Up-and-coming indie director Marc Webb has officially signed on to helm Sony’s proposed reboot of the Spider-Man series, following previous director Sam Raimi’s departure from the hit franchise.

Webb is best known for last year’s breakout Sundance hit, (500) Days Of Summer and countless music videos and commercials. This would be his first film with a major studio, and coming fresh off the unique visual touches of Summer, the movie world is now curious to see what he can bring to the ongoing story of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

The Sam Raimi-led Spider-Man trilogy, beginning in 2002 and running through 2007′s third installment, was one of the highest-grossing and most profitable film franchises in history, setting countless records and helping to keep the box office strong in a particularly trying period for the industry.

The newest addition to the web-slinger’s film canon is reportedly being scripted by James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, this year’s upcoming The Losers,) and is tentatively scheduled for a 2012 release.

500 Days of Summer director Marc Webb is in talks to direct Just Another Love Story. The film will become a remake of the hit 2007 Danish film of the same title. The Hollywood Reporter tells us more:

Ole Bornedal directed the original, which broke out at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008. The film tells of a crime photographer who pretends to be the boyfriend of an amnesiac, only to face the wrath of the actual boyfriend when he finds out about the deception. James Mangold, Cathy Konrad and Nathan Kahane are exec producing. Nicole Brown is overseeing for Mandate.

Currently Marc Webb, hot off the heels of his recent feature, is already signed on to direct Jesus Christ Superstar as well as Age of Rage.

This past week, I revisited the Back to the Future trilogy, directed by Robert Zemeckis. These films essentially laid the groundwork for Michael J. Fox’s career — the man is synonymous with Marty McFly. The movies are a mad dash, guaranteed to raise your stress level and blood pressure no matter how many times you see them. I swear, I always think Dr. Emmett Brown and Marty are going to miss their one lighting quick chance to send Marty back to the future in the first film, despite watching it happen probably hundreds of times.

They got me thinking though — do we have any young actors like Fox in these films, frantic but cool, likeable but authoritative? Do any young guys have a role that’s so synonymous with their name that they’ll never be able to part from it?

Shia LeBeouf, for example, is probably most closely associated with the Transformers movies. As Sam Witwicky, he has the Spielbergian frantic nature of the young male role down pat. He’s aloof and certainly likeable (perhaps diminished by his off-screen personality, in some people’s opinions). But I never felt while watching those films that he was supposed to be anything but “cool.” Marty McFly was cool, but also in over his head, naive and fairly stupid. LeBeouf actually probably comes closer to resembling this in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a role that he was pretty hated for.

It seems that Hollywood has been unable to tether young actors to blockbuster roles the way Fox has forever been tied to McFly. Heath Ledger will obviously be legendary for his work as The Joker, but he was approaching his thirties, and certainly The Joker wasn’t a hero. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, despite turning in stunningly great performances, doesn’t conjure up a particular name other than his own.

Daniel Radcliffe is the only actor, in my mind, who has achieved this — he is the face of the Harry Potter franchise, and likely always will be. Perhaps Robert Pattinson in Twilight, as much as it hurts me to say, embodies this as well? Michael Cera still has a chance, as does Emile Hirsch, to become the face of a series or franchise that a generation can connect to.

Two notes before I’m out of here — first, this isn’t to say that young actors aren’t turning in good work. In fact, I’d argue that the shift from big blockbuster roles to more sophisticated character pieces is a great thing that’s happened. I’d much rather see Emile Hirsch turn in a wonderful performance in Milk than another Speed Racer, and Gordon-Levitt’s (500) Days of Summer was as relatable to me as a young man as any big blockbuster could hope to be.

Second: I’m not excluding female actors for any reason other than I intend to write more about their presence in big Hollywood films in the future. That, and I think the male dominance in pop culture-accessible roles like Marty McFly in Back to the Future has shifted to a female dominance in a big, big way.

Till next time, folks.

(In this weekly column, I’ll take two films, one old and one new, and compare them in terms of theme and substance, hopefully in some interesting ways. I’ll be trying not to spoil too much of these films, but in order to dissect them properly I’ll have to venture into spoiler territory a little.)

