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Movie Review: 'High Fidelity'
Aside from the change of location (from London to Chicago) High Fidelity is a surprisingly faithful cinematic rendering of Hornby's terrific novel about the twisted love lives of a hapless band of obsessive music geeks who run a record store that specializing in vinyl copies of hard-to-find albums. The move is as funny, savvy and biting as the book.
In the Mp3 era, High Fidelity is almost something of a l950's period piece, when rock-and-roll inspired music crazies spent hours sorting through bins of records, polishing and carefully storing their vinyl and blowing the dust off. John Cusack is great as Rob, the owner of Championship Vinyl, who is as obsessed with women who have dumped him as he is with spouting lists of songs for every conceivable occasion. In fact, Rob sees life as a series of top five lists -- especially the five most painful relationships in which he has been dumped by women.
Moving the movie from London to a gritty Chicago neighborhood was risky, since London was a vivid backdrop to the original story, but it works. Rock was, after all, born in the U.S.A. The book and the movie are penetrating looks at the sometimes bewildering life of the urban single. One of the movie's interesting devices is that Cusack addresses the camera directly throughout the film, explaining his story directly to us. The bare-outlines plot focuses on his efforts to win back Laura (Iben Hjejle), who, to his mortification, takes up with his upstairs neighbor Ian (played by Tim Robbins), a pompous expert in conflict resolution who sports a pony-tail and a lot of New Age chatter.
Although Rob sees himself as a perpetual victim of diffident women, the movie makes clear, even to him, that relationships are more complicated than that.
As good as Cusack he (he also co-wrote High Fidelity's screenplay, which lifts whole chunks verbatim from the novel), he is nearly upstaged by Jack Black (Barry) and Todd Louiso (Dick), two hilariously odd music freaks who work for him (he hired them years ago to work three days a week, he confides, but they never left). Barry in particular brilliantly embodies the 50's/60's music crazy -- addicted, intemperate, astonishingly knowledgeable, arrogantly defensive and superior about music. In one scene, he practically tosses a clueless middle-aged father out of the story for wanting to buy a lousy album for his daughter's birthday. The type will be instantly familiar to everyone reading this.
There's also a surprise guest appearance by a major rock star, whose identity won't be given away here.
High Fidelity is a terrific movie, a must-see -- well-paced, funny, beautifully written and well acted. Perhaps without meaning to, it's also a bit of a nostalgic film, a peek inside a culture that mostly lives online, and has been Wal-Marted out of the real world.
Every time Jon Katz posts something with a year number in it, he starts it with an el. Good thing we live in the year 2OOO now, eh?
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
This is clearly an April 2nd joke.
There are still geeks out there who spend hours obsessing about their records every day and spend all their time cleaning them and caring for them...
We are called DJs =)
Just because most of the music I have is in MP3 format doesnt mean I dont buy music, I just only buy it on vinyl.
Sorry, I don't go for movies about people who sit around, sulk, and feel sorry about themselves. Although I'm sure that Katz can relate.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
They don't compete with Walmart. Walmart will never carry Stiff Little Fingers vinyl and Beefheart first editions. They may be competing with Ebay, but I know of very few music geeks who would buy vinyl sight-unseen. If they are under any threat, it's much more like to be a matter of the pandemic rent hikes that major cities are experiencing now. But I still see a lot of indie record stores. In the Bay Area (Berkeley and San Francisco) we have Amoeba Music, the greatest music store in the world, and my favorite small store, Aquarius Records. We've got places like Streetlight. When I travel to San Diego, Seattle, Portland, and Chicago, I never fail to find cool little stores.
I just saw the movie. It was excellent - not Oscar material, but a good, funny, honest movie about relationships. I also do know some people for whom pop music is so deeply enmeshed in the fabric of their day to day lives, that it is part of their emotional and interpersonal language, a sort of kaliedoscopic reflection of their inner lives.
The movie was kinda low tech, but I was struck by the similarity in attitude between the workers at the store toward the customers, and in the attitude of some techies I've known toward users. "Top 5 songs about death" could morph into "Top 5 favourite features of OO programing in C++."
Over all a very good movie. Man John Cusack does a good job.
BTW, does anyone know how to pronounce Hjejle??? I think it's probably something like "Hi-yay-lee" with a very short "hi."
