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Sunday 16 February 2014

“(500) Days Of Summer”. A Review Of The 2009 Film Now On BLU RAY by Mark Barry...


This Review and 100s More Are Part Of My E-Book
BLU RAY Keepers and Sleepers (A to G)
Available on Amazon - use the Link below


"…The Best Way To Get Over A Woman…Is To Turn Her Into Literature…"

30-something wannabe architect Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has worked for 4 long years in a Los Angeles greeting card company as a slogan writer dreaming of love that somehow seems to elude him. Enter a new ‘average girl’ employee – the heart stopping bug-eyed Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) whose very presence can make ice-cream sales increase and add value to unsellable real estate. Everything about Summer is magical and Tom’s gone-baby-gone in a heartbeat (“This Is Not Good!” his friend quite rightly muses). And therein lies the problem. New Jersey Tom doesn’t just want Summer Finn as a friend...he's thinking Soul Mate - when maybe Michigan's finest isn't thinking anything of the sort…

Possessed of a freshness and wit that is so often replaced with crudity in modern world rom-coms (especially those hoping to be hip, happening and hitting the zeitgeist) – “(500) Days Of Summer” is exceptional is so many ways. It’s lol funny a great deal of the time – visually surprising – beautifully cast and above all just keeps you watching and enjoying right up until its unexpected and satisfying end. Even movie clichés like the dweeb friends to the lead character (superb turns by Geoffrey Arend and Matthew Grey Gubler as McKenzie and Paul) and the smart-arsed child (a droll and grown up performance by tiny Chloe Grace Moretz as his younger sister Rachel) are given such great lines that you’re too busy enjoying yourself to notice piddly little things like time passing. Characters play The Smiths on their Walkman’s, wear Joy Division teeshirts to work, quote Sid Vicious at dinner, want to buy Octopus’s Garden in record shops and even quote Henry Miller for solace (title above). This is a very cool and likeable movie.  

It also uses the brilliant device of an intermittent screen page that tells you which day number we’re on (flicking up and down like a counter clock). If we’re on Day 36 then love is all happy-wappy and new with chirping animated birds and gymnastic sex in showers. But if we’re on Day 329 then the boredom and suffocation on her part has set in - and friendship let alone love is fading fast. Many of the very funny earlier sequences explaining their upbringings are also accompanied by the dry-as-a-cactus-root droll voiceover of Richard McGonagle having a Stephen Fry type hoot with statistics on men, women, shoe size and fate. There’s even a song and dance sequence – a truly infectious sketch played out to the magically upbeat “You Make My Dreams” by Hall & Oates (1981) which is the kind of cinematic genius that is guaranteed to put a smile on the most miserable of mutts.

Defaulted to 2:40.1 Aspect Ratio – the BLU RAY image can be stretched to 16 x 9 without any degradation and is frequently beautiful (especially when Tom shows Summer the beautiful lesser-known architectural wonders of L.A.). There are good extras too:

1. Deleted and Extended Scenes
2. Bank Dance – A feature on the scene choreographed to the Hall & Oates song (as mentioned above)
3. Mean’s Cinemash: Sid And Nancy/(500) Days Of Summer
4. A Music Video to “Sweet Disposition” by Temper Trap
5. Conversations with Lead Actors Levitt and Deschanel
6. A DVD which includes a DIGITAL COPY of the film

Brilliantly written by Scott Neustadter with Michael H. Weber and zestfully Directed by Marc Webb – “(500) Days Of Summer)” isn’t going to send Oscar committees into raptures – but it should.

The movie’s blurb tells us “This is not a love story – but a story about love…” 
Well - when the story of our hopes and dreams is told this well – then count me in…

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