(500) Days of Summer
So, yes, long time no see. Life has changed a lot since I last wrote. Long story short, I graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Japanese and Linguistics, and now I'm living in Korea (as long as I can keep making my visa situation work) and studying Korean. But I've got back into the habit of watching movies (more than drama) so I decided to start reviewing them to keep my thoughts in order.
So, first off the bat is (500) Days of Summer, which I have seen before. I actually remember it must have been in January 2012 because I was living with Daniel and we had ALL movie channels on Foxtel, so I went on a bit of a movie spree - watching one or two movies a day - during the summer break.
Watching it again I did, again, enjoy it. At the beginning when they say 'this is a story of boy meets girl, but this is not a love story' is important. I like that in this movie we only see one person's perspective. One person's experience of the relationship. Tom falls hard for Summer, but we don't really know how she 'feels', we can only guess from her actions. And that's what real relationships are like, so I actually think it's good that this film tried to tell the same story in this particularly different way.
One thing that nagged me though was a scene in the beginning where the narrator was basically putting Summer up on a pedestal by pointing out how 'normal' she was. There was also a line where the narrator says "there's only two kinds of people in the world. There's women. And there's men" and I felt like screaming *get ready*: NO THERE ISN'T THERE IS A WHOLE SPECTRUM OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY AND SOCIAL NORMS that come between the idea of woman-female and man-male that you just fucking glossed over in one fell swoop and like, I thought this was supposed to be a hip modern indie movie because the characters like hip indie old music like The Smiths and MY POINT is that I think that line was really throw-away and cheap. *Breathes*
One thing that I do love about this film and the reason I thought to re-watch it was for the views of downtown Los Angeles - the old banking district and Pershing Square and Angelus Plaza. The beautiful old architecture squished now inbetween modern necessities like parking lots. I've had, for a long time now, a thing for cities as characters. Whenever I travel I like to just get out and walk around. Catch a bus to somewhere, anywhere, walk around, and somehow find my way back. And though I think they definitely could have featured downtown more than they actually did (like name the places they filmed in more, because at one point the boys went to a coffee shop that kind-of doubled as an arcade and game place and I was like 'I want to go there!'), I am glad that the story was set somewhere specific.
Well, those were the important things I came away with from seeing this movie.
So, first off the bat is (500) Days of Summer, which I have seen before. I actually remember it must have been in January 2012 because I was living with Daniel and we had ALL movie channels on Foxtel, so I went on a bit of a movie spree - watching one or two movies a day - during the summer break.
Watching it again I did, again, enjoy it. At the beginning when they say 'this is a story of boy meets girl, but this is not a love story' is important. I like that in this movie we only see one person's perspective. One person's experience of the relationship. Tom falls hard for Summer, but we don't really know how she 'feels', we can only guess from her actions. And that's what real relationships are like, so I actually think it's good that this film tried to tell the same story in this particularly different way.
One thing that nagged me though was a scene in the beginning where the narrator was basically putting Summer up on a pedestal by pointing out how 'normal' she was. There was also a line where the narrator says "there's only two kinds of people in the world. There's women. And there's men" and I felt like screaming *get ready*: NO THERE ISN'T THERE IS A WHOLE SPECTRUM OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY AND SOCIAL NORMS that come between the idea of woman-female and man-male that you just fucking glossed over in one fell swoop and like, I thought this was supposed to be a hip modern indie movie because the characters like hip indie old music like The Smiths and MY POINT is that I think that line was really throw-away and cheap. *Breathes*
One thing that I do love about this film and the reason I thought to re-watch it was for the views of downtown Los Angeles - the old banking district and Pershing Square and Angelus Plaza. The beautiful old architecture squished now inbetween modern necessities like parking lots. I've had, for a long time now, a thing for cities as characters. Whenever I travel I like to just get out and walk around. Catch a bus to somewhere, anywhere, walk around, and somehow find my way back. And though I think they definitely could have featured downtown more than they actually did (like name the places they filmed in more, because at one point the boys went to a coffee shop that kind-of doubled as an arcade and game place and I was like 'I want to go there!'), I am glad that the story was set somewhere specific.
Well, those were the important things I came away with from seeing this movie.