IMHO, as per
J:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
I don't know what its like to be dumped, and i mean that in a bad sense :)
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
Typical. Take a good (or potentially profitable) story and set it in America because thats what the marketing men say. As a Londoner, I idendified very strongly with the novel and imagine it will loose a lot of this by being moved to America. The main character is a very English (in the way he is a total loser in the way only the English are) as are his attitudes. Fans of the novel in the US - if you like this kind of novel about sad, single males in London can check out 'A While Merc with Fins' by James Hawes and 'Love and Nausea' by David Wilson.
The movie has its moments, the fact that I got to see it on the industry's dime made it that much better (if anything I did not have to walk out pissed at how much I spent). That being said, this is the second movie in a 1 year period that Cusack has been in a film that has used a funeral as a vehicle (the other being Pushing Tin). Unlike Pushing Tin, which turned out to be a chick flick in disguise, High Fidelity actually had a better more plausible ending. It had its moments, but could and did drag on at times (and clocked in somewhere round 2 hours which should not be that long). The only other movie that drug on longer was the Bruce Lee story, probably one of the worst tributes to a single person ever made. I'd wait for it to come out on video, mainly to continue giving the industry the finger in regards to the whole DeCSS mess. RIMBoy....
Nick Hornby. No 's' in there. Also the author of Fever Pitch, an excellent (and quick) read about the life of an English football supporter. In his case, he supports Arsenal, but it's enjoyable even if you're a supporter of a different club.
"Stephen Fear's" (sic)? I'm sorry, but is there something about electronic publishing which prohibits proof-reading? This movie was made by Stephen Frears (I'll leave it to the reader to figure out where to place the apostrophe when needed).
a peek inside a culture that mostly lives online, and has been Wal-Marted out of the real world.
What do you mean? Online is the real world!!
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Always posting non-anonomously, 'cuz, you know, I'm an anti-karma whore.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Barry in particular brilliantly embodies the 50's/60's music crazy -- addicted, intemperate, astonishingly knowledgeable, arrogantly defensive and superior about music.
This type never went away. In fact, I'd argue that they got worse as time's gone on because the language of criticism has been appropriated by just about every schmuck with an opinion. Including me, by the way.
People used to aspire to an appearance of sophistication by subscribing to the right book clubs and doing paint-by-numbers of old masterpieces. Now they just hang out and talk like post-structuralists. I'd prefer the older forms of middle class insecurity, because people eventually try to dump their paint-by-numbers of sad clowns and moody watermills, or string art, or mass-edition copies of the book du jour, for a nickel apiece. If we keep up this practice of blabbering like academics without creating a demand in the market for the trappings of our sophistication, people like me are going to have nothing to pick up at Salvation Army in twenty years.
I think, by the way, I'd like to cast my vote (with whoever's keeping track) to declare use of the word "geek" oversaturated, or at least badly in need of reevaluation. I overheard a 30-something referring to herself as a "Friends" geek. You know... an unconventional outsider who sits in front of a tv for half an hour per week at the same time as millions of others, feeling the bitter sting of persecution because of her love for a television show some corporation has identified as suitably safe to serve as filler between the commercials.
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Michael Hall
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
Michael Hall
mph.puddingbowl.org
Jon Katz is a geek martian!
I remember them well. Like that time those punk kids with pink hair ripped off my record store and I resented them until I realized their band rocked nads and I put out their CD.
Woogie
I haven't seen the film, but if it really is just like the book, then it must be *awful*. Unless you like self-indulgent pre middle age poor-me-won't-be-young-for-ever crises.
Possibly I'm just too young, and you need to have been the age of the hero to appreciate the book, but it did strike me that him and Bridget Jones would make an excellent couple - they deserve each other.
andy.
I haven't seen the movie, yet. I read the book when it came out, and, frankly, I don't remember much about it, except that I read it really quickly (not "thinky" enough for my taste). That said....
:).
:)
There's something about us record geeks that, if Katz had known it, would have made a better "angle" for this review than that tacked-on mp3/WalMart schtick he always does. Our records are our lives. And I don't mean that we're merely obsessed with them. They're us--we live there in our piles of pressed plastic. I don't know how to explain this to a typical "record user" without a boring personal anecdote, so here goes:
A couple weeks ago, this fabulous babe I know and I finally managed to hook up after years of futilely flashing the fuck-eye at each other while being overinvolved with annoying losers. On the way home after our tremendously cool and fun first date, I had Shudder to Think's *50,000 BC* on in the car. So that's where my memory lives--all the coolness and fun and that awesome-first-date feeling--it's in those songs. I don't have it without them. Conversely, things have since gotten kind of shitty and tense between us, for reasons neither of us is airing. I've been listening to the new Love-Cars and the last Sunny Day Real Estate album a lot--sad, confused, frustrated records. And they're where my sadness, confusion, and frustration live now. This week is what those songs will always be about; they're me, this week, and they're how I'll always remember it. I'll never get it back without hearing them, and I'll never hear them without getting it back.
