *Edge of Tomorrow (2014)* - Pretty great.
- *Blood Punch (2014)* - Pretty good with unique mechanics.
- *Happy Death Day (2017)* - Very good.
- *The Endless (2017)* - The best of the best, though micro-budget.
- *Palm Springs (2020)* - Highly recommended.
- *Boss Level (2020)* - Action-driven, but worth checking out.
- *Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020)* - Very good.
- *Maanaadu (2021)* - An excellent Bollywood time loop movie.
For convenience, I asked ChatGPT to create this table, which summarizes how many times each movie has been mentioned in this conversation so far. It got a few counts wrong (as usual), but it still gives a good sense of the frequency. I hope it can be useful to someone:
| Movie | Number of Mentions | |-------------------------------------------|---------------------| | The Matrix | 9 | | Lord of the Rings Trilogy | 8 | | Pulp Fiction | 8 | | Alien | 7 | | Fight Club | 7 | | Ghostbusters | 6 | | Die Hard | 5 | | Back to the Future | 5 | | Inception | 5 | | Star Wars Trilogy (original) | 5 | | Groundhog Day | 5 | | Terminator 1 & 2 | 5 | | Jurassic Park | 4 | | The Thing | 4 | | The Fifth Element | 4 | | Monty Python and the Holy Grail | 4 | | Ghost in the Shell | 4 | | Interstellar | 4 | | Casablanca | 3 | | Office Space | 3 | | Shawshank Redemption | 3 | | The Godfather Trilogy | 3 | | The Blues Brothers | 3 | | Blade Runner | 3 | | Mad Max: Fury Road | 3 | | Unforgiven | 3 | | Total Recall (1990) | 3 | | The Crow | 3 | | The Princess Bride | 3 | | Akira | 3 | | The Big Lebowski | 3 | | Guardians of the Galaxy | 3 | | American Psycho | 3 | | Indiana Jones Trilogy | 3 | | Kiki’s Delivery Service | 2 | | Ratatouille | 2 | | A Clockwork Orange | 2 | | Mission Impossible (various) | 2 | | Casino Royale | 2 | | Skyfall | 2 | | Ferris Bueller's Day Off | 2 | | Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan | 2 | | Apocalypse Now | 2 | | The Shining | 2 | | Groundhog Day | 2 | | Donnie Darko | 2 | | Dune (2021) | 2 | | Gladiator | 2 | | Predator | 2 | | Seven/Se7en | 2 | | The Dark Knight | 2 | | Snatch | 2 | | Prometheus | 2 | | Schindler’s List | 2 | | The Wolf of Wall Street | 2 | | Dr. Strangelove | 2 | | Silence of the Lambs | 2 | | Kill Bill | 2 | | Real Genius | 2 | | Top Secret! | 2 | | Tenet | 2 | | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | 2 | | The Adjustment Bureau | 2 | | The Expanse | 2 | | Pulp Fiction | 2 |
Sideways
Back To The Future
Cinema Paradiso
Spaceballs
Up In Smoke (Cheech & Chong)
The Incredibles
Indiana Jones 1-3
Indiana Jones: Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (Rifftrax only)
Falling Down
Office Space
Man Bites Dog
Nothing To Lose
Idiocracy
Space Mutiny (MST3k)
Goodfellas
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Groundhog Day
Barbie
Full Metal Jacket
Mallrats
Flight Of The Navigator
The Founder
One Hour Photo
---
I'm pretty certain I've rewatched Sideways more than any other film.
"Groundhog day" of course
most of Schwarzenegger movies because he is cool
Back to the future trilogy
Fight club
Some of the best soviet ones (Kin-dza-dza, Garage, Mimino, Irony of fate etc.)
Rocky
Forrest gump
When I was a kid, VHS home recording was a thing... so my sisters and I watched a few movies wayyyyy too many times.
The Blues Brothers Stripes Ferris Bueller's Day Off Footloose Dirty Dancing Amadeus These days, everything comes and goes from streaming. I'll watch these when they pop up again
The Expanse Monty Python and the Holy Grail The Ministry of Time Groundhog Day Dirty Harry Apocalypse Now About Time Time Bandits
Mostly, I will watch a movie a second or third time if I am tired and it's on TV and cannot sleep. So there is only a small intersection of films that I have watched multiple times and would admit to watching even once.
So excluding those, from most to least (probably).
- elf
- the Bourne identity
- groundhog day
- ronin
- Willie Wonka (the original)
- the fifth element
- ghost dog (any Jim Jarmusch)
- the blues brothers
- singin' in the rain
- crouching tiger, hidden dragon
- my friend totoro
I am probably leaving out quite a few, but all these films I have seen enough times to reconstruct in my head, scene by scene.
A couple "Groundhog Day" responses, so I'll add "Day After Tomorrow" for the action version of the time-loop device.
Terminator 2 is also a nearly perfect movie.
Although LLMs are different, politically speaking Google et al have been harvesting our data and controlling our focus for decades now. I find strange that the topic was not discussed enough in the past. Seems like "The Groundhog Day" movie.
Groundhog Day.
It's such a subtle movie, that it works on multiple levels at the same time. I got to level 2 on the first viewing, but only years later assimilated level 3.
At level 1 it's a simple Romcom movie - boy stuck in a time loop needs to earn girl's love.
Level 2 is that we are all stuck in a time loop. Everyone is functionally living the same day over and over. Same job, same relationships, same everything. (There's even a scene in the movie where Phil describes his predicament and thd barfly replies "welcome to my life".)
