Prince Avalanche (2013)

Jack and I would watch Paul Rudd in anything and this leisurely character study of two men painting road lines through a burned out Texas forest is well worth watching. Rudd (last blogged in Admission) brings his inner nerd to a new level as the senior member of the duo with Emile Hirsch (most recently in Killer Joe) as his naive colleague. Lance LeGault (luh-GO), who was once Elvis Presley's stunt double, has a wonderful cameo as the truck driver, and then died last year at age 77. Notably, the woman in the hat is not an actor but is speaking the truth in her first scene.

On Letterman the other night Rudd explained that director David Gordon Green (I liked Snow Angels (2007), hated Pineapple Express, and didn't see any of his others) thought up the title in a dream and was already planning to adapt the Icelandic movie Either Way (Á annan veg - 2011) which was directed and written by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, so he tacked that inscrutable name onto his adaptation. You can read his comments here.

The location is spectacular--an actual burned park in Bastrop Texas, near Austin, Green's home. Apparently the whole movie was shot in 16 days and was kept a secret until its release at the Sundance festival in January 2013.

You can listen to the entire ethereal soundtrack here by clicking on the next track after each one is finished. David Wingo (Mud) collaborated with the band Explosions in the Sky to compose it. They're all from Austin.

Critics are with us on this one, averaging 83% on rottentomatoes to audiences' 69.

A word of warning: it's a possible motion picture motion sickness (I have made a list of MPMS movies) inducer. I looked at the exit sign on the wall whenever the camera started bouncing too much.