The Daze of Love in (500) Days of Summer

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 59 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux


(500) Days of Summer (2009)
Running time: 95 minutes (1 hour, 35 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for sexual material and dialogue
DIRECTOR: Marc Webb
WRITERS: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber
PRODUCERS: Mason Novick, Jessica Tuchinsky, Mark Waters, and Steven J. Wolfe
CINEMATOGRAHER: Eric Steelberg (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Alan Edward Bell
Golden Globe nominee

ROMANCE/DRAMA/COMEDY

Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Geoffrey Arend, Chloe Moretz, Matthew Gray Gubler, Clark Gregg, Patricia Belcher, Rachel Boston, Minka Kelly, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Richard McGonagle (narrator)

(500) Days of Summer is an uncommon romance. It is certainly sweet, whimsical, and charming, but not in a syrupy way. (500) Days of Summer isn’t a “chick flick.” It’s the kind of unique love story that crosses age and gender lines0 to capture imaginations and maybe even hearts.

The film focuses on Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a trained architect who works as a writer at a Los Angeles greeting card company. He is also a young man who believes in that one-of-a-kind love – the soul mate – that person destined to be his one and only. So when this hopeless romantic meets his boss’ new assistant, Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel), the fuse is lit and it’s Day 1 of Summer. Tom is so certain that he has found the woman with whom he will spend the rest of his life.

Problem is, Summer doesn’t believe in destiny – not at all, which doesn’t stop Tom from going after this lovely, witty, intelligent woman. Still, Tom and Summer begin to date, although she tells him that she does not believe in true love and does not want a boyfriend. When Summer suddenly dumps him, around Day 290, Tom begins to sift through the days they spent together, looking for clues as to what went wrong as he heads towards Day 500 and a revelation.

(500) Days of Summer uses a nonlinear narrative to tell the story, jumping backward and forward over the 500-day span of Tom and Summer’s relationship. I don’t know if that really does anything for the film. It feels more like a gimmick than a storytelling structure that would actually benefit the story. In fact, moving about in time so much causes the middle of this film to dry up to the point of being catastrophically dull.

What sets (500) Days of Summer apart from standard movie love stories is the role reversal. This time it is the male character, Tom, who is clingy and smitten and believes in true love, a role usually assigned to the female character. Summer is more like the guy character found in the typical romantic comedy (or rom-com). She’s doesn’t buy into destiny and the boyfriend-girlfriend dating game. Summer just wants to have fun with no strings attached and no commitment – a trait usually applied to shallow male characters.

I think that having the guy character be so lovelorn and infatuated is a novel idea, but having that character performed by a talented actor like Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes him more than just a novelty. Gordon-Levitt gives Tom richness and depth so that he is more than just charming and sweet. A love-struck fool, he is determined to grapple with the issues of love and romance in a way that will not always give him a satisfactory outcome.

Sadly, Summer is not as well developed as Tom, and the character is more of a supporting player. Luckily Zooey Deschanel is pitch perfect in her usual deadpan way, and her brooding turn as Summer makes the character more than the shallow creature that the screenplay seems to think Summer she should be. Deschanel has a way of surprising us in the way she makes Summer’s emotional displays, her smiles and frowns, seem unexpected and… well, delightfully surprising.

I cannot really call (500) Days of Summer a romantic comedy because, for one thing, it is even more a drama than it is a comedy. Secondly, because Tom’s relationship with Summer is also an arc in which Tom learns a lot, (500) Days of Summer is like a coming-of-age story. Its unique spin on love-at-first-sight is presented in a way that will appeal even to audiences who avoid romantic comedies and love stories. Any way you look at it, (500) Days of Summer may just leave a smile on your face.

7 of 10
B+

NOTES:
2010 Golden Globes: 2 nominations: “Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy” and “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy” (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)

Saturday, July 31, 2010

VIZ Cinema to Screen Hiroshima Doc

VIZ CINEMA PRESENTS THE POIGNANT DOCUMENTARY WHITE LIGHT / BLACK RAIN TO COMMEMORATE THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ATOMIC BOMBINGS OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI

Academy Award Winning Director Steven Okazaki Captures Emotional Stories Of Extraordinary Resilience

Film Premiere To Present A Special Q & A Session With Survivors And The Friends Of Hibakusha Organization

VIZ Cinema, the nation’s only movie theatre dedicated to Japanese film, is proud to present a screening on August 6th and 7th of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki’s White Light / Black Rain, a moving documentary about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought about the end of World War II.

Tickets are now available to attend a special Premiere Event for White Light / Black Rain on Friday, August 6th at 7:00pm that will also include a Q&A session with several survivors and the Friends of Hibakusha, a San Francisco organization dedicated to supporting U.S. citizens and Japanese-American survivors of radiation exposure from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A portion of ticket sales will be donated directly to the Friends of Hibakusha.