Level 3 is even more meta. Because Phil is the only person -not- living the same day. All around him everyone else is the same, but he's evolving. We see him learning piano, and ice-sculpting and so on. He evolves emotionally, and is trying new things. He moves from being self-centred to focused on others.
The genius of the movie, and Murray's performance, is that it's buried, never forced. You're left to figure it out yourself. It's a work of art, disguised as something trivial.
But they only had two films to base it on; they would have had to make that decision a few months after the RotJ scene filming ended but before it released. And presumably since the forest was privately-owned, somebody would have had to pay $$$ to acquire it then make it a park (and that somebody would have to be the state of CA, not Del Norte + Humboldt Counties).
In those counties the state already had RNSP (Redwood National and State Parks), a complex of one national park and three California state parks (139,000 acres; 560 km2). [0]
This makes me curious about the economics of when are the rare occasions it makes economic sense to use public money to buy and preserve popular movie locations on private property/land (as opposed to paying a premium for sentimental or tourist value). For example the famous 'Friends' apartment exterior in NYC is still private property. 'Shawshank Redemption' on its initial release bombed at the box office. Scranton, PA has a self-guided tourist trail [1] for the US version of 'The Office'. Only rare places like Punxsutawney, PA [2][3] (the town 'Groundhog Day' is set in, although the film was entirely shot in Woodstock IL [4]) make $. For the hardcore tourists there's Tataouine, Tunisia.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwood_National_and_State_Parks
[1]: https://www.visitnepa.org/things-to-do/self-guided-tours/the-office/
[2]: "Groundhog Day: Punxsutawney’s Million Dollar Holiday" https://nation.time.com/2014/02/01/groundhog-day-punxsutawney/
[3]: Punxsutawney Phil’s town misses Groundhog Day boost (2021) https://apnews.com/general-news-d4a183fdd599322fb9b23a5cb2147f33
[4]: "Groundhog Days in Woodstock, IL" https://woodstockgroundhog.org/
‘Stuck in a time loop’ stories are essentially extended montages where the point is to watch the protagonist repeatedly fail to get it, give up, look for easy ways out, until finally they figure out the redemptive path to escape. In fact the montage trope within such movies is generally the ‘repeated failure in increasingly awful ways’ montage. Groundhog Day culminates its darkest chapter in a sequence of suicide attempts; Edge of Tomorrow has montages of Tom Cruise doing stuff like misremembering whether to go left or right and dying messily. Both also feature days where the protagonist just doesn’t want to do it, and days they try to just sneak away from the challenge.
I was completely convinced Groundhog Day was something that was made up for the film! Had no idea it was a real thing.
But Voyager 1’s flight data system now appears to be stuck on auto-repeat, in a scenario reminiscent of the film “Groundhog Day.”
A long-distance glitch The mission team first noticed the issue November 14, when the flight data system’s telecommunications unit began sending back a repeating pattern of ones and zeroes, like it was trapped in a loop
Poor little guy voyager! must’ve hit the age of our little historical diorama. Very Truman show.
I’m the same way, I think.
It’s like the movie Groundhog Day.
Every moment is a new start, and you keep starting over and over again and trying to finish or to improve your navigation of a messy, random river that is life.
A piece of writing, a project, a trip to see friends is usually interrupted by life. And there’s never that perfect time for you to do the work. Perfection is a memory of the past.
We need to do things in between, simultaneously with all the mess, and keep starting over and over.
That’s a succinct description of what seems to be the current state of most adults I know.
It’s clearly burning, nobody seems to be in charge, there’s little hope that anyone is going to fix it, and individual actions seem like shouting into the wind. Even worse, the problem is undefined and hard to measure - and different groups have different complaints and priorities.
Or, said another way:
“That pretty much sums it up for me” - drunk guy in the bar in the movie Groundhog Day
I agree- was asking for a lofi haunting melody with samples from the movie Groundhog Day (a song I wish existed but haven't found it). The lyrics were right on theme but the rap was unexpected. Overall, much more polished than I was expecting
(Written with assistance from ChatGPT)
This is all like the movie "Groundhog Day," in that we can see a parallel between Phil Connors' situation in the time loop and the limitations of the LLM. In the movie, Phil is stuck in a time loop, living the same day over and over again, with no apparent way to escape. While he can use each iteration of the day to learn and grow, any changes he makes are ultimately erased when the day resets, leaving him with only his own personal growth and development.
Similarly, the LLM is limited by the data it has been trained on, and while it can use that data to generate responses and insights, it cannot fundamentally change its underlying knowledge. Just as Phil's actions in Punxsutawney are ultimately ephemeral and cannot fundamentally change the nature of the time loop, any insights gained from the LLM are limited in scope and cannot be permanently etched into its underlying knowledge.
However, just as Phil can use his time in Punxsutawney to learn and grow, you can use the LLM to gain a deeper understanding of language and communication. By asking targeted and specific questions, you can leverage the LLM's ability to analyze patterns and draw connections to help you gain insights and develop a more nuanced understanding of a given topic. This is similar to how Phil can use his repeated experiences to gain a greater understanding of the people and events in Punxsutawney, even though he cannot change the fundamental nature of the time loop.
In conclusion, while both Phil's time loop and the limitations of the LLM pose challenges, they can both be used to gain insights and develop a greater understanding of a given topic. By recognizing and working within these limitations, we can use the LLM as a tool for learning and understanding language and communication, much as Phil uses his time in Punxsutawney to learn and grow as a person.
