Hurt, Batman Begins, Elizabethtown

I rented the Johnny Cash video "Hurt" from Netflix. One disc, less than four minutes. It's a great song, Cash doing the Nine Inch Nails cover all slowed down and broken. Beautiful. The video is good but on the second time through I decided to close my eyes and it was even more powerful. The songs hits me in the gut far more when it is just Cash singing with no visual.

After missing it in the theatre, and having it sit on my DVD player for a week or two, I finally watched Batman Begins. Damn, if that isn't what a Batman movie should be. The origin story worked so well and I really, really hope that Christopher Nolan makes the next two. He did such a great job reinventing Batman and making him darker and grounding everything in a reality. The Scarecrow charcter made me nervous as a concept of a supervillain who caused "fear" in people, but it works so well. Everything did.

Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown is something that I've been looking forward to for some time. He is one of my favorite filmmakers, but I was nervous. Orlando Bloom was great as an elf, but as a real person? Well...he works. It works. Bloom is believable without pointy ears and I loved the dynamic of Bloom meeting an entire side of his family that he never met before (the father's side) and how different it is and how welcoming it was. It's a family dynamic that made me a little wistful, how the whole community was family and friendly and supportive and close. And Kirstin Dunst played an actual character with some depth. Her flight attendant who becomes friends with Bloom and helps him find some focus even while she doesn't have a true focus is an excellent character. She has heart, the movie does, and the longer the movie played the more i liked it and the less I wanted it to end because i just loved being in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. It is doubtful that it'll make my top ten list for 2005 (which you can expect sometime late 2006 when I watch all the movies), but I truly felt a part of this town, family, world, movie whatever.