(Minor Spoiler Warning for (500) Days of Summer and The Graduate follow)

To dwell too long on the homage toward Mike Nichols’ The Graduate drawn by Marc Webb’s new non-romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer would be to state the obvious. In fact, when images from one film actually appear in another, I feel like it stops being homage and starts being an overt, friendly nudge to what’s come before. Anyone who has seen Webb’s film knows what I’m talking about, and should also know that Dustin Hoffman’s winking smile used to poppily visualize Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Tom Hansen’s mindset in 500 is perfectly at home in a wonderful film.

Even without the visual cue, the tale of Tom Hansen and Summer Finn’s romantic rollercoaster ride would evoke memories in the educated filmgoer of The Graduate. I mean, the first five minutes of The Graduate have parallels in a variety of films, ranging from Jackie Brown‘s opening credit sequence to Garden State‘s immediate sense of morose to Donnie Darko‘s … immediate sense of morose. That one even shares an actress, the talented Katharine Ross.

However, there’s value to comparison between  (500) Days of Summer and The Graduate, though, on more than just a superficial level. Both Tom Hansen and Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin in The Graduate are desperate youths, products of a society that markets and tampers with the emotional tracks of the next generation. Tom, as he so astutely remarks, has been force-fed romantic malarkey on store-bought cards since the cradle, leading him to idealize relationships and make mountains out of molehills. Benjamin is a talent pulled in a hundred directions at once (literally, in the case of The Graduate‘s opening scene) by an older generation’s apathy and clockwork mechanics.

Benjamin’s seduction by the infamous Mrs. Robinson is a seduction by the hand of a whole slew of bad ideas being thrown his way; Tom’s catastrophic (and hilariously relatable) relationship with Summer is the sad consequence of around 23 years of misconception. Tom’s journey is Benjamin’s, a mad dash through post-college anonymity through one means or another. Without ruining much of either film, it’s safe to say that both characters have much more of a path to travel before they find Mrs. Right, or a even a sense of direction. Both films revolve around spinning compasses.

As a person who is slowly approaching my graduation from college, it’s not hard to relate to both of these men. Watching both of this films within the span of a month at this point in my life is poignant and sad and funny in just the ways the filmmakers intended. If (500) Days of Summer were a weaker film, its inclusion of footage from The Graduate would seem awkward and unnecessary; as it stands, it threads the film to a much larger cloth of movies that don’t just define events and characters, but movements and periods in life. Gordon-Levitt is a torchbearer for Hoffman’s iconic character, and while one film is a classic, both will undoubtedly be of equal importance to me.

Try to catch (500) Days of Summer before it leaves theaters. In a summer filled with the usual fluffy, explosive entertainment, Marc Webb’s film is unusual, insightful and inventive, with a visual flair that owes much to The Graduate. If you haven’t seen that film, do. It’s as pertinent, funny and phenomenally well-acted as it was the day it was released.

Sacha Baron Cohen takes over the box office again, this time with his gay Austrian fame seeker in the mockumentary, Bruno. Taking in about 30 million, despite the overall slightly weakened amount of people flooding down to the theaters, Bruno still caught the eyes of people who took in Borat and loved it just like myself. With what appears to have possibly been in some people’s minds as a fight for first between the teen comedy I Love You, Beth Cooper and Bruno, the second of the two won within the first round.

I Love You, Beth Cooper, starring Hayden Panettiere, Paul Rust, Jack Carpenter and others, did not perform as well as it could have. Only scratching at the surface with 4.9 million, this high school graduation night film did not reach out towards its target audience as well as it could have. Possibly, if the film would have been released around early June which is technically high school graduation time, I’m sure the appeal of it to the teenage masses would have drawn in more sales, but that’s just me.