The Cusack character in the movie has the same problem. His emotional life is mediated by popular culture (in that you have to buy records before you can get unhealthily attached to them) to a harmful degree, and it's his getting past that that the book's (partly) about (hence the record *store* setting). And the more thoughtful among us (like Cusack himself (met him once--awesome guy), and all of us who've read Adorno) know that this is a huge-ass emotional problem we record geeks have. We've become one with The Spectacle
Geeks I know, of every sort, have a similiar, allegedly abnormal transferrence-of-emotion thing going on. I'm about nine kinds of geek myself, though I'm not enough of a computer geek to know where they store their feelings. An HFS+ partition, maybe? I suspect it'd be hard to make a movie about it.
Did I make my point yet? Screw it; this is too long.
PS: I was planning to see the movie tonight, but the Love-Cars are playing, so...
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
=(
Free music from Jack Merlot.
I have a deep dark addiction... one that forces me to spend hundreds of dollars a week/month.. one which never ceases... never sleeps... and will continue until I or the electricity dies..... it is far worse then my friends' E or pot habits.... nay it is not a chemical dependancy... but one etched in "vinyl"
.... a record addiction.... one which makes DJing the most expensive hobby on the planet today
;)
it is
My home away from home is the record store... and my name is legion... for we are many
err.. sorry... wrong quotation... wrong time
but, lets hear it for all the dj's out there who have more milk crates full of records then they have cans of coke on their computer desk
cheers,
ecc
Stephen Fear's Geek Fidelity is as good a movie as the 1995 Geek Hornsby novel on which it is based. The movie brilliantly evokes the overheated life of the urban single, and gives us a nostalgic period piece for the long-ago-and-far-away age of vinyl records, along with the obsessive music geeks who loved and collected them. Aside from the change of location (from London to Chicago) High Fidelity is a surprisingly faithful cinematic rendering of Hornby's terrific novel about the twisted Geek lives of a hapless band of obsessive music geeks who run a record store that specializing in vinyl copies of hard-to-find albums. The move is as funny, savvy and biting as the book.
In the Mp3 era, High Geek is almost something of a l950's period piece, when rock-and-roll inspired music crazies spent hours geeking through bins of records, polishing and carefully storing their vinyl and blowing the dust off. John Geek is great as Rob, the owner of Championship Vinyl, who is as obsessed with geek geek have geeked him as he is with spouting lists of geeks for every conceivable occasion. In fact, Rob sees life as a series of top geek lists -- especially the five geek painful relationships in which he has geek dumped geek women.
Moving the movie from London to a gritty Chicago neighborhood was risky, since Geek was a geek geek to the original story, but it works. Geek was, after all, born in the U.S.A. The book and the movie geek penetrating looks geek the sometimes bewildering life of the urban single. One of the movie's interesting devices is that Cusack addresses the geek directly throughout the film, explaining his story directly to geeks. The geek-outlines geek focuses on his efforts geek win back Laura (Geek Hjejle), who, to his geek, takes up geek his upstairs geek Geek (played by Tim Geeks), a geeks expert in conflict resolution who sports a pony-tail and a lot of New Geek chatter.
Although Geek sees himself as a geek victim of geek women, the geek geeks clear, even to geek, that relationships are more complicated than that.
As good as Cusack he (geek also co-wrote Geek Geek's geek, which lifts whole chunks verbatim from the novel), he is nearly geeked by Jack Black (Barry) and Geek Louiso (Geek), two hilariously geek music geeks who work for geek (he hired them years geek geek work geek days a week, he confides, geek they geek left). Geek geek particular geek embodies the 50'geeks/60's music geek -- addicted, intemperate, astonishingly knowledgeable, arrogantly defensive and geek about music. In geek scene, he geek tosses a clueless geek-geeked father geek of the story for geeking geek buy a geek geek for his geek's birthday. The type geek be instantly familiar to everyone geeking this.