Tickets for the event are $15.00 and are now available for purchase online at the NEW PEOPLE / VIZ Cinema web site at: www.vizcinema.com. General admission tickets for the screening on Saturday, August 7th (no reception or Q&A) are $10.00. No discounts apply.

After 60 years, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th, 1945, continue to inspire argument, denial and myth. White Light / Black Rain provides a detailed examination of the bombings and the aftermath and features interviews with fourteen atomic bomb survivors (known as hibakusha), many who have never spoken publicly before, as well as four Americans intimately involved in the bombings. While Japan would go on to emerge as a leading global economic power in the wake of World War II, the country’s psyche would remain forever altered by these terrible events. Through a succession of riveting personal accounts, the film reveals the unimaginable destructive power of atomic weapons, the inconceivable suffering, and extraordinary human resilience of the survivors.

Trailers, screening times and more information available at: www.vizcinema.com.

Director/filmmaker and third generation Japanese American Steven Okazaki has explored the Japanese American experience extensively through a variety of acclaimed documentaries. He has received a Peabody Award and been nominated for four Academy Awards and won an Oscar in 1991 for his documentary Days of Waiting: The Life & Art of Estelle Ishigo. He also was a co-recipient of the 2008 "Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking" Primetime Emmy Award for White Light / Black Rain. Okazaki is based in San Francisco, CA.

VIZ Cinema is the nation’s only movie theatre devoted exclusively to Japanese film and anime. The 143-seat subterranean theatre is located in the basement of the NEW PEOPLE building and features plush seating, digital as well as 35mm projection, and a THX®-certified sound system.


About NEW PEOPLE
NEW PEOPLE offers the latest films, art, fashion and retail brands from Japan and is the creative vision of the J-Pop Center Project and VIZ Pictures, a distributor and producer of Japanese live action film. Located at 1746 Post Street, the 20,000 square foot structure features a striking 3-floor transparent glass façade that frames a fun and exotic new environment to engage the imagination into the 21st Century. A dedicated web site is also now available at: www.NewPeopleWorld.com.

Review: "Eternal Sunshine" is a Spotless Delight

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 196 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Running time: 108 minutes (1 hour, 48 minutes)
MPAA – R for language, some drug and sexual content
DIRECTOR: Michael Gondry
WRITERS: Charlie Kaufman; based upon a story by Charlie Kaufman, Michael Gondry, and Pierre Bismuth
PRODUCERS: Anthony Bregman and Steve Golin
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Ellen Kuras
EDITOR: Valdìs Óskarsdóttir
Academy Award winner

DRAMA/ROMANCE/SCI-FI with elements of comedy

Starring: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, and Tom Wilkinson

Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) has just had a really bad break up with his girlfriend, Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), but there is still more bad news. Clementine has undergone a psychiatrist’s (Tom Wilkinson) experimental procedure in which all her memories of Joel were removed. Joel is frustrated by the fact that he still loves Clementine deeply, although she often irritates him greatly, so he undergoes the same procedure to erase his memories of her. The film then moves into Joel’s mind as the setting, and the procedure works backwards in time, removing the most recent memories first. So we see a memory, watch as it fades or is destroyed, and Joel’s mind moves backwards to the next oldest memory before that one is likewise scragged. Midway through the process, Joel decides realizes how much he still loves Clementine and doesn’t want to lose his memories of her. He begins to move parts of his time with her into places of his memory where she doesn’t belong, like his childhood. That only alters his other memories, and as his mind travels farther back in time, he wonders if he’ll retain any memories of Clementine when he awakens in the morning and the procedure has finished.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is another brilliant screenplay from the mind of Charlie Kaufman, author of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. As usual, his scripts are directed by excellent filmmakers; in this instance, the director is Michael Gondry, known for his work directing music videos for Björk and The Chemical Brothers. Gondry expertly directs the inspired madness of Kaufman’s script. The film, for all its surreal moments and shifts both in “real time” and dream time,” makes sense. Gondry also weaves out of this a poignant and genuinely heartfelt romantic drama.

The performances in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind range from great to pretty good. This is Jim Carrey’s best work and one of the few times he completely looses the clown and turns his creative energy and his longing for acceptance into a fierce, dramatic performance worthy of standing with the best “serious” actors. Kate Winslet is good…of course, and she does a better working class or ordinary American woman than most American actresses her age. The supporting roles are great with Kirsten Dunst making the most of a small part, but Tom Wilkinson is either a bit too aloof or too distant, or maybe the script didn’t give him enough.

At times, the film seems like a nightmare from the mind of the late, great sci-fi author and writer of speculative and mind-bending fiction, Philip K. Dick. In fact, Eternal Sunshine has a better PKD flavor than the films allegedly adapted from Dick’s books and short fiction. All things aside, this is excellent cinema. The time shifts and surrealism in Charlie Kaufman’s screenplays are practical and move the narrative similar to the way Quentin Tarantino does with his films. As of the closing days of September 2004, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the best film of the year.

