Walk The Line

Some singers become bigger than themselves. They mean more than just the songs they sing. In today's media saturated world the word Icon is used for entertainers a lot. Just because you only use one name for yourself, that doesn't make you an Icon. By all definitions of the word, Johnny Cash is an Icon. Johnny Cash represented more than the songs he sang, he represented a world view to many people.

When the movie WALK THE LINE first came out I made a point of seeing it in the theaters. It was one of my favorite movies of the year. Now I'm usually not a fan of musical bios where the actor sings instead of using the real music of the musician. There's a reason people are going to see the movie of the singer and it's because the people going to see it are fans of his singing, not the actors. But sometimes it works. THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY worked. And in WALK THE LINE it worked. Joaquin Phoenix isn't Johnny Cash (but than who is) but he pulls it off. And it made sense in the movie, with the songs being built around certain scenes it would have been hard to just splice in a song off an album.

WALK THE LINE was smart that it didn't try to showcase Johnny Cash's entire life. It focused on his relationship with the love of his life, June Carter. Ms. Carter is played quite well by Reese Witherspoon, well enough that she won an Oscar for her role.

When the movie came out on DVD I was first in line to purchase it. I wanted to own this movie so I could watch it again and again. Now the studio is releasing it again, as a two disc extended edition.

The first disc features an extended version of the movie with commentary with the Director and co-writer of the movie, James Marigold.

The second disc has mulitple features that add to the pleasure of watching this movie. My favorite are the historical featurettes such as "Sun Records and the Johnny Cash Sound" and "Folsom: Cash and the Comeback."

I'm not a big fan of movies (or cds) that come out after the first version with new extended features that try to get you to re-purchase what you've already bought once. And I have to be upfront here and admit that I didn't buy this disc, it was sent to me to review. But saying all this I have to say this is a great movie and I enjoyed the extras. Would I have bought it? I'm not sure, I would have liked to own the extras so it's very possible. If you're a big fan of the Man In Black it's worth buying this movie. And if you don't already own the movie, than by all means purcahse this version.