The 500 Days Of Summer Team Want To Heist Your Heart
500 Days of Summer director Marc Webb has already completed his third collaboration with stars Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt (the second has already graced these pages in full).
Of course, they haven't had time to make another feature but instead, what they've cooked up is a music video for the She & Him track Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? (The She in this case is Ms. Deschanel, the Him M. Ward).
The video is currently available exclusively at USA Today though it is set to spread to other venues – ie. those dusty corners of MTV where music videos still play – pretty soon. This cross-promotion takes me back to the days when a Bryan Adams video would have done the world of good for a Kevin Costner movie at the box office, and said Costner movie would have done Adams bank balance just as big a favour.
The USA Today report claims that Deschanel and Levitt "hope to team up repeatedly and have aspirations of being a regular screen couple, like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers or Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn." No complaints here. And maybe Marc Webb can be their Marc Sandrich, without sharing the same unfortunate, tragic end.
Unlike Peter, who has been waxing lyrical about the film for some months now, I haven't yet seen 500 Days of Summer. I live in the UK, that strange little collection of islands that seem to get far too many really exciting films really far too late. But perhaps this lack of foreknowledge makes me somewhat more qualified to discuss the video clip...?
I certainly found it an easy watch, and some elements were quite striking, but the end lacked punch, I felt, and there were a few bits that weren't as smoothly executed as the rest (the cuts around '2.18 remaining' are not pleasing, for example). And despite much of the clip smelling of 'glory days' musicals or Rat Pack-era heists, the residual taste of Spike Jonze' Weapon of Choice video crawled back up my throat in a couple of shots too, which I don't think was ideal. Jonze came to a place like this already, and he definitely did so better.
All the same, it certainly hasn't dampened my enthusiasm to see 500 Days of Summer and for most folk, I imagine this will be a nice extra boost of encouragement. Let's see what happens to the screen averages over the next week or so.