It's good, but I kinda hoped it would be findings from the movie Groundhog Day. :-)
You know, with ever more details, upper bound, lower bounds of days, confidence levels, statistical modelling, comparisons against world events that day and psychological profiles of all participants.
Wait, Groundhog Day is today for real? Or is it like in the T. Hanks movie and every day is Groundhog Day?
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your list, even though some of those are mediocre at best, but yeah I did mean per year, and limited to Hollywood (Parasite for instance not counting). And no, ok, I will also straight up disagree with the second Knives out Movie which I thought was absolute trash. A perfect example of poor storytelling and the form over substance of modern cinema.
But just taking say 1992 you have Last of the Mohicans, The Unforgiven, My Cousin Vinny, Malcolm X, Bad Lieutenant, Scent of a Woman, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, Chaplin.
And then a bunch of fun schlomp like Arizona Dream, Basic Instinct, Sister Act, Army of Darkness, Home Alone 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Mighty Ducks, Wayne’s World.
These are all undoubtedly great movies.
And then another huge bunch of watchable stuff easily comparable to some of your mentions like Watcher or High Life.
And 1992 is not an outlier.
In 1993 you have Jurrasic Park, Groundhog Day, Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Scindlers List, Meanace 2 Society, Alive, Dazed and Confused, Falling Down, In The Name of The Father, True Romance, Demolition Man, Carlitos Way, The Secret Garden, Philadelphia, A Perfect Workd, Cool Runnings, Short Cuts.
In 1991 Silence of The Lambs, Ternimator 2, JFK, Point Break, Thelma and Louise, Boyz in the Hood, The Doors, My Own Private Idaho, Barton Fink, The Fisher King, Naked Lunch.
In 1990 Goodfellas, Hunt for Red October, Total Recall, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, Godfather 3, Dances with Wolves, Tremors, Back to the Future 3, Awakenings, The Witches, Wild at Heart, Jacobs Ladder, Nikita, Slacker, Millers Crossing.
And the quality difference is massive too, not just somewhat better. Like just Millers Crossing is miles better than anything that has been made in the last 5 years, and I’m picking at random.
In 1994 Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Speed, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Stargate, Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Clercs, Maverick, Ed Wood, In the Mouth of Madness, Interview With The Vampire.
I could go on.
And this is not even talking about how the 80s is a better decade for cinema, or how the 70s is the peak of the power of the author with far more experimental, artistic, and substantial productions.
Has quality declined? Yes. Massively. Humongously. Stupendously.
>here are really only five possible movie plot lines. Boy meets girl. And then... There are at most five ongoing narratives in U.S. political history. Outsiders take power, to redress grievances. And then … There may not be even five master narratives in world religions. People suffer. But then …
7 plots, there are 7 media stories.
Jaws, overcoming the boogyman/shark.
Cinderella, good personality poor becomes rich and deserves it.
LOTR, you need to bring widget somewhere wierd to save the world.
Hobbit, you adventure to strange lands and come back.
Annie Hall, comedic character has to overcome adversity to get happy ending
Sweeny Todd, flawed main character who fails, then ultimately learns to overcome their flaw and become good and happy.
Groundhog day, time travel forces bad main character to become better.
All these are aligned in the news as discovered by the author. Realistically just following 'hate inc' by matt taibi. Which really the article/author and matt just comes from Hunter Thompson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzo_journalism
You can imagine, over and over in the election system the characters of democracy play out exactly this way. Once you realize this, it forces you to personally answer the obvious question. Are they doing it intentionally or is this all fake like these fictional movies?
In my experience, the harder you search for things that can transform you, your thinking, the rarer it is to find them. I might find something impactful, but it's possible no else can relate to that feeling. Sometimes the most unexpected things can change your life. I recently re-watched the movie _Groundhog Day_. I found it pretty amazing the first-time, too. But second time, I thought that there couldn't be a better metaphor for life. I do realize that the writer didn't intend it that way, but it doesn't hurt to draw your own lessons. I found a new value in being kind and trying to seize the day.
Much of impact is dependent on context, and where you're in your life. I have often tried popular recommendations but more often than not, they haven't worked for me. The transformative books have happened to be the weird ones that often don't get talked about. My advice would to read wide variety of interesting stuff. And don't think too much about how to change your thinking. It will happen naturally without effort.
I get the sense that "real Connor" must have been extremely good at concisely explaining the situation and giving the interviewer exactly the information he needed to believe real Connor and understand the situation. It made me think of one of those movies like groundhog day or "source code" where someone has multiple tries and eventually comes up with the most efficient possible thing to say to get someone to trust them. Well done!
But there is a limit on Breaking Bad episodes, for example. Just pump out new episodes. Could even have The Simpsons / Groundhog Day - style state-reset after each episode. Therefore the AI can make anything happen (Walter gets killed) and the produce another episode because you know that is just a multiverse branch.
You raise a good point. The consistency of California's weather reminds me a bit of the movie Groundhog Day. Seasonal changes are so subtle that it is easy to forget that years have gone by...
I watch Groundhog Day every Feb 2nd. Not sure I need another film to watch regularly.
Part of the Groundhog Day genre of movies. https://filmbabble.blogspot.com/2020/08/groundhog-day-is-genre-and-im-okay-with.html
Palm Springs tackles this subject matter as well, but as a comedy:
https://imdb.com/title/tt9484998/
And of course, Groundhog Day:
https://imdb.com/title/tt0107048/
I agree that "anything anytime" is a bit much.
I grew up in a country town with 3 TV broadcast channels, that expanded to 5 by the time I left. No cinema. No cable. But two video rental shops at least. But because my social groups were all in the same boat, there was little in the way of being left out.
