500 Days of Summer

(USA, 2009, 95 mins)

35mm

Wisconsin Premiere

writer: Scott Neustadter & Michael Weber
director of photography: Eric Steelberg
editor: Alan Edward Bell
music: Mychael Danna, Rob Simonsen
production designer: Laura Fox
costume designer: Hope Hanafin
producer: Mark Waters, Jessica Tuchinsky, Mason Novick, Steven J. Wolfe
cast: Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Clark Gregg, Minka Kelly, Matthew Gray Gubler, Rachel Boston, Geoffrey Arend, Chloe Moritz

• IMDB Film Info
• www.foxsearchlight.com/500daysofsummer/

“If you want to be whacked around the head by whimsy then this is certainly the film for you.” — Amber Wilkinson, eyeforfilm.co.uk. Summer (Zoey Deschanel) and Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) chart the course of their relationship in the feature film debut of Marc Webb, who grew up in Madison. This post-modern love story is never what we expect it to be — it's thorny yet exhilarating, funny and sad, a twisted journey of highs and lows that doesn't quite go where we think it will. When Tom, a greeting-card copywriter and hopeless romantic, is blindsided after his girlfriend Summer dumps him, he shifts back and forth through various periods of their 500 days together to try to figure out where things went wrong. His reflections ultimately lead him to finally rediscover his true passions in life. “Levitt is utterly brilliant at Tom, a hopeless romantic who believes he has at long last found the perfect girl. We’re with him as he struggles to get up the nerve to ask her out, makes a fool of himself at karaoke, and gets punched in the nose defending her honor….Tom is awkward and frustrated, often unable to express his emotions. He’s also loyal and brash and all the things women are so often drawn to in the midst of young love. Zooey is a natural as the object of his affection. Tom sees in her only the perfect girl, but Deschanel does an amazing job of projecting something hidden underneath what he sees.…500 Days of Summer is unlikely to reinvent the romance genre, in fact it’s not even interested in being that kind of film. If it’s romantic (and it is), it achieves that as only a byproduct of something else, something deeper, something bigger, something even more beautiful than the standard boy meets girl tale. It’s creative, surprising, insightful, and a must see for any lover of great film." — Josh Tyler, cinemablend.com. 2009 Sundance, South by Southwest Film Festival.

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