No one wants 'New Moon' to end

By Sarah Sluis

The success of New Moon has brought the Twilight franchise to a whole new level. Among franchises, there are the ones that do better the second time around (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) and then there are the ones that do worse. By amassing a two-week total that exceeds the gross of the first film, New Moon is firmly among the franchise winners. Predictably, Summit is trying to stretch out the amount of Twilight movies it can make, and supernatural romances are in hot demand.

Today, for example, Warner Bros. picked up a series of five books in the "supernatural romance" category--the first one was just released today. Richard LaGravanese (writer/director of P.S. I Love You) is set to write and direct the first in the series, entitled Beautiful Creatures. An extension of Harry Potter and Twilight, the novel is told from the perspective of a popular high school boy in the South who secretly wants to get out of his small town. He has dreams of a girl, who suddenly arrives as a transfer student. They go through all the usual motions of falling in love, but she is the heir to a terrible family curse (not revealed in synopses) that gets in the way of their love. It sounds like a winning plot, but the success of Twilight and Harry Potter over, say, The Golden Compass has to do with fanbase. Is this project going to remain in a holding pattern until it ignites among young adult audiences? Or will it be moved swiftly into production before (or even if) the series turns into a phenomenon?

The other news on the supernatural romance front is Summit's proposal to extend the success of the Twilight series by splitting Breaking Dawn, the 756-page finale to the series, into two movies. That would bring the total amount of movies to five. It's an expensive move that will require raises among cast and crew (the Harry Potter series went through the same series of renegotiations), but the payoff could be big. Summit has already made a smart move by releasing the movies in quick succession. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse will come out not next Thanksgiving but this summer (June 30th). While the Twilight series, like the Harry Potter series, is strong enough to bring in new fans as older ones age out of the series, holding onto an audience is always a concern. Teen girls are only teen girls for so long. I've heard of kids who were into Star Wars but lost interest by the time the third film was released. As for myself, after seeing the first five Harry Potter movies on opening day, I missed the sixth one in theatres (though I'm anxiously awaiting its DVD release). It just wasn't as much of a priority anymore. Summit will be counting on the "Twihards" to retain their fanaticism for at least a few more years.

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.