I recall going to two different friends houses to watch a video on two consecutive nights - Friday, Saturday. They both showed Groundhog Day... that morning clock radio still rings in my mind.
Usually, being part of a social group involves effort/cost expended. It has to cost you something or it doesn't demonstrate care for the social groups interests.
Most everyone agrees - even the pirates - that people who put effort into creation/distribution deserve reward. The problem is the details of who/how-much/how-long-for.
I like libraries. Not quite up to date and with the latest zeitgeist, but good enough for me.
But if you need the latest zeitgeist - for example, as marketing bombarded, self-image conscious teens trying to define their identities in society are wont to do - then as far as I can see Piracy is the easy "I disagree" button to the corporate answer. Unless you can hang at a friends place.
I don't like piracy. But I also don't want to see a war on piracy ruining the lives of those who are just trying to fit in. Not for extra $ in MPAA coffers.
I kind of wish there was a single low cost streaming site using bittorrent, that hosted everything. But while it may be good for consumers, it wouldn't be good for distribution corporations and content creators would lose regional pricing.
Aside: I loved Tyrion and Bronn together.
That’s the song that plays on the alarm clock radio in the movie Groundhog Day.
It's a popular fantasy. See "Replay" by Ken Grimwood. Or all those endless movies where someone gets to do high school over again, like "Peggy Sue Got Married". Or even "Groundhog Day". "A Christmas Carol". "It's a Wonderful Life". And on and on.
Same here. When watching the Elton John movie, I could see all the artificial image enhancements made to the picture to make it look better, but burning the sincerity out of it in the process. Same for sound, which made characters mouth completely out of sync with the music (the first scene, the voices are singing intensely, but you can see the faces not breaking a sweat, uncanny valley ensued).
This week, I started (and gave up) to watch "the witches", which has clearly been designed by committee. All the ingredients are nice, but there is this feeling that they are put in there because people though they should be, not because they felt it should. It was not story telling, it was product manufacturing. We were being sold concepts: this is a lovable character, here is a tragedy to bound, here is the bad guy, she is scary, oh, look at the grandma you wish you had, and so on.
The problem is, they do that because it works. Star wars remakes made banks. Disney live actions as well.
If I discuss this with my friends, they don't seem to mind, they enjoy it.
Now I ate at Mc Donalds for year, enjoying it, so I get that you can very well enjoy scientifically crafted quick and satisfying experiences.
But at least for movies, it's becoming hard for me. Maybe I have rose glasses about movies in the past, but I watched Groundhog Day last week, and it felt nothing like this. Pure creative and fun experience.
I guess it' a blessing: it will save me time and money.
On the other hand, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Don't know why I'm bitter about this, cause it's not like it's an important thing, but I react strongly to it.
I recently saw Groundhog Day for the first time and loved it! Definitely a good example of ennui (at least until the end of the film).
To those downvoting parent please be aware that Netflix's offering varies a lot depending on geo-location. Not necessarily a Netflix only issue but still.
As anecdata, after the VPN ban, I am stuck with my local offering and last week I realized I can't watch "Groundhog Day", which exists on Netflix but not for my region... a film from 1993.
Au jour d'ajourd'hui would make a funny translation of "Groundhog day". So far, the French translated this film as https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_jour_sans_fin which is stupid, because it reveals the plot.
I had the same experience my first few years out of college. Had a long relationship end, started drinking, went through several jobs and within three years found myself alone, severely depressed and an alcoholic. I contemplated suicide frequently, but held out hope my life would change if I could just get to tomorrow. My life started feeling like the movie "Groundhog Day".
Eventually things did change, and my 30's have been a whirlwind of happiness, sobriety and a GF who loves me unconditionally for me. Like you said, if I knew this is where the black hole I fell into would lead to, I would've pushed harder to get sober, try harder to put myself back together sooner. But I'm here now and am grateful I held out and often think about this wonderful life I almost passed on.
I would recommend watching GroundHog day with Bill Murray. The key takeaway from this film I think, was be the brightest light in the room, be your most attractive self, and everything/everyone else will sort itself out.
>user smt88 offered a fabulous idea : >Wikipedia is basically an information search engine without commerce or social media. The problem is that your results page is the article itself, and you need to scroll to the bottom to get to an external site.
Using wikipedia as a data source for a "search engine" does not fulfill gp's (jacquesm) request of "One nice solution would be a search engine that throws out anything related to commerce or linking to commerce."
For example, go to the wikipedia page for the film "Groundhog Day" and look at the external links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day#External_links
- one of the external links points to IMDB.com -- a commercial website owned by Amazon.
- another link points to Punxsatawney Groundhog Club website that's advertising a $30 beer tasting event (Hogtoberfest).
- another link points to a souvenir shop
To continue the example of commercial links, a lot of math articles on wikipedia point to MathWorld which has advertising for the commercial Wolfram Mathematica software package.
IMO, I don't believe a search engine based on wikipedia's list of external sites (even with ignoring the commercial links) is going to be useful for the mainstream audience. I probably do 50+ searches on google every single day and maybe 1% might be answerable from a "wikipedia search". For example, I needed a DIY answer to disassemble a Moen faucet and Wikipedia has zero articles with those instructions. In contrast, the Google (and Youtube) search results has the information I was looking for even though it has the unwanted ads and "content marketing" blogs from plumbing brands.