There's also a surprise geek geek geek a major geek star, whose geek won't be geek geek geek.
High Fidelity is a terrific movie, a must-see -- geek-geeked, geek, beautifully written and well geeked. Perhaps without meaning geek, it's geek a bit of a nostalgic geek, a peek inside a geek geek mostly geeks geek, and has been Wal-Marted out of the real Geek.
Grades, Social Life, Sleep....Pick Two.
--Justin Mitchell
"2nd Place is a fancy word for losing" --Bender (Futurama)
Vinyl is still an affordable medium for independent bands to put out music on. If you take a look at any of the larger independent labels in existence (like Dischord, Alternative Tentacles, Victory or Matador) you can see that they still produce a tremendous number of vinyl records.
This is done for a few reasons:
It's a less substantial investment than CDs (if the band just doesn't sell, it's less money lost by the label than if they gone ahead and released a full-length CD with them).
Consumers are more willing to spend $3 on a seven inch record of a band they've never heard of than $12 for a full-length CD.
A seven inch with four songs by a band just starting out will most likely have four of their better songs, whereas they might have to struggle to produce an entire CD of music, and write a lot of crappy songs.
and of course:
Damn it, they just sound better.
SteveHe can even make a simple movie review seem pretentious. What a guy.
I found the film extremely suspenseful, funny, and chock-full of subtlety and strong plot and character development. I'm recommending it to everyone I know.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
And the music was pretty cool, even though I'm no music freak.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
The Cusack character in the movie has the same problem. His emotional life is mediated by popular culture (in that you have to buy records before you can get unhealthily attached to them) to a harmful degree, and it's his getting past that that the book's (partly) about (hence the record *store* setting).
I'm sure there have been times in my life when it HELPED to have a song as an object-to-think-about (I just read Sherry Turkle's "The Second Self"), but I can see how it would be easy to slip overboard and into the morass of emotion that you THINK is your own. The commercial element has something to do with this -- so does the isolation and elitism of him and his fellow music lovers (definitely Barry, but also, if you look for it, Dick and Annaugh).
Side note -- isn't it odd how geeks often believe in the inflexible Law of Mainstreaming and Goodness; the quality of a band/OS/ISP/writer/brand of anything varies inversely to its/her/his popularity. Championship Vinyl doesn't carry that mainstream stuff -- ugh. Celine Dion? Whitney Houston? No, and f--- you for asking. To prove that you are great, you must be misunderstood -- only geniuses like yourself must understand and love your work. The free market philosophy in inverse -- reaction to commercialization/ rationalization of failure, or something more?
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
BTW, at the HR site you can listen to clips from the songs, the list of which I duly post here:
1.13th FLOOR ELEVATORS "You're Gonna Miss Me"
2.THE KINKS "Everybody's Gonna Be Happy"
3.JOHN WESLEY HARDING "I'm Wrong About Everything" [FULL SONG]
4.VELVET UNDERGROUND "Oh Sweet Nuthin'"
5.LOVE "Always See Your Face"
6.BOB DYLAN "Most Of The Time"
7.SHEILA NICHOLLS "Fallen For You" [FULL SONG]
8.BETA BAND "Dry The Rain"
9.ELVIS COSTELLO "Ship Building"
10.SMOG "Cold Blooded Old Times"
11.JACK BLACK "Let's Get It On"
12.STEREOLAB "Lo Boob Oscillator"
13.ROYAL TRUX "Inside Game"
14.VELVET UNDERGROUND "Who Loves The Sun"
15.STEVIE WONDER "I Believe (When I Fall In Love)"
I think that's the entire soundtrack -- it felt like more, though, when I saw the credits. I believe these are in chronological order -- in terms of when they are played in the movie. And, in fact, if you click "buy the soundtrack," you get directed here -- not Amazon, but "Express". $12.98? Perhaps a bargain.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
Nah, that's "Geek dammit!".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I would recommend that you visit the "High Fidelity" web site. Especially visit the "Top Five" portion. You can read funny Top Five lists, some in the movie and some not (SPOILER ALERT!). Also sprinkled throughout the sites are little Top Five videos with the cast from the flick. Kool.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
http://salon .com/ent/movies/review/2000/03/31/high_fidelity/in dex.html
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
We've spoken about this before (please see my post about epudding from a few days ago. Not everything is about geeks, geek life, and geek culture. As I mentioned before, that "culture" doesn't really exist, as most of the "geeks" I know are so vastly different from one another as to be almost uncanny. If ePudding didn't do it for you, John, try this on for size...
