500 Days of Summer
By Mark Baratelli
I saw the sneak preview of "500 Summers" last night. Lindsay Lohan used to be into cutting. I was very much into cutting after this movie. There's a play called 52 Pickup that worked the Fringe circuit where a couple's courtship and final break-up were divided into 52 scenes. A deck of cards was thrown into the air, with each card representing a scene, and they played the scenes in the random order the toss created. This movie used that to structure its editing. I did not enjoy the production I saw of the play in New York City and I did not enjoy this movie. Zooey Doochoomoomoo is one of the good actors, but this movie was not creative enough for her, it appeared to me. (listen to a 2008 NPR interview)
Zooeys character is named Summer. She dates and dumps a guy. In the final scene post-dump, the dude meets a girl named "Autumn." Rimshot.
The movie says there is no fate, only coincidence. Its only coincidence then that in June I heard (and recommend) the 6/15/09 and 6/29/09 episodes of the WNYC RadioLab podcast talking about coincidence. (Search for "radiolab" in itunes or use their RSS feed)
Those two episodes are more interesting than this movie.
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7 Comments:
But you liked the Fringe show, right?
I saw it in NYC at a non-fringe performance. It was ok.
so you didn't like the way it was edited or what? i guess i don't see why it sucked.
as you know, i really liked the movie. saw it twice already.
Gosh its so hard to verbalize and be specific. I think the focus on the concept and importance of love was cartoonishly intense. There was a lack of truth in the plot/story. Zooey Dooshoonanabaaba is of course one of the good actors, but I felt like I was watching a good actor doing her best with not-amazing writing and directing. She came off as uncreative, and I bet she is creative.
i thought the movie was very original and honest in its observations of modern romance, and it was visually creative as well. like a contemporary annie hall.
i think it does help to have been through similar experiences to fully appreciate the film. the bittersweetness was very believable.
and i don't think the film says that there is no such thing as fate... not at all. that's the point of the last 15 minutes of the film. which reminds me, it's common practice if you're going to give away any significant plot points to preface your review with SPOILER ALERT.
I heard a nice interview rebroadcast on a Fresh air podcast the other day about Zooey Dooshoomooshoochicken.
yeah, i heard that interview too. she's also in a band called she & him.
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