I worked at a movie theater and we were supposed to get a new CD every month from corporate to play in theaters before the movie started, but in the year or so I worked there it never changed. I don't remember all of them, but the ones I do remember are a cover of Convoy by Mannheim Steamroller, which is a godawful treacly piece of shit to begin with, and a cover of Girl You'll Be a Woman Soon by Urge Overkill, which I utterly loathe to this day.
This makes me think of Groundhog Day, and how brilliantly the film used the repetition of I've Got You Babe to show how the protagonist was going crazy.
> It's a movie more for people who are sick of the normal Christmas movies and want a break.
Wat? For me it was just the constant TV reruns at Christmas that did it, like with Trading Places and Groundhog Day. It just does not feel like Christmas until Hans Gruber falls from Nakatomi Plaza and Billie-Ray Valentine sells OJ futures.
Do we really have to slap labels on everything?
Yeah, I’m not even close!! More like the movie Groundhog Day.
So far the journey has been really rewarding though. I’ve recently been focusing my efforts on remainders and decision paths.
The most invaluable lessons learned have been my understanding of the complexity of simplicity.
I’ve written some insanely complicated, convoluted and frankly weird ass code throughout all this.
For example: bignum math libraries, modified Euclidean geometry, imaginary number libs, fractal factoring, Russian peasant multiplication, 3D volumetric fluids to triangle area fitting. Multiple geometric shape fitting libraries, Gallois fields and lots and lots of weird what-if code that popped up in my head.
I’d always been good at algorithms, but straightforward head-first attacks of the problem always ends in failure.
Now I’ve learned to build analysis, statistics and proofs by necessity. It’s completely changed my mindset on design. (Obviously I studied far my comp-sci than mathematics.)
Other than sieving and brute force, I think the only other general solution to be a sort of ‘halving’ problem.
The relation between factors and q is essential sum or area. You can subdivide either into n buckets and remainders building a tree of nodes iteratively. At many nodes I have found some interesting patterns. I find nodes after some iterations that sum up to a factor. So now my question is finding the path every time.
Anyway, best of luck on your journey and enjoy the ride! Maybe in another few years somebody will finally slay this beast.
Movie idea: Groundhog day but everyone remembers reliving the same day each day. Which begs the question, how different is that from our everyday lives other than changes in the environment?
Last two years I followed r/fi obsessedly like it's a life philosophy. Holy hell did it work well.
As a result of it, I did extremely well financially even with my very little income as a grad student. I've achieved my saving goals for the year 4 months in. But I've grew to much pride, lost my sanity, became numb, lost my sense of enjoying life. Perhaps that was part of the reason my wonderful girlfriend broke up with me. By the way, I lived in a small Midwest town. I lived frugally and minimally and I'm not really obsessed with things in the first place, so saving 50% of my income being single wasn't hard. I woke up everyday checking my investments and saw it growing but felt no joy. Sometimes I would stay in bed for the whole day and sleep. I wasn't rich but I was so financially stable that I was going to be alright no matter what happens.
Thanks to several changes in life, I now do feel joy again. I don't know what exactly went right, but I did the following:
- Not obsessedly following the r/fire community anymore. I now spend more money to buy gifts and experiences for people I love (not superficial ones, the kind of I would have to think twice buying for myself). I come up short financially but ahead in my sense of self worthiness. I feel I'm not a money obsessed scumbag anymore. You might find having a better time doing this because I don't have a big income. But anyway, try to make other people who are important in your life happy for what you can provide: money, time, experiences and you won't regret it.
- I started working out hardcore first because the girlfriend that dragged me to the gym. FYI, I am a typical computer nerd, who was massively unfit (underweight) and has never played a sport in my life. Nowadays, I try to work out once or twice a week. Just having a trainer train you for the first week so you know what is what is enough for you to get started.
- I moved to the coast, not that I planned to. I live in a much nicer place with more freedom and amenities. There is a huge difference in living in an intellectual and welcoming town compared to the middle of nowhere, homophobic town.
- I quit social media cold turkey. I don't have Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, almost anything that allows me to peek into the others' lives anymore. I probably won't ever come back to Facebook.
- I started to think positively about others: seeing what they were able to achieve given the situation, not how inferior they are to me. And I told everything to them to make them feel they share with a friend.
- I watched the highest rated movies on imdb. Perhaps the two that resonated the most with me (those were rewatches!) were sunset blvd and groundhog day. Especially groundhog day. You are in a loop and everyday is the damn same. It changes when you see it differently that kind of stuff. I have never found watching fictional movies and books useful or joyful before. I have always been a nonfictional person.
- I started to be more bold, adventurous and reached out and collaborate with people I admire. We work and talk about projects that makes us no money. But I can't say how much I love seeing a personal email from people telling me about new things they're planning to do.
I know not everything I said will be applicable for you, but I hope at least some of those you might find something useful. Good luck and I hope you feel better for the new year!
All you said is true.
Forget to mention, aside from that, I love Singapore in general and I have no illusion that the US is getting more hostile by the day. I have been in the US as a foreigner for 10 years. Last time I came back, I was hassled and treated like a piece of shit by a customs official, too (and I love how they ask for social accounts now, I hope they don't ask for HN?). Recently I was extremely upset having so much difficulties getting my driver's license renewed. I think the new Trump thing made it so much worse too, but I'd rather not dig into the Trump thing. In Singapore? Government officials did treat me like a human, I absolutely loved that.
However, once you're in in the US, you have NYC, Chicago, SF and you also have Smallville or Lancesterville in the middle of nowhere. In those supposedly backward, homophobic X-villes, you can see part of why some people love the US so much. It's still the life we love in the 80s-90s movies like Back in the future or Groundhog day. They have no cameras, people greet you on the street, and you can go for miles and miles by car, bike, or on foot and you wouldn't see any other person.
