Walk the Line

(Movie Review)
(Yet another movie review that I’m a bit behind the times on, and once again I’d like to blame Japan.)

Ah, the immortal Johnny Cash. I remember his music well.

Actually, my experience of Johnny Cash in high school and college was that all the cool kids knew about him and talking about Johnny Cash was a way to prove your hipness, but I don’t remember anyone ever actually listening to him. I don’t remember ever walking to a party and hearing Johnny Cash music, or ever hearing it from the neighboring dorm room, or ever getting into a friend’s car and hearing it on the stereo.

Up until now, my only exposure to Johnny Cash had been the his appearance on the Bob Dylan album "Nashville Skyline" (which my uncle gave me for Christmas when I was 17). And now that I think about it, Rob did have “Ring of Fire” on his computer playlist, but I think that was more tongue and cheek on his part.

So it was interesting to learn about Johnny Cash’s life and music. Although it turns out that his life is just the same as every other rock star whose life gets the Hollywood Biopic treatment.

About this time last year I saw “Ray”, and the similarities between the two movies are numerous. Both Ray Charles and Johnny Cash are haunted by the death of a brother in childhood. Both struggle against the odds to become hit musicians. Both get mixed up in drugs, and have tumultuous love lives. Both get busted by the police at one point for their drugs. Both eventually get cleaned up with help from their woman.

The similarity of the source material cannot, I suppose, be helped, but I think Hollywood is still guilty of trying to apply the cookie cutter mold to the rock star biopic. Or really any Hollywood biopic. The scene where the husband and wife are shouting in the kitchen and the wife starts crying has got to be in just about every biopic I have ever seen.

Still, I did learn an interesting thing or do from this movie. I guess the biggest surprise was that Johnny Cash, whose name is frequently used as a litmus test for coolness in college dormitories, was once climbing the pop charts and on tour with such common pop stars as Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
The 256th and final level in Pac-Man is generally considered unplayable due to corrupting map glitches. However, in December 1982, an eight-year-old boy named Jeffrey R. Yee received a letter from U.S. President Ronald Reagan congratulating him on a worldwide record of 6,131,940 points, a score only possible if the player has passed the Split-Screen Level. Whether or not this event happened as described has remained in heated debate amongst video game circles since its supposed occurrence.

Link of the Day
"The Worse Things Get in Iraq, the More Privatized This War Becomes, The More Profitable This War Becomes" - Naomi Klein on the Privatization of the State

Walk the Line: Movie Review (Scripted)