We have here a bottle of Windex(tm) brand glass cleaner. But this is no ordinary Windex(tm) brand glass cleaner... no way, no how, nuh uh. This is Geek Windex(tm) Why, do you ask, is it so special and geek-oriented? Well, I'll tel you. Its uses in the last twenty four hours alone have been so geek-like that it can't possibly be described as regular Windex(tm) brand glass cleaner anymore. Most recently, it was used to clean the one inch layer of dust off of my computer monitor. Before that, I cleaned my big fat 34" Geek television, which is used to display movies from my Geek DVD player. Only Geek movies are played on that DVD player, by the way. And those DVDs, when dirty are cleaned with Geek Windex(tm). What else do I use Geek Windex for? Why, for cleaning my bathroom mirror, of course! And since I'm such a geek, and all of my friends are geek-by-association, it's a Geek Mirror! Hot damn! I've spawned a whole new series of articles... Geek Mirror: A window into the world of the Geek. If only this had been covered before Columbine... we could have saved those poor, innocent geeks who went on a murderous rampage because they just didn't look in their Geek Mirror enough. Those poor, poor boys.
John, relax. You're not a geek, so top pretending. I don't know what a geek is, but fifty some odd year old men who think movies like the Beach, Scream 3, and High Fidelity are Geek Films most certainly ain't a geek.
Try this. I've got a friend who thinks he's a geek, too. He's about to graduate with an english degree from Ohio State, and he thinks he's a geek by proxy. Ask him about it. You and he are cut from the same cloth, John. The difference is he's only 23 and he knows a bit more than how to find the fucking power switch. You can e-mail him at holtman.4@osu.edu. He'd love to hear from you. Maybe the two of you could come up with the next great geek book over a capuchino (sp) while you try and figure out how to decrease your web cache.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
I had a teacher who walked out on Pulp Fiction because he didn't want to see any more glamorization of violence. I never saw the flick, but from what I know, the end totally de-glamorized violence. Would my teacher have enjoyed the ending more, the movie more, if he'd stayed till the end? Maybe there are some things that some people just can't take -- violence, whining, casual sex -- and it's so disturbing and/or annoying to see these things that the negatives of staying outweigh the benefits of seeing a gret, meaningful and meaning-making ending.
*rational = economically rational. So I'm taking Econ 2. so sue me -- wait! Economists would HATE that! Transaction costs, gov't interference in the market -- ugh.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
This advice is unsolicited, and worth every cent you paid for it: Talk to her! Start airing the reasons. This is a lesson I'm still learning, and I assure you it's a valuable one. Unless you conceal a black secret, discussing your problems never makes the situation worse. Failing to discuss them almost always makes things worse, as the imagination gets more and more elaborate trying to fill in the gaps.
It's an avoidable mistake; I recommend avoiding it.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Does anyone know of a cheap way of transfering music to vinyl? There is a lot of music which never makes it to vinyl which I would like to scratch to. The only way I've heard of is having it mass-pressed (500+ copies).
Thanks.
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
it's a movie review, you dolt. it's all opinion!
Stephen Fear's High Fidelity is as good a movie as the l995 Nick Hornsby novel on which it is based.
I didn't think the novel was a very good movie.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
Get a Vinyl-R drive and attach it to your computer.
A sort of "Vinyl-R" does indeed exist, in the form of the Vestax VRX 2000 vinyl cutting lathe. I'm not quite sure "cheap" is the correct word for it though, it costs £4000 and the special disks it eats are over £10 each. It's not out yet, so there is no information on Vestax's home page yet, but check out this preview -- it should be coming out this summer and prototypes are already floating around.
Cheers,
-j. (occasionally also known as DJ Gnosis)
Also -- sorry for the digression here -- is anybody else here a Tenacious D fan? Barry from the movie is one of the band members, and I love their stuff... It's beautifully ridiculous. If only I still got HBO and knew when/if the 15 minute shows were on.
Thank you. Pretty expensive but interesting none the less.
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
Hornby's just towing the party line as to not damage box office receipts? Please.
Authors refrain from supporting filmed versions of their works all the time. John Irving didn't say anything nice about "Simon Birch" ('inspired' by his "A Prayer for Owen Meany"). He didn't say anything mean, either, contrary to popular opinion. He simply distanced himself from the movie because he claimed that it was a different story from his own, to be judged on its own merits.