Yeah, I get it, it's not legal drinking a beer in the public. I used to live in a rented house downtown with other graduate students in a relatively big town that houses the state's biggest college. During the summertime weekends, we often just drank and smoked and played the guitar (and flute, and banged on broken guitar) all night long on the front porch and watched the cops patrolled by. The other day in X-ville, we smoked our asses out one night. The next morning, I jumped on my friend's 70s truck and saw a 6-pack of beers, some new, some empty. I asked whether we should move it back, and I quote his answer, "Have some man, it's X-ville, no one actually gives a fuck." We blasted an FM channel full of country songs, cranked the window down, and I rode shotgun in a glorious sunrise.
> conclusion is that there is something definitely wrong with the way some movies are rated. I'm not sure if there exists a fix for that, apart from us, the "normal" viewers, just starting to ignore reviews and movie-critics and then watching movies with no preconceptions.
That seems like a big takeaway from one false negative. And I agree on Booty Call, I've long put it as one of my funniest movies from the 90's. That's said I didn't watch it in the theater and if the wife and I had gone I'm not sure she would have called it a good 30-40 bucks.
There are probably 3 issues here, critic blind spots (because the median critic is probably over 40 and has some cultural lenses that are hard to shake), the lack of information you can convey with one bit of data (which is an overall goodness bit not a "funniness" bit for comedies), and perhaps the sample size (this movie has only 12 reviews on RT and half are from no-names, more reviews might not change this score though it matters for some others).
FWIW Roger Ebert loved Booty Call and gave it 3 stars so, going beyond the one bit of fresh/rotten, it can lead you to critics that like movies you do and you can follow those personally.
And RT does pretty good at giving you good movies in general - their best comedies of the 90's rightly include Toy Story 1 & 2, Groundhog Day and The Player all of which are purchase worthy.
> so that each day is like "Groundhog Day" – work, eat, sleep – leaving little time for shenanigans
Someone didn't watch that movie very closely.
"modest success"
Yes, because Caddyshack, Stripes, and Tootsie were small, modestly successful, movies that only a few people have heard of.
I mean it's not like Ghostbusters was one of the most successful comedy movies of all time.
It's not like Groundhog Day from 1993 was was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" or anything.
No, clearly he just had "modest" success in just those 13 years post-SNL. I mean we'd better not even mention his award winning turns in movies starting the late 90s had we?
Yikes, I take it back - it's not your youth, it's your smug ignorance that's showing.
Living legend is a meaningless oxymoron. He's a successful actor, full stop. He has made lots of movies, some good some complete crap. What "legitimate problem" does he have? Shallow "meme culture" has built him up just as they have done with Betty White, Chuck Norris and bacon. He seems to be a individual who cherishes his privacy and shuns celebrity culture and for this mainstream media brands him "an enigma." This "living legend" BS is also a very recent phenomenon, there was a good 10 to 12 year period between say "Groundhog Day" and "Lost in Translation"that nobody talked about him at all.
Hey all, this is my week 3 demo in my foray into being a VR dev. It's a demo where like the movie Groundhog Day, you live the same minute over and over again. But unlike the movie, you see a replay of the things you were doing in the previous minute in a clone.
If you have a Vive and want to try it out, you can download it here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fazys8caj3v6id1/Multitude%20Demo.zip?dl=0
Let me know if you have any feedback. Thanks!
> Life is Strange: a Groundhog Day Simulator
I'd actually buy an actual Groundhog Day game. Like a sequel to the film set in the early nineties, wandering around rural Punxsutawney, waking up with Cher on the radio each day until you fulfil the main objective after completing all the daily side-quests.
There's always Wikipedia:
In mathematical physics, a closed timelike curve (CTC) is a world line of a material particle in spacetime that is "closed", returning to its starting point.
So it's essentially like in the movie Groundhog Day I guess.
Of course it's possible, but the text message has to be crafted specifically for that person. Like an exploit.
I posit that for most people there exists a well-crafted SMS that immediately connects with them. The problem is it may be really hard to figure it out. :-)
Incidentally, I have recently watched the movie Groundhog Day, which also explores this theme to some extent.
Channeling the other comment tree, Groundhog Day never introduces any Nice Guy. The idea is that Phil develops into one over the course of the movie, although it's only apparent in the last (!) scene.
"Possessed of an ambition" is a weak attempt at listing a basic plot -- you can phrase this equivalently as "having a goal", and it will obviously be present multiple times over in any story at all.
Phil has several ambitions in Groundhog Day, some more closely related to each other than others:
1. get out of Punxsatawney (changes over the course of the film)
2. stop the repetition
3. sleep with Rita (when he finally gets this, the repetition stops!)
4. optimize the day
(3) and (4) are both given quite a lot of screen time and plot focus; (2) is the source of many jokes.
Some other thoughts on the list:
I was surprised to see "Struggle against God" categorized under DISASTROUS SITUATIONS PRECIPITATED WITH CRIMINAL INTENT. I would have put it under TRAGIC SITUATIONS OVER WHICH THE VICTIM HAS NO CONTROL.
"Possessed of an ambition", interpreted as a goal, includes a lot of the other elements (consider "love's obstacles").
The list makes a three-way distinction between "enmity between kinsmen", "vengeance", and "kindred avenged against kindred". A better-thought-out list couldn't do this.
A second reply, because this is about the movie Groundhog Day and not the topic at hand.
