Songs #11: Angeles Songs #12: Alphabet Town

I keep saying this around the blogosphere but Paranoid Park keeps growing on me, bit by bit. More to the point of this post is that Gus Van Sant knows how to use Elliott Smith songs. But I think the two he uses in this picture, like the whole soundtrack, are placed perfectly. This scene, in particular, is startlingly moving. Sometimes it's easy for me to forget how good a songwriter Elliott Smith was, how much his music has played a part in stages of my life. ("Alphabet Town" doesn't appear in PP; it's just a personal favorite.) --RWK

Elliott Smith - Angeles (zshare)
Elliott Smith - Alphabet Town (zshare)

[I guess I've reverted to doing the obvious after that string of "difficult" or "esoteric" links I (and I alone) saw between my song and screenshot choices.]