10 of 10

NOTES:
2005 Academy Awards: 1 win “Best Writing, Original Screenplay” (Charlie Kaufman-screenplay/story, Michel Gondry-story, and Pierre Bismuth-story); 1 nominations: “Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role” (Kate Winslet)

2005 BAFTA Awards: 2 wins: “Best Editing” (Valdís Óskarsdóttir) and “Best Screenplay – Original” (Charlie Kaufman); 4 nominations: “Best Film” (Steve Golin and Anthony Bregman), “Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role” (Jim Carrey), “Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role” (Kate Winslet), and “David Lean Award for Direction” (Michel Gondry)

2005 Golden Globes: 4 nominations: “Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy,” “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy” (Jim Carrey), “Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy” (Kate Winslet), “Best Screenplay - Motion Picture” (Charlie Kaufman)

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Twilight's Edi Gathegi Cast in "X-Men: First Class"

From AOL Black Voices' "BV on Movies" blog:  Kenyan-born actor Edi Gathegi who played the vampire Laurent in Twilight and Twilight Saga: New Moon has signed on to "X-Men: First Class," the upcoming X-Men movie that looks back at the early days of the X-Men.  The 31-year old Gathegi will reportedly play Armando Munoz, the mutant also known as "Darwin."

The film is being directed by Matthew Vaughn and stars James McAvoy as Charles Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Erik Lensherr, Alice Eve as Emma Frost, Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy, also known as Beast, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Caleb Landry Jones as Banshee, Lucas Till as Havok, and Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw.  20th Century Fox will release the film on June 3, 2011.

Remembering Harvey Pekar

One of my favorite comic book people, comic book writer and one-time publisher Harvey Pekar, died July 12th. Pekar’s best known work is American Splendor, a series of autobiographical comic books that Pekar began publishing in 1976. Dark Horse Comics published American Splendor beginning in 1993 with issue 17. DC Comics, under its Vertigo imprint, published the last 8 issues. There were 39 American Splendor comic book issues published over a 32 year period.

Considered an underground comic book, American Splendor was mostly autobiographical, and Pekar used the comic book to chronicle his everyday life, including his job as a file clerk at a Veteran’s Administration hospital and his relationships with coworkers and patients. Pekar wrote the stories, but could not draw, so, over the years, a number of comic book artists drew the stories. The most famous is legendary Underground Comics artist, Robert Crumb (or R. Crumb), a long time friend of Pekar’s. Among the other American Splendor artists were Gary Dumm, Gregory Budgett, David Collier, and Frank Stack (Our Cancer Year).

Some will remember Pekar for a number of appearances that he made on the old Late Night with David Letterman show in the late 1980s. American Splendor was also adapted into a 2003 Academy Award-nominated film of the same name. Actor Paul Giamatti portrayed Pekar, but Pekar also appeared in the film as himself.

I first discovered Pekar in the mid-1980s, only a couple of years after discovering that there was such a thing as a comic book shop. I still have a weathered copy of the first American Splendor book collection, American Splendor: The Life and Times of Harvey Pekar, which Doubleday published in 1986 under its “Dolphin” imprint.

Harvey Lawrence Pekar was born on October 8, 1939 to Polish immigrant parents. Apparently, Pekar lived his entire life in Cleveland, OH, except for his time in the U.S. Navy. Pekar was 70 years old. Rest in peace.

Pekar's death is noted in this blog entry at Cleveland.com that also talks about his life and work.

There are Wikipedia entries for Pekar and American Splendor.

Smith Magazine has The Pekar Project.

My review of American Splendor is here.

American Splendor Remains a Truly Unique Film

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 61 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

American Splendor (2003)
Running time: 101 minutes (1 hour, 41 minutes)
MPAA – R for language
DIRECTORS: Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
WRITERS: Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (based upon the comic book series American Splendor by Harvey Pekar and Our Cancer Year by Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner)
PRODUCER: Ted Hope
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Terry Stacey (director of photography)
EDITOR: Robert Pulcini
Academy Award nominee

DRAMA with elements of animation, comedy, and documentary

Starring: Paul Giamatti, Hope Lange, Judah Friedlander, James Urbaniak, Madylin Sweeten, Earl Billings, Maggie Moore, Robert J. Williams, and James McCaffrey with Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner, Toby Radloff, and Danielle Batone

American Splendor is a film based upon the comic book of the same name, and the comic is about its author, Harvey Pekar’s, everyday humdrum life – his sufferings, the annoyances, and just getting by while winning a few skirmishes in the war called existence. See where this is going? Splendor is pretty downbeat, but one can’t help but wonder if Harvey wants to miserable. Though the film isn’t plot-centered, it’s a series of short tales with eccentric characters as the glue that holds the movie.