In all liklihood, "High Fidelity" is set in Chicago because John Cusack took the project under his wing, wished to star in in, and decided that that's where he could make the story work. He probably wisely decided that he couldn't pull off the whole british "lad" thing and made it an American story.
Besides, if the book is "quality literature", as you claim (personally, I loved the book & gave it to almost all of my close friends), it should be able to stand up to translocation. Shakespeare's survived far greater mangling. As others have pointed out, it's a pretty universal theme among men living in post-feminized cultures.
This whine reminds me of New Yorkers attitudes towards the rest of the U.S., in particular their claim that people in the rest of the country could never really 'get' Seinfeld, because it was "too New York". Imagine their surprise when they found that most of my friends from Minnesota were far more into the show than they were, and picked up on even more of the humor (and we were Jewish, either - another strike!). Of course, all that exposure to MST3K has honed our comedy physiques.
-BbT
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You have your opinion (John Cusack taking the project under his wing ...) and I have mine (Hollywood time and again bastardising European film and literature. Note that this is a criticism of Hollywood and not Americans, as my previous post hopefully communicated). I guess we're not going to agree there.
However, I have to disagree that all quality literature can survive translocation. Many novels capture a mood, a feeling, a time and place. For example, could you ever see "On the Road" being set anywhere but America? I certainly can't - but if it did it would have to significantly change the subject matter.
Another example is the yet to be made "Bridget Jones' Diary". OK, the idea of a single woman in the nineties looking for direction is not exactly original. What made the book was her outlook as a British woman. So many of her thoughts and actions were based on those that are integral to British society. It is another book that I believe will not stand up to being translocated - and I hope to God they don't.
Maybe you would understand this "whine" (as you so politely put it) if more of your nation's art was butchered in the way that us Europeans have had to suffer for years now.
"High Fidelity" may have a pretty universal theme, but the way that theme is protrayed, where they are and what they do is not so universal. They are set in a definite place and time.
Finally, whether Shakespeare has survived greater mangling is questionable. Many novels and films based on the works of Shakespeare (who, let's face it, may not have been as original as we like to think anyway) have been chopped and changed so much they are barely recognisible. Is that "surviving"?
Great movie, all around. Go see it.
But you don't have to take my word for it:
Salon's Review
Gee, thanks for spoiling that one. If you think Bruce Springsteen isn't a major rock star, you've got no historical perspective on anything but the last decade or so. Just because someone isn't on the charts constantly doesn't mean they're not relevant. Springsteen still consistantly sells out his concertes and has scads of fans. Try looking beyond your own perspective. -Goliath
After extensive testing, I've found that the book does indeed stand up to translocation with no discernible ill effects.
To test, I first translocated the book from my shelf to my coffee table, and then to my desk. I was unable to find any damage to the book, and the story was just as enjoyable as in its original setting.
Furthermore, I am happy to report that, yes, my Shakespeare has survived far greater mangling as described above...
BRENT ROCKWOOD, EST'd 1975
Can you put anything on Slashdot as long as you have a tenuous link to what JonKatz likes to label "geeks"?
Please, isn't Slashdot about technology? If it's trying to turn into Suck or Salon or any of a million other lame sites, please just say so and _I'll_ go away.
MP3's are fairly useless for those of us who want complete albums and something other than bootleg Mariah Carey singles or obscure electronica cuts. I don't know any record collectors who would dream of playing music through their computer. The sound sucks. This is where the technocrat problem comes into play. Those who exist in a world of technology sometimes assume that the rest of planet is as enamored of the technology du jour as they are. Just because Jeffy in the cartoon Family Affair makes a joke about checking his e-mail, doesn't mean that the nation at large has sold all their LP's and CD's and is living in the "MP3 era". Even most geeks I know (I'm referring to computer geeks here) buy and listen to mainly CD's. They might use MP3's to check something out but the RIAA and Katz nothwithstanding, we still live in the era of CD's.
As others here have pointed out, there are still plenty of record stores out there, some with knowledgeable (and sometimes arrogant) employees, not that I was ever arrogant. I may have been a little impatient with some customers STUPID FSCKING QUESTIONS!!! but I always tried to help. Which is why I no longer work in records (that and the money sucks and the era of getting decent promos is past).
