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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