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Archive: August 2009 (41-42 of 42)

Aug 1 2009 02:39 PM ET

'Funny People' takes Friday box office with $8.6 million

The dramatic comedy (or is it comedic drama?) Funny People took in a healthy $8.6 million to take the top slot at the Friday box office, keeping writer-director Judd Apatow and star Adam Sandler’s box-office reputations intact. The guinea pig kiddie flick G-Force landed at second place with $5.8 million, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince conjured $5.4 million for third, and The Ugly Truth, starring Apatow bete noir Katherine Heigl, slipped to fourth with $4.4 million. Be sure to check back tomorrow for full weekend results.

Aug 1 2009 01:37 PM ET

'(500) Days': Would you watch them in order?

by Owen Gleiberman

Tags: (500) Days of Summer, Romantic Comedies

Remember Memento, Christopher Nolan’s amnesiac mind-bender? It was a tale of trying to retrieve the past told backward. In 2002, the Special Edition DVD of the film included a hidden feature that allowed you to watch the movie in reverse — that is, in rough chronological order. I never did sit down and watch it that way; I think I was worried that I still wouldn’t be able to follow it. (Much as I cherish Memento, the beauty of Nolan’s hypnotic puzzle thriller is that its narrative logic always remains a shade out of the reach of your mind’s eye.) Yet thinking back on it gave me an idea: When the time-hopping indie-hit romance (500) Days of Summer finally comes out on DVD, wouldn’t it be fun if there were a special feature that allowed you to watch it in chronological order?

The reason I ask the question is that the central device in (500) Days — we follow the romance of Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a failed-architect-turned-greeting-card-writer, and Summer (Zooey Deschanel), a free spirit, by bouncing around in time — so defines the movie that you might be tempted to think that’s more or less all there is to it. Look closer, though, and you’ll see that what has been charming audiences about (500) Days isn’t just its playful, artfully structured cinematic cleverness. Scene for scene, the movie is the opposite of jumpy; it’s fresh, deft, funny, supple, intimate, and emotionally sly. READ FULL STORY »