Don't Talk. Listen.

I'm nowhere near young enough to know if "500 Days of Summer" is emblematic of what today's twentysomethings really have to teach and learn about the mating rituals of urban elites. I've studied many of the earlier chapters carefully, however, as the scenes of my own adult life chick-flicker by. Can a Jewish writer in Manhattan find happiness (and avoid a statutory rape rap) with a shiksa half his age? Can Harry learn to think about Sally in other than purely sexual terms before they fall passionately in love? Will Bridget Fonda find a man who will say "God bless you" when she sneezes?

In the tradition of Woody Allen, Rob Reiner, and Cameron Crowe, directors of 1970s "Manhattan," 1980s "When Harry Met Sally," and 1990s "Singles," comes 34-year-old Marc Webb, whose "500" does for Los Angeles what his predecessors did for New York and Seattle. First movie I've ever seen with a character, Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Keanu Reeves with facial expressions), who ogles LA architecture. He's absolutely convinced that Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) is the one. I was, too, because that's how these movies usually go -- even after a weird-sounding omniscient narrator warned us at the very beginning that it wasn't a love story.

The problem is that Summer's just not that into him. After they've broken up, he's a blind date from hell for Alison (Rachel Boston), who, evidently as a public service, patiently and methodically asks him if Summer had ever misled him about her feelings or intentions. Certain that kismet is at work, Tom never actually listens to Summer or picks up her ambivalent signals. The movie's gimmick is that she doesn't believe in kismet until she changes her mind, but by then, it's too late for teacher Tom. Affecting movie, great music, appealing though poorly matched young stars, several Woody Allen-style grace notes (such as when Tom imagines himself as characters in Buster Keaton and Ingmar Bergman movies), and an old-fashioned (which is to say timeless) message about listening to what the other person is actually saying.

alt.-37 And Blue Man's Group

Reviewing "Watchmen" in the New York Times, as a public service A. O. Scott notes the use of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" during a sex scene and beseeches filmmakers:

[C]an we please have a moratorium on the use of this song in movies? Yes, I too have heard there was a secret chord that David played, and blah blah blah, but I don’t want to hear it again. Do you?

Amen and (with apologies to my Lenten brethren and sistren) alleluia.

Several "Watchmen" reviews, including Scott's, have persuaded me to watch for the DVD, if only to restrict the gushing blood, cracking bones, and exploding bodies to a smaller screen.

Having missed the graphic novel phenom entirely, I did buy a copy of the book and am about halfway through. Reading a comic book at 54, I feel self-conscious, even though it's strictly for research purposes. President Nixon, of course, is in his fifth term, having sent a big blue superman called Dr. Manhattan to defeat the Viet Cong, enabling the U.S. to win the war. That's alt.-37 above, anxiously contemplating the possible loss of the entire Eastern establishment in a hypothetical nuclear exchange. It's now the mid-1980s. The Soviets have invaded Afghanistan and plunged into Pakistan. But the blue man has broken up with his girlfriend and been accused of giving everyone cancer. He's gone to Mars to sulk and so isn't available to RN to blunt the invasion.

The reflections of another from "Watchman"'s band of troubled superheroes on the meaninglessness of the universe and the pivotal role played by chance in our lives reminded me of one of Woody Allen's best movies. A ring decides a character's fate in Allen's "Match Point," a broken watch in "Watchmen." The book has also been giving me weird dreams. Its looming apocalypse resonates discomfitingly with our all-too-real economic crisis.