I’ve mostly been watching the Scrubs DVD set that I got for my birthday. The second season isn’t as lackluster as I remember it, which is good. I’ve also learned very much from the special features on the DVD, such as how they made all the sets and post-production studios and stuff inside the real former hospital in which they film the show. That just blows the mind. Uhm, that’s all about that.
My sister’s getting married I guess. She got a massive ring she’s all happy. Good stuff. Nathan’s too old to be sharing a room with his mom. Once he turned, say, thirteen, I was going to put my foot down.
School was cancelled today it was like a snow day so here I am writing about visual media.
Elizabethtown (2005)
If you’re like me, you were very afraid that this movie was going to suck the big one. And by “one” I of course mean veiny bulging angry penis. You and I were both afraid that this movie was going to suck the big veiny bulging angry penis. Which is to say, that we didn’t think that Elizabethtown would live up to the grandeur of Cameron Crowe’s previous offerings and were tempted to skip it due to the negative press it recieved and its branding as a “chick flick.” We were fooled by collective opinion before, and we’ll be damned if we are to fall for it again.
I am, of course, indebted to Mr. Crowe for the rest of my days. I will force myself to watch every movie he makes for the rest of my life in payment for Almost Famous, which has a prominent place on God’s Own DVD Shelf. I’m currently in the market for a copy of the Untitled Bootleg special edition, but eBay is full of scammers and fuckups these days. It’s really pretty shameful. Ah well. I really like to hang out hello hello. So, I decided “screw it, I’m just going to watch this movie and form my opinion based on the movie by itself. So last friday everybody was out so I ordered a pizza, sat my ass down and honest-to-God watched this movie.
Can’t say I regret it.
This film is full of much of the typical Cameron Crowe wankery: “deep” monologues, “perfect” lines for trailer purposes, sagely voice over work and a very hip soundtrack. I’m pretty sure there’s no original score at all, and all music is just licensed rock and pop and whatever songs. It’s all very entertaining. This fiick got a lot of flack for being too “Garden Statey” at a time when movie snobs are still hoarse from yelling at Garden State fans in a vain attempt to explain to them that Zach Braff is not the second coming of Federico Fellini. There’s a vague similarity in the premise, yes! And there’s an unhealthy fixation on the soundtrack, yes! What’s up with that? I’m not gonna defend it in any way but to say that it’s well known that Elizabethtown was set to start shooting in January of 2004, the same month Garden State premiered at Sundance, so it’s not like Crowe was like “hey a hip drama/comedy! I can do another one of those in a similar manner!” But who knows.
What I liked about the movie had nothing to do with its similarities to any films but my favorite Crowe pieces. All said, the movie (and especially Bloom’s performance) reminds me more of Jerry Maguire. Lots of people walking away and then raising one crooked arm once the music starts playing so that no one will ever forget the ending to The Breakfast Club, and like I said earlier, lots of “memorable” lines for the trailer like “Don’t take this as a rejection.” “I really don’t. lol” and “Why do you keep trying to break up with me when we’re not even together…”
I’m just talking about the parts that I thought were lame, but I really did enjoy this movie. It didn’t make me ashamed to be a Cameron Crowe fan like I thought it might, and it was just pretty entertaining. I’ll offer this one example as a closer:
The movie opens with Orlando Bloom’s character loosing almost a billion dollars for his employing shoe company due to some kind of unspecified recall on the shoe he designed. He then goes home and constructs an elaborate suicide machine involving an exercise bike, a butcher knife, and some duct tape. Just as he is about to fire it off, his cell phone rings. Overcome with curiosity, Bloom answers the phone. It’s his sister, telling him that their father has died. He temporarilly abandons his suicide plot to comfort his family. Shortly after, his mother reminds her two children to remember what their father had always said: “If it wasn’t this, it’d something else.”
