Anything But Good IntentionsAlthough I resisted heartily at first, I'm getting really excited to see
Elizabethtown. When I first saw the trailer for it this summer, I just thought,
Eh, Kirsten Dunst and figured I'd see it on video if I heard it was good, but then I saw better trailers, and then I read articles about it (particularly the one in the current issue of
Paste, the greatest magazine ever), and the more I know about it the more I want to see it. I love Cameron Crowe, of course, and I looked at the soundtrack and any movie that features music from both Ryan Adams and Elton John can't be bad. And I love how Crowe tends to make the music such an integral part of the film. Today on my iPod I listened to the Cameron Crowe mix that showed up in my mailbox courtesy of
Drew a couple birthdays ago and it's just so lovely the way he does that. And then I keep seeing similarities between this and
Garden State (besides the painfully obvious plot similarities, of course), and I don't see that as negative at all-- I can see this being another
Garden State, if not in its indie appeal (Orlando Bloom and Dunst are about as mainstream as mainstream gets) then in its effect. Perhaps this will be the soundtrack that plays incessantly in coffee houses in college towns across America this year. Crowe even mentioned in the Paste feature that he was a
Garden State fan and wished more filmmakers would take a page from Zach Braff's book (don't we all?).
So on Friday, after classes but before matinee prices are over, we're going to go see it. And I hope it lives up to the image I've built in my mind, because just good intentions won't cut it.