Splendor is a fairly interesting movie, but it’s certainly nothing I fell in love with. And despite being a 2003 critical darling, I don’t think it’s one of “the year’s best films.” Paul Giamatti does a fairly decent impersonation of Pekar, but it’s not a standout performance. I figure that he could have done this acting job in his sleep. Although I’m fairly familiar with Pekar’s work and have seen the man on TV several times, I don’t know much about his wife Joyce Brabner, though I’ve seen pictures of her. I must say that Hope Lange who plays Ms. Brabner is wishful thinking in casting because Ms. Lange turns the rather ordinary Ms. Brabner into an attractive, intriguing, and quirky matinee beauty.

The movie’s technique is a combination of film drama, documentary (where the audience gets to see the real Pekar, Brabner, and some of their associates), and animation. Several times in the film, comic book-like drawings and actual comic book art act as backdrops to the main story. It’s neat (though not original), and frankly they should have done it more. That would have made the film stand out. As it is, American Splendor is an odd oddball, not really artsy and more like something peculiar made palatable for mainstream tastes. The film is more interesting than entertaining – more than mildly interesting and above average, but well short of attaining the excellence it should have.

7 of 10
B+

NOTES:
2004 Academy Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay” (Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini)
2004 Golden Globes: 1 nomination: “Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture” (Hope Davis)

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Ben Affleck's "The Town" to Debut at Toronto International Film Festival

Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ “The Town” to Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival

Directed by and Starring Ben Affleck, the Film Will Have Gala Presentation

BURBANK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) announced today that Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ crime drama “The Town” will premiere at this year’s 35th annual festival. The Gala Presentation, which marks the North American debut of the film, will take place on Saturday, September 11, 2010.

Directed by and starring Ben Affleck, “The Town” opens in North America on September 17, 2010.

There are over 300 bank robberies in Boston every year. And most of the professionals live in a one-square-mile neighborhood called Charlestown. One of them is Doug MacCray (Ben Affleck), but he is not cut from the same cloth as his fellow thieves. Unlike them, Doug had a chance at success, a chance to escape following in his father’s criminal footsteps. Instead, he became the leader of a crew of ruthless bank robbers, who pride themselves on taking what they want and getting out clean. The only family Doug has are his partners in crime, especially Jem (Jeremy Renner), who, despite his dangerous, hair-trigger temper, is the closest thing Doug ever had to a brother.

However, everything changed on the gang’s last job when Jem briefly took a hostage: bank manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall). When they discover she lives in Charlestown, Jem gets nervous and wants to check out what she might have seen. Knowing what Jem is capable of, Doug takes charge. He seeks out Claire, who has no idea that their encounter is not by chance or that this charming stranger is one of the men who terrorized her only days before. As his relationship with Claire deepens into a passionate romance, Doug wants out of this life and the town. But with the Feds, led by Agent Frawley (Jon Hamm), closing in and Jem questioning his loyalty, Doug realizes that getting out will not be easy and, worse, may put Claire in the line of fire. Any choices he once had have boiled down to one: betray his friends or lose the woman he loves.

Academy Award® winner Ben Affleck (“Good Will Hunting,” “Gone Baby Gone”) directed and stars in “The Town,” a dramatic thriller about robbers and cops, friendship and betrayal, love and hope, and escaping a past that has no future.

The film also stars Rebecca Hall (“Vicky Christina Barcelona”), Jon Hamm (“Mad Men”), Oscar® nominee Jeremy Renner (“The Hurt Locker”), Blake Lively (“The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” TV’s “Gossip Girl”), Titus Welliver (“Gone Baby Gone”), Oscar® nominee Pete Postlethwaite (“In the Name of the Father,” “Inception”), and Academy Award® winner Chris Cooper (“Adaptation”).

“The Town” is produced by Academy Award® winner Graham King (“The Departed”) and Basil Iwanyk (“Clash of the Titans”) from a screenplay by Peter Craig and Ben Affleck & Aaron Stockard, based on the novel Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan. The executive producers are Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, William Fay and David Crockett, and Chay Carter served as co-producer.

The behind-the-scenes creative team was led by Oscar®-winning director of photography Robert Elswit (“There Will Be Blood”), production designer Sharon Seymour (“Gone Baby Gone”), Oscar®-nominated editor Dylan Tichenor (“There Will Be Blood”), and costume designer Susan Matheson (“The Kingdom”). The music is composed by Harry Gregson-Williams and David Buckley, who previously collaborated on Affleck’s “Gone Baby Gone.”

Warner Bros. Pictures presents, in association with Legendary Pictures, a GK Films Production, a Thunder Road Film Production, “The Town.” The film has been rated R for strong violence, pervasive language, some sexuality and drug use.

http://www.thetownmovie.com/