'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' on its way to a magical weekend

By Sarah Sluis

This weekend, it's all about Potter. The 6th film in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, earned $100 million in 24 hours. $58.2 million came from its 4,235 U.S. theatres, and the other $45.8 million came from theatres abroad. No wonder Warner Bros. has decided to make the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, into two films. Most critics enjoyed the latest trip to Hogwarts, and took particular interest in seeing how the stars have grown up. Our reviewer Doris Toumarkine found the "packed" film to be "great fun and engaging populist movie entertainment, even at 153 minutes and even for those of voting age." By appealing to fans and casual viewers alike, I suspect that it will do business for much longer than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which slightly bested Half-Blood Prince's debut. Plus, next weekend the film will open on IMAX screens, after Transformers finishes its one-month run, which will boost its box office. Fan response, too, has been overwhelming. I'm getting a huge kick out of the "hp6" Twitter search, a multilingual homage to the muggles' excitement.

Releasing on just 27 screens, (500) Days of Summer is opening small in the hopes of setting off a snowball of word-of-mouth endorsement. I interviewed director Marc Webb before the film's release, and blogged my initial reaction back in April. One of the big pluses of (500) Days is that it allows you to watch a romantic comedy without having to endure the exact same contrivances with only slightly different set-ups. While A. O. Scott from the New York Times is quick to point out all the ways (500) Days hews to the generic conventions of a romantic comedy, he also concedes that the Memento-type plot structure "restores a measure of the suspense that is usually missing from the romantic-comedy genre, which relies on climactic chases to the airport and ridiculously contrived choices between rival mates." Our critic Doris Toumarkine suspects that "(500) Days should emerge a summer winner. The little film that could and does is smart, funny, real, surprising, and hits the bull's-eye on all production counts." While almost everything about this film is positive, up until the point some people declare it treacly and syrupy sweet, I'm curious as to how, and when, this film will really catch on. Fox Searchlight would certainly like Juno, Little Miss Sunshine or Garden State-type success. Unlike with films that release wide, Searchlight will have the opportunity to tweak their marketing campaign over the coming weeks to make sure this film sparks. Each of those three films slowly increased the theatres in their release over a period of eight weeks, so it may be until the end of summer before (500) Days of Summer can be evaluated on the indie success scale.

I will be on vacation next week, so I'll see you back on July 27th.

Advance buzz: '(500) Days of Summer'

By Sarah Sluis

Yesterday I saw (500) Days of Summer, the Sundance sensation that's already captivated bloggers and prompted people to count their calendars down to its July 17th release. The sweet, self-aware film--the screenwriters call it "postmodern"--can come off as smug or earnest, though I lean towards the latter interpretation. Fox Searchlight picked up the film, a sure sign that it will follow in the footsteps of the studio's other indie successes, Garden State, Juno, and Little Miss Sunshine.

The movie opens by telling us it's not a love story, even though, well, it kind of is. Tonally, the best comparison is Annie Hall: it's telling you a love story that won't have a happy ending, but somehow makes you leave the theatre thinking about the lobster pot-like moments in the movie, not the break-up.

(500) Days of Summer is incredibly playful stylistically. The morning after Tom's first night with Summer, for example, he checks himself out in the car window and sees Harrison Ford in Star Wars. Everyone moves to his beat, and the scene eventually turns into a dance sequence, and a straight-from-Disney animated bluebird flies through the foreground. So how is this not obnoxious? The sequence seems to come from Tom's subjective point-of-view. He's sentimental, he works for a greeting card company, so it makes sense that he would have these fantasies. Music-video director Mark Webb does a great job keeping the style in check. He avoids hard shifts to fantasy sequences, the kind where the character looks around to see an empty park where a legion of dancers were a moment before, but keeps them slighly loose and open: fun "what ifs" that allow you to share Tom's excitement. Another particularly effective device was a split-screen sequence of Tom attending a party hosted by Summer. The left-hand side shows "Expectations," the right-hand side "Reality," and for a couple minutes we see the scene evolve in different directions. It's a playful style that comes straight from music-videos, but used sparingly, effectively conveys Tom's disappointment. Tom even interacts with the soundtrack. He explains, as "She's Like the Wind" swells in the soundtrack, that he just can't help feeling the music. To me, the style and reflexivity work because Webb is careful to tie each use to Tom's emotions, instead of going willy-nilly just because something would look cool.

