500 Days of Summer

There's a lot of talk surrounding this film which is due for release in July:



I can't tell if I like it or hate it, but why do I feel like I've seen this film before? I like it in as much as I like sappy romcoms where someone gets a boot up the arse, but then... "Oh look everything's fine... lah dee dah...". What delightful bullshit. Show me this trailer a year ago and I might have been interested - show me this trailer 2 years ago and I'd be counting down the days until it came out.

Since then I've developed a loathing stemming from a disparaging awareness of the unoriginality of all things 'indie'. No, this is not an original film for the two people* out there who've heard of Sid and Nancy. It's all too easy to throw a band like The Smiths into the mix and gain cult indie status nowadays.

Just like music, indie film have become mainstream - but they're trying to hide that for as long as they can so all the "I'm shitting unique, goddammit!" kids of our generation will eat it up, and hand over their very lucrative custom.

The indie teen market must be massive. Throw in an unlikely hero (with one leg, or a stutter or something), a pretty girl who wears nice dresses, let them have adventures edited in a non-lineal fashion, maybe a bit of kooky captioning, and put an 80s indie rock soundtrack over it. Bish. Bash. Bosh. Give me a million quid, I've just written you a indie breakthrough hit.

I'm not saying that liking quirky things is wrong. I'm saying that liking these things because they are quirky is stupider than your mum on toast, and that everyone should like what they like, whether it's popular or not, whether it's cool or not, and whether you want to or not. That's individuality: that's indie, motherfuckers.

...

Also, is it just me, or does that guy look insanely like Heath Ledger?

*That would be a chasm of sarc, there.