I’m on a weird kind of high right now after an afternoon viewing of 500 Days of Summer. It was just as great as I expected, and I’m so glad I wasn’t disappointed. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was great.

My co-worker, Dave, expressed that he would not be seeing the movie because there is no way it could possibly live up to the hype. Well, fortunately for me, that wasn’t the case. In my opinion, the over-hyped-movie title still resides with Shrek and Waitress.

From the beginning of the film the narrator informs us that although this is a story of boy-meets-girl, this is not a love story. I love that 500 Days of Summer was so very grounded in its portrayal of love, or rather, relationships and our expectations of them and the people with whom we become involved. The idea that it’s unwise to go into a relationship expecting to change the other person, to win them over to your side of whatever your core beliefs are, and not expect that that person, in turn, will affect you in the same way—this film explored that idea brilliantly AND it was so very pretty, funny, heartbreaking and squeeful (JGL doing a very relatable portrayal of a stifled artist) to watch.

At first, I didn’t give much consideration to Zooey Deschanel‘s performance as Summer. Now I think that’s a good thing. Her performance wasn’t lacking by any means, and now I realize she did an amazing job of conveying a sense of reservation on the part of Summer, playing a character who didn’t believe in love, but by the end, you see that she truly wanted to believe what it was that Tom (Gordon-Levitt) was pitching.

On that note, here’s this:

“Why Don’t You Let Me Stay Here” by She & Him
Directed by Mark Webb

Monday night I attended a concert at the Saenger Theater.

I was blown away by the opening act, a little band called Jukebox the Ghost. Before they began to play, one of them joked that while eating at Denny’s, they got schooled on the correct pronunciation of Mobile (Moh-BEE-uhl. It’s French.) It is a well known fact around these part that how one pronounces the name of my hometown is a valid litmus test for whether they are a native of the area. Dude, Ben Thornewill, killed it on the keyboards. The drummer was excellent. Of course one would reason that any band with the privilege of opening for Ben Folds was probably be pretty good. Listening to the album now, I much prefer the live version of “Hold It In” better live.

Then came the main act. I remember that he opened with “Annie Waits” and ended with…a song whose title has many asterisks, as listed in the iTunes store.
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Tuesday night, I discovered Seven Brides for Seven Brothers playing on TCM. It was close to the beginning, and I found that I had to watch the thing all the way to the end. It’s just that good.

In this sequence, the Pontipee brothers have come to town to participate in a barn raising. They meet 6 lovely girls, and get the opportunity to test out the manners taught to them by Milly, their new sister-in-law.

It really picks up around the 2:38 mark, and again at around 4:20.

Apparently, this is dubbed and subtitled in Italian. It’s the only one I could find of this particular sequence, but it doesn’t matter, because this number is all dancing, no singing.

This is a movie I really need to add to my DVD collection.

“Elephants” by Rachael Yamagata

If the elephants have past lives
Yet are destined to always remember,
It’s no wonder how they scream
Like you and I, they must have some temper

I don’t know how she expects me to get through the rest of the album when I love the song on the first track so much that I just want to put it on repeat.

“Rockferry” by Duffy

I’m really feelin’ her music right now. Her single, “Mercy,” was available as a free download on iTunes several months back. I got it, but didn’t listen to it at the time. A little while ago, I started hearing the song on the radio, and them remembered her name was familiar. I decided to investigate more of her music, and I like it a lot. I just bought her album last night. My favorite songs are “Warwick Avenue” and “Stepping Stone,” but it’s a good listen all the way through. (I so wish I was more eloquent in describing music.)

I described her voice to a friend as Amy-Winehouse-on-helium. That’s as best as I can approximate it. Their voices are very similar in tone and inflection, Duffy’s is just a lot higher. Also, she’s totally adorable.