Please Stop with the Ellipses in RomCom Titles

Aieeee! Elizabethtown has to be one of the worst films I've seen since Rumor Has It.... Truly execrable. Paul Schneider's kind of nice in his little supporting role, but, otherwise, it's a total mess. I hate Kirsten Dunst, Orlando Bloom looks sooo much better as a blond, Judy Greer's comic talents are utterly squandered, and Susan Sarandon should be ashamed of herself for the boner joke she consented to deliver on screen (you read that right). The music is great, as always, but if that's the best thing you can say about Crowe's most recent films, he needs to take the hint and just start directing music videos until he can get his groove back. I said to LK at one point, "I can't believe this thing was written by the same person who wrote Say Anything...." It's really embarrassing, but more than that, it's really a shame. Steer clear, unless you're prepared to snark it up for two hours with some pals and some drinks. Because, for reals, you're gonna need those drinks to be numb enough to handle the last little bit of montage and voice over. "A single green vine shoot is able to grow through cement." Gag!

An unexpected shout-out to Northwest Indiana's very own Town Theatre on Salon today! I was absolutely tickled to see it given its due as the Grand Pompadour of the "strangest and unlikeliest art-house theater[s] anywhere in North America." Andrew O'Hehir mentions the free cake and coffee available in the lobby during intermission, which is certainly one of its most unique and charming attributes, but I've always been partial to the rusty old suits of armor propped up near the proscenium. This theater has been a huge part of my moviegoing life, from the second semester of my senior year in high school when I was only attending classes half-day and could stay out late for showings of stuff like Swingers to the extremely uncomfortable evening I spent watching Boys Don't Cry there with my father to bored summers home during college when CTLA and I would do the aural equivalent of squinting through British gangster movies like Sexy Beast whose slangy, heavily accented dialogue was done no favors by the theater's echoey acoustics to the year of aimless desperation I spent living at home between graduating from IU and moving to Chicago when I would go see subtitled piffle like Le Placard just to surround myself with any little bit of worldly glamour I could find to keep me from giving up the hope that I'd eventually do anything of substance with my life. Cheers to Salon for saluting this suburban oasis of respectable film culture and this landmark from my own wayward youth!

Chicagoans, come stalk my sexy ass at the Tapes n' Tapes/Cold War Kids show at the Abbey tomorrow night, where nine out of ten attendees will probably be live blogging the event. Unless, y'know, the music bloggers and other denizens of elbo.ws are, like, so totally over those buzz bands already. LOL, whatevs, OKBYE.