Secret Cinema present Bugsy Malone

(500) Days of Summer. Again.

No one likes to realise they were wrong about something, so it's nice to be reassured, by what ever fates or mediums come your way, that you were right all the long. I recently had to watch popular indie rom-com (500) Days of Summer AGAIN, but am pleased to report that while I found more things to like about it the second time round, I still disliked it as much as I remembered. At the heart of the problem, of course, is its female lead, the eponymous Summer. The role is played by the doe-eyed ZDC, who've I explained my problems with before. The good thing about (500) Days of Summer is that it also stars Joseph Gordon -Levitt. JGL is a proper acting genius. He was amazing in Mysterious Skin, and completely carried the dribbly mess that was Brick (ask anyone, anyone what they can remember about Brick. Popular answers are 'a payphone' , 'a bridge', 'a sort of warm sunny wall', 'the girl from Lost, but she wasn't Australian' and 'Joseph Gordon-Levitt'). Luckily, no-one asks JGL to hoist (500) DOS onto his back and drag into post-production and for the purposes of this movie, nothing too taxing is really asked of JGL. He wears a very good wardrobe very well (I am sticking to my guns on this - his wardrobe is the best thing about this film by miles) and smashes a karaoke scene with a triumphant Pixies interpretation. If there was an award for Best Male Karaoke Performance within a Fairly Pointless Film, Bill Murray (Lost in Translation) would be passing it over to JGL right now.

The film had the same faults - the most interesting character {the best friend who hasn't had a girlfriend since seventh grade} still only gets four minutes of screen time, the sister still seems to have walked on to the set from a different production and I don't get the bookend voice-overs. Also whats with the title? Is the film really called Days of Summer or just 500? Like 300? "This....is.... Chicago!!"? Was it set in Chicago? I can't really remember, which is weird because wasn't the films protagonist was supposed to be an architect in love with the city? Wasn't he? Oh who cares. Your man wears two different Joy Division t shirts within two hours, for Christs sake, and then wonders why he gets dumped. In fact, I think that's the problem with the whole film. It does have some really good moments. The karaoke (JGL, not ZDC singing that song that sounds like the theme song to The Shoe People), the Han Solo reflection bit, the party expectation/reality split screen. But all the gaps between the clever bits are filled in with nonsense and non-characters with non-backgrounds.

And that is exactly the problem with the film. It's too many Joy Division tshirts mixed in with too many average tshirts. Then your Joy Division shirts stand out too much and show everything else up as tired, mediocre rubbish.

Heres the audio of the winner of the Official Best Male Karaoke Performance within a Fairly Pointless Film Award 2009

Cut-price Celebrity 'spots'

I saw this lady walking down Portabello Road on Wednesday.

Her name is Vera Filatova, and she played Elena on Peep Show. I mention this because I once had an elaborate plan to devote an entirely separate blog to my Crap Celebrity Spots, but considering I seem to be unable to regually update even this blog, its possibly for the best that I didn't extend my evil blog empire. So, I'll cram them all in here.

1) Vera Filatova, obviously. She was very short (shorter than me), had small features and seemed calm.

2) Samantha Mumba, walking along Poland Street, talking on her phone. She is very, very tall, super-smiley and seemed full of energy (so I guess that one number one hit didn't take it out of her too much).

3) Ian Brown. Greasy of hair and slumped of shoulder. He was in an off-licence in Soho.

4) Alan Carr. Oxford St.

5) Simon Amstell, different end of Oxford street

6) Lily Cole, Charing Cross Road. Very nice mittens.

It reads like the guest list for the Ant and Dec ITV Xmas Special. *sigh*