Cybertech
Aug 10th
Computer users and web designers revolt against old Internet junk that’s holding down the advancement of a better tomorrow, also coffee shops are taking a toll because too many people sit around on laptops without much in return. Also a touch on fashion, environment and here at home in Boulder the city folk are building around the mountains and too close for comfort.
Julie and Julia – Movie Trailer
Aug 7th
Nora Ephron adapts Julie Powell’s autobiographical book Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen with this Columbia Pictures production starring Amy Adams as an amateur chef who decides to cook every recipe in a cookbook from acclaimed celebrity chef Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep) in order to chronicle it in a blog over the course of a year. Streep’s Devil Wears Prada co-star Stanley Tucci re-teams with the actress as Child’s husband.
“(500) Days of Summer” Movie of Expectation
Aug 5th
Movie of Expectation
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
(500) DAYS OF SUMMER of Summer is an anti-romantic comedy, but more than that, it is a long string of gimmicks from its title to its final scene, when a new character is introduced.
The gimmick in the title is the parentheses around “500” and the fact that “Summer” is the name of the character played winningly by Zooey Deschanel.
The gimmick of the movie is that it portrays the first 500 days in the relationship of Summer and Tom, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who meet when she joins the greeting-card company that Tom works for as a writer.
Thankfully we don’t see every one of those days, but the gimmick of the story is that it jumps randomly throughout the 500 days, identifying each scene with a number that marks the day.
The gimmick of the plot is what we are told by a narrator at the beginning when he says, “You should know up front that this is not a love story.”
No, it is a love-story wannabe on Tom’s part and a romantic-comedy wannabe on the filmmakers’ part.
So, even though Summer tells Tom at the beginning of their relationship that she doesn’t believe in love, but is willing to be best friends with Tom, like all men of the romantic persuasion, he either doesn’t believe her or else he believes that he can get her to change her mind.
Especially since they are “friends with benefits,” as the kids today are calling it.
Well, the film begins essentially on Day 290 when Tom is reacting to Summer’s having broken up with him, and Tom’s adolescent sister, Rachel, is called over to help him get through it.
Yes, there is the “wise younger sister” gimmick in the movie, too.
And, yes, we go back to Day 1 when they meet, and eventually we will get to Day 500 at the end of the film, but the days in between move around so quickly and so much out of order that the audience can suffer from romantic whiplash just trying to follow the action and to keep up with Tom’s expectations about their relationship that keep flying in the face of everything that Summer keeps telling him.
Now, the actors are appealing, but the movie, not so much.
(500) DAYS OF SUMMER is a movie of romantic expectation.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