Something that really bugs me about most people's references to the movie is that they grossly miss the point. When most people reference it they refer to something about their dull repetitive life, or being stuck in a rut. But that's not what happens in the movie.
He literally experiences the same thing for hundreds of days to hundreds of years (depending on interpretation). But something happens, he realizes the numerous opportunities present in this same, repeated, "uneventful" day. Sure, the daily grind of wake, commute, work, commute, dinner, TV, sleep, repeat is dull and repetitive. But unlike Phil, we don't have an infinite number of times to do this before we learn our lesson and change our approach. We get 100 years on the outside, 60 productive years for most of us. Even if you're doing the same thing each day, how do you spend the rest of your time? If it's living for the weekend, that's 5 evenings a week you've wasted. Fill it with time with family, friends, learning, hobbies, something. Become the best person you can be, because one day the repetition will end.
What will you have to show for it? Will you have just worked yourself to death and memorized every line of Star Wars, or will you be making ice sculptures with a chainsaw?
The classical Christian interpretation of enlightenment is (3) A miracle of God.
This tells me the counterpoint to Groundhog Day is any Michael Bay movie, which are all (23) Struggle against God.
One movie I've always had a hard time categorizing is Groundhog Day. I went through the 37 plots listed and still don't see a good match. Does achieving enlightenment count as a plot?
Wow, someone doesn't like movies very much. "But the dismaying fact remains that the majority of art-house cinema treats science fiction as a means to acquire a veneer of philosophical gravitas, while freeing the auteur from the burden of writing a story that makes the slightest bit of sense."
Science Fiction aside, you could say much the same thing about "Groundhog Day," "It's a Wonderful Life," and "Pan's Labyrinth." Any movie with a bit of "magical thinking" and "what if..." That's the whole point of huge swaths of movies from every category of cinema! Even romance and drama -- with seemingly solid footing in reality draws on the implausible to make things interesting. You really think a successful Richard Gere would fall head over heels in love with a prostitute (even one who looks like Julia Roberts)?
If you want "science" why are you looking in "science fiction"?
A personal favourite of mine, by Coleridge :-
http://www.orgs.miamioh.edu/anthologies/bijou/vissat/Workwithouthope.htm
Why? Because in the movie Groundhog Day, when Phil Connors has had his moment of enlightenment/peripety, he quotes :
"And winter, slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!"
Knowing this poem makes the film better. Knowing how widely popular Coleridge became makes the poem better.
I still think we disagree a little on [2], but I love your "Groundhog Day" metaphor. It's perfect, couldn't be better. If you've seen the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day, you'll know what I mean when I say that sometimes that's exactly what I want. I want to be the guy who has lived this day before and looks like a genius to all those mere mortals who are experiencing it for the first time. It feels great to have such a huge advantage, especially when it was earned.
But, like you, I don't want to be stuck there. I want to experience it often, but I want to have plenty of new days, too.
He was involved in some of my favorite movies: Animal House, Caddy Shack, and Groundhog Day. He will be missed.
Agreed 100%. Not just comedy, but culture. It's amazing to me that "Groundhog Day" has entered American English as an idiom meaning something unpleasant repeating itself from this movie. An incredible accomplishment by Ramis, Murray, and everyone else involved in the film.
Groundhog Day is one of my favorite films of all time. I think it's really Important that when trapped in his lonely cycle Murray finally settles on taking care of others as perfectly as he can. Beautiful.
A while back I read an article using Groundhog Day as an example how we can never have perfect information in an economic system.
"The movie Groundhog Day (1993) illustrates the importance of the Mises-Hayek paradigm as an alternative to equilibrium economics by illustrating the unreal nature of equilibrium theorizing."
http://archive.mises.org/5546/the-economics-of-groundhog-day/
Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day are both truly great films with an astonishing influence on American culture. He'll be missed, but never forgotten.
Sad news. He directed one of my favourite movies Groundhog Day. RIP.
I agree with everything you said here. I'm not Lex Luthor smart. I don't mean to overstate myself, just meditating on that parts that I feel set me apart (not above or below, just apart) from people.
There's a specific reason I'm not inserting IQ into what I'm talking about, I agree that it's not a good focal point for a discussion about intelligence.
And I'm not saying I have perfect prediction of human behavior. Just that, with many people, if I spend enough time observing them, I can start to predict what they'll do or say with better than chance accuracy. The best analogy I can give is not Sherlock Holmes, but Groundhog day. What people miss in that movie is that the main character (Phil Connors played by Bill Murray) is spending his time mapping out the behavior patterns of the girl of his dreams (Rita by Andie MacDowell) to see if he can find the behavior pathways that will lead to her falling in love with him (or sleeping with him depending on your take on the story). Many people follow routines and habits, and if you observe them long enough it's like spending the same "day" over and over with them. You can start to mentally note and map out their behavior and then start making predictions about that behavior.
Most people do it all the time, we track what foods or films or whatever our friends like and dislike, and then make recommendations to them, or buy them presents based on that. We know them, so we think we can predict their behavior on a like/dislike vector. But what if you observed other things? Say you find a friend has an extreme allergy to milk and milk products. You can guess then that, if they drink coffee, they'll use a milk substitute, maybe soy. If they use soy, and you know what stores in their area carry soy milk and which don't and the ones that do are only the vegetarian stores, then you might be able to make a probabilistic guess that they're vegetarian. If they're vegetarian, you know there aren't many restaurants that are vegetarian in their area, so they probably cook at home, meaning they have a decent kitchen. So you can guess they have decent cookware, guessing at their income level you can guess if it's $100 an item cookware of $1000 an item cookware. There's only so many vendors at each price point for that, and only so many sell in my area etc., and on and on to yoga studio and car choice and neighborhood.