With an original, challenging screenplay by Michael Weber and Scott Neustadter, and expert direction by first-timer Webb, (500) Days of Summer is going to be the kind of film people love to love, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised to see one of those Garden State-like backlashes where some get annoyed with the film's self-aware cleverness. It's definitely a film that people will want to talk about afterward, and if the reaction is like the standing ovation the film received at Sundance, it looks like it's going to be a particularly happy summer for Fox Searchlight, which is already on a winning streak with Slumdog Millionaire.

Interview with Matt Aselton, director of 'Gigantic'

By Sarah Sluis

Upcoming release Gigantic, a romance and a comedy about a young mattress salesman (Paul Dano) who wants to adopt a baby from China, and the equally unusual young woman (Zooey Deschanel) he falls in love with, releases in New York City this Friday. I had an opportunity to speak with director Matt

Aselton about his debut film, including why he felt the need to have a random homeless man attack his male lead, and the stroke of genius that helped John Goodman cough up a realistic-looking tumor.

One of the most striking things about Gigantic is its stellar cast (all of whom turn in spot-on performances). Besides Paul Dano, best known for his role as the preacher in There Will Be Blood, the cast includes Zooey Deschanel, John Goodman, Edward Asner and Jane Alexander.

To assemble the cast, Aselton first talked to Paul: "I had seen L.I.E. years ago and liked him since then, even though he was really young at the time. He understood the script and the way that I wanted it to go. It's sort of a quiet role...it's Paul's movie in a large way, everyone's orbiting around him. I wanted to make sure that his character was setting the tone and pace, that everyone's reacting to him" Once Dano was on board, "Zooey came on next. From an intellectual standpoint, it made sense."

As for John Goodman, who owns each scene he's in? "I begged him. For six months." One casting decision that didn't come to fruition was Gene Wilder as the homeless man/Paul's demon. "He sent us a note saying, "I'm a lot older than you think I am," a nod to the physical fights required in the role.

The homeless man, who attacks Paul Dano throughout the film without explanation, was in the script

from the beginning. Aselton always thought the meaning was obvious: "a manifestation of Paul's subconscious, a demon." He also plays with the surreal in a tumor-coughing scene narrated by John Goodman. The sequence ends with him using traditional chinese medicine to visualize moving a brain tumor to a place where he could cough it up, and, of course, expectorating. After attempts to make a realistic-looking tumor failed, a makeup artist (with a background in horror) stepped in, taking some unripe banana and ketchup to make a suitably bloody, solid mass.

Set in New York City, Aselton aimed for a more "local" look of the five boroughs. "I'm always kind of wary of those movies where the 28 year-olds live in huge lofts, so I wanted Paul's place to look kind of outer borough (in fact filmed by Orchard Street in Chinatown). We didn't want to shoot big landmarks. We wanted it to look like what a pedestrian would see: stacks of air conditioners, not the Brooklyn Bridge."

While not many romantic comedies can claim to have tumor-coughing scenes or angst expressed by fights with a homeless man, Aselton makes us believe these are just part of this world, mainly through Paul's nonchalant reactions. It's a welcome departure from hyper-conscious hipster films, intent on deconstructing the irony of their world. Aselton agrees: "I really wanted it to be about observing these people as opposed to trying to put them in a position where it's audience/stage, a proscenium. I wanted it to be, let's just sit back and watch."

Opening this friday at the Village East, Gigantic will roll out nationally later this year. As for Aselton, his next project involves an art thief who steals fine art from homes.