Moving movies

Look, I'm not going to say that Elizabethtown is a good movie. It's an un-win-able argument, I think. I mean, I can't even convince myself that it's a good movie, I just happen to like it. I like Cameron Crowe, I even kind of like Kirsten Dunst (despite her horrible accent) and Orlando Bloom. I like the music (Ryan Adams, Elton John, My Morning Jacket, Fleetwood Mac, James Brown, The Temptations), as I always seem to with Crowe films. I like the cameos by Patty Griffin and Paula Deen.

But most of all, I love the surroundings. The hazy barely-there clouds of dew hanging over Kentucky hills and streams, the sound of cicadas and locusts and crickets, the stars that puncture a deep, steamy night's darkness with cool light. Tall old trees raised up on sections of craggy, gorged land that begs to be hiked and explored. Rock-lined roads, bared by blasts to clear pathways for vehicles to press comfortably over black asphalt from the cities and trouble and noise to the seclusion of endless farmlands and gravel roads and clean air laced with fresh-cut grass and moss and earth.


I can't wait to get back to that scene.