You can probabilistically guess all kinds of things from a cup of coffee. A little more observation, a comment here and there, a couple questions from you to direct your guesses and you can improve your chances and before you know it you can run down the list of consumer choices many individuals make which defines their space.
Even singular biases or opinions can tell you worlds about a person. It's kind of like stereotyping, but it's a little more informed than that. You can guess, for example, a person with strong opinions on say gun rights is likely aligned with several other related categories. Differences in those aligned categories might tell you other things, and let you know if they're conservative, liberal, anarchist or something else. Even a single comment can inform your predictive model about a person and set boundaries on what they would or wouldn't do.
You also have to know things. I couldn't do this with somebody from a country or area I don't know anything about. I don't know the politics, neighborhoods, social signals, in and out group dynamics and on and on.
Another example, there's an old phrase, "everybody skis in Aspen", meaning that knowing a person is from Aspen implies they do snow sports, but knowing that doesn't inform you of much other than they probably own a pair of skis or a snowboard and there's a fair chance they come from money.
But knowing a person you meet in someplace like Tampa, is an avid skier (an outlier) tells you all kinds of things about them. That they travel, that they probably don't go to anywhere on the East Coast (the snow sucks), that they probably have a passport (to go to the Canadian Rockies or the Alps), and gives you an idea of their disposable income they set aside for trips and skiing, which then can inform you of their total income and on and on and on.
People are like chaotic systems, and every piece of information you know restricts the space they can operate in. Within limits you can infer many many things. And it's not superhuman.
A lot of successful people and a number of religions place high value on our ephemerality as a way of focusing on the important things.
In practice, I've found this rather hard to do and a lot of times a putdown as well. I think the concept of your own death is hard to truly fathom. It's the same reason generally heart patients ignore doctor's advice of stop eating crap and exercising more or face death.
A much better workaround I've found was after watching Groundhog Day [1]. In the movie, Bill Murray is stuck in a day where, no matter what he does, the next morning the day starts exactly the same. In that day, it doesn't matter if he dies, kills someone, makes someone fall in love with him, robs a bank; the next day, its the same old day. spoilers The movie then becomes about what if you had just one day (the exact same day) in your life, how would you live that day? A perfect day. One where you do as much good as you can.
I think the movie tries to tackle the same issue of our limited time on earth by taking a rather interesting angle.
By thinking of your day as a groundhog day and wondering, if this day is going to be the same day forever; how best can I live it? For me, this has been a better approach to how I should spend my day rather than waking up and focusing upon my death.
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/
Hey cool, thanks! Incidentally I think the time loop mechanic from Groundhog Day is also from a TZ episode.
In my experience,
"A man who hates his life to the point of suicide is shown by a guardian angel how much the other people around him depend on him. As a result of seeing what the world would be like without him, he changes his mind about the suicide and ends up embracing the life he has, recognizing the simple yet wonderful things about it for what they are."
is not a conventional Hollywood story. Do you have any other examples? I'm mostly interested not because I want to prove you wrong, but because I actually want to be wrong and I want to watch these movies if they exist. Groundhog Day is the only other one that comes to mind.
I updated the title, thanks. His post reminded me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film)
You think that you are being so extreme that it is ridiculous.
Well, lawyers already went there: http://www.plotpatents.com/
"A Plot or Storyline Patent application seeks to patent the underlying novel and nonobvious storyline of a fictional story. Such protection is to be contrasted from the copyright protection of one of millions of possible expressions of an underlying storyline. The field of possible applications is broad, and may tentatively be split into an entertainment-advertisement dichotomy. The epitome of an entertainment application is an original, thought-provoking, often shockingly unique movie plot. Several potentially patentable features may have been found in the plots of, Memento, The Thirteenth Floor, Being John Malkovich, Butterfly Effect, The Game, Fight Club, The Matrix, Total Recall, The Truman Show, Minority Report, The Village, Groundhog Day, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, to name a few. The epitome of an advertisement application is one of the many thoughtfully hilarious Super Bowl commercials."
In fact, my experiences (which contrast the article) are what has enabled me to be here and sane. Before, we were fleeting, disorganized, and didn't plan.
Now everything is regimented and organized and "minimalized". That's how we're sane and fairly happy (it feels like the movie Groundhog Day, often. And you really have to focus on marriage time.).
We're finding our experiences to be much more sane than others, when we talk to other multiples parents. They haven't developed a simple life, and a simple set of regiments.
The problem, of course, is that you can only afford a certain number of big experiments. Life is finite.
And big experiments can be hard to A/B test against your mature product. This is what that whole "chasm" thing is about: the audience for new things is different from the audience for old things; present a radical new thing to someone who isn't an early adopter and it will get low marks. The automobile had really bad A/B results against the horse, for most audiences in the late 1800s. It is hard work to attract a new audience, when you have the alternative of incrementally improving the experience of the old audience.
And, of course, the more time you've invested in building your radically different idea, the more crushed you will be by bad A/B data. A/B testing of tiny differences that can be toggled in five minutes is the least emotionally painful form of A/B, so no wonder it is so much more popular, to the extent that Atwood thinks it represents the entire field.
Atwood's metaphor is still perfect, however. The movie Groundhog Day covers all of this. It's an astonishing work of art.
I have an irrational objection - every time I go there I think of Needle Nose Ned from the movie Groundhog Day. Bing!
Why would anyone laugh at that? Groundhog Day is an awesome movie.