Everything else maintained the same sales as the previous week, except for the now slowly falling Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Even though it did break some box office records and has a hefty profit from tickets, the robot friendly movie is sliding itself down into third with 24.2 million. The rest of the box office is listed below:

Weekend Box Office (July 10-12)

1. Bruno  ($30.6 Million)
2. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs  ($27.6 Million)
3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen  ($24.2 Million)
4. Public Enemies  ($13.7 Million)
5. The Proposal  ($10.6 Million)
6. The Hangover  ($9.9 Million)
7. I Love You, Beth Cooper  ($4.9 Million)
8. Disney/Pixar’s Up  ($4.7 Million)
9. My Sister’s Keeper  ($4.2 Million)
10. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3  ($1.5 Million)

Get your wands at the ready, because this Wednesday is the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Then jumping its way out into limited theaters is 500 Days of Summer, Bull and many others.

(500) Days of Summer is really one of the best films of the year. It’s the type of indie movie that follows the beat of it’s own drum but doesn’t pummel you with it’s quirkiness. Forget crap like The Ugly Truth, and The Proposal, this is THE romantic comedy to beat this year. It’s a nice script featuring the best female performance of the year (so far) from Zooey Deschanel and an equally as good job from Joeseph Gordon-Levitt. Credit should be given to Marc Webb who does an excellent job giving the film it’s own style and never succumbing to most of the traps first time directors usually do.

The fine folk over at Film School Rejects have posted the release dates and cities for when you can see this film. Strongly, strongly suggested you should but what do I know? I’m just that “road block on the speeding highway” of reviews or something retarded like that.

Check out when and where you can see this greatness below.

Friday, July 17th

• Boston
• Chicago
• Dallas/Ft. Worth
• Los Angeles
• San Diego
• New York
• San Francisco
• Seattle
• Toronto
• Washington, D.C.

Friday, July 24th

• Atlanta
• Austin
• Baltimore
• Cleveland
• Denver
• Detroit
• Houston
• Indianapolis
• Madison
• Milwaukee
• Minneapolis
• Montreal
• Philadelphia
• Phoenix
• Portland
• St. Louis
• Vancouver

Friday, July 31st

• Albany
• Albuquerque
  
• Ann Arbor
• Boca Raton/West Palm Beach
• Buffalo
• Calgary
• Charlotte
• Cincinnati
• Columbus
• Edmonton
• Fresno
• Halifax
• Hartford/New Haven
• Honolulu
• Kansas City
• Kitchener
• Miami/Fort Lauderdale
• Nashville
• New Orleans
• Orlando
• Ottawa
• Pittsburgh
• Richmond
  
• Rochester
• Sacramento
• Salt Lake
• San Antonio
• St. John
• Tampa/St. Petersburg
• Tucson
• Victoria
• Winnipeg

Friday, August 7th

• Anchorage
• Asheville
• Baton Rouge
• Birmingham
• Boise
• Champaign/Decatur/Springfield
• Charlottesville
• Colorado Springs
• Corpus Christi
• Dayton
• Des Moines
• El Paso
• Fort Myers
• Gainesville
• Grand Rapids
• Harrisburg, PA
• Ithaca
• Jacksonville
• Knoxville
• Lansing
• Las Vegas
• Lexington
• Louisville
• Memphis
• Norfolk/Newport News
• Northampton/Springfield
• Oklahoma City
• Omaha
• Portland, ME
• Providence
• Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill
• Reno
• Sarasota
• Santa Fe
• Spokane
• Syracuse
• Tallahassee
• Tulsa

Although this Sundance feature has already been heard by some of you out here, the premise and the utter sweetness of this semi-love story has convinced myself to finally put it up. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, the story follows Tom as he chases after his dream girl, Summer, who doesn’t believe that true love exists. Directed by Marc Webb, a music video director up until this point, this film bursted out at Sundance creating a lot of mainly positive hype. The script was penned by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, both of them already sharing screenwriting credits on films such as Steve Martin’s The Pink Panther 2. Take a look at the colorful off beat film below:

The film is set for a limited release, once it finishes its festival runs, coming out on July 17th. For more updates on this film and many others, keep your eyes locked here on Atomic Popcorn.