Anyway, I am looking forward to this movie to relive a little bit of my RECENT past. I look forward to Katz's review of a movie sure to be made at some point about a group of crazy sys admins and their wacky shenanigans as they work the help desk at a major internet e-tailer. Perhaps that time, he will get it right.
LETCHHAUSEN
"I've got more Cramps bootlegs in this room than most people have records in their entire collections" - Byron Coley
Hey, you think your house is cool?
can anyone list some of the music in the movie. I know the soundtrack is avaliable, but I was wondering about some of the other songs.
Just wondering.
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Yep, Spot on Jon! The movie totally captured the feel of the book, and the location change worked well (I was dreading it beforehand).
I'd read the book (plus "About a Boy") last November, and perhaps in the whiney limey kind of way totally identified :)
Spoilers (?) I don't recall there being a bit about him becoming a music publisher in it ... plus wasn't he supposed to be an early 80's (punk/alt rock) DJ ?
Other than that, it was the best movie adaptation of a book I've seen for a long time...
oh, an his two sidekicks were so well matched with the characters in the book! Winton
Obsessive compulsives? Check. Tell me no-one here has never reorganized their CD collection
I once ended a relationship (that was not going well in other areas) with a girl immediately after I caught her rearranging my cd collection. It is one of those things that simply could not be tolerated. Of course it was a final straw type intrusion, but...
Even though she hadn't damaged much, I had to completely rearrange my collection before it felt 'right' again. Something like 400 cd's, including cd's she hadn't touched, had to be taken out of their leather binders and stacked in piles while waiting to be replaced in a suitable fashion.
O-C behavior? heh. Try psychopathic. I like my cd's...
Rev Neh
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
I think many of us can relate to the pain and anguish of being dumped or rejected by someone we desire (a best friend for example.. stupid dark one... but most of us get on with our lives. Anyone who has enough time to ponder over why their ex-girlfriend/boyfriend dumped them is just sad... That is for diaries and anoymous postings, jeez, when will people ever learn?!? The only thing funny about the movie was the low budget feel to the filming and the fact that it was not my trials and tribulations on the screen for the entire theatre to see...
Even without the good reviews it's been getting, I'd go see it because it's so obvious from the previews that Cusack loves the same record stores I have.
I know this is off-topic in slashdot and all but did you say BEEFHEART FIRST EDITIONS ? And where can I get these things? Specifically where can I get Lick My Decals Off Baby , that I've been looking for for about five years now? I really would appreciate a pointer.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Movie reviews...Finally something Katz can handle. I, for one, encourage Katz to stick to cinema reviews while leaving deeper issues to those capable of discussing them intelligently and rationally. Unfortunately, I doubt Katz will appreciate the suggestion and, of course, for some mysterious reason, SlashDot will continue to provide him with a soapbox.
Not much character development going on there.
And as for the weird indy music bits, there was more depth in the Berkeley college punk scene, which isn't saying a lot. /html
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
My definition of a hippocrite is someone who complains about the movie 'Junior,' a movie about Arnold Schw. getting pregnant. This is the best possible movie that could be made about this innane subject matter. People are like, "hey, I saw that movie and it SUCKED!!" I say: "What the hell do you expect?? You went to see a movie about Arnold getting pregnant!"
Retards...
when you come home and find her taping all your albums.
Paul M
"There are no innocent bystanders
What where they doing there in the first place"
Paul M
"There are no innocent bystanders. What where they doing there in the first place"
William S Burroughs
I'm very disappointed in the state of commercial audio formats these days. CDs sound cleaned, sampled, starched, digitized and seem to lack "feeling". Tapes always sucked, but they let you bring your music into the car back in the 70s and 80s before car CD players. Now with the thought of DVD-Audio, I'm apalled- MP3s are nice, but we're going to have some level of "digital mangling" in our audio? (read: DVD uses all sorts of compression which does a good job, but is NOT PURE.)
This is why I long for Vinyl. I'm still one of those "geeks" who listens to records (and yes, I own that fantastic Technics record player too. Best turntable I ever bought!). Without trying to bore you people too much, here are a few reasons why I feel the way I do about vinyl (and why this movie hits a heart string)
(By the way, if you're not an audiophile, you probably don't understand half of this)
It's a tough argument, but there is just something lost. I personally feel there is still quite a bit to experiencing a good record versus an impersonal CD. True, it is more convenient to have CDs and they're less delicate than LPs, but I digress..
It's funny how few of today's kids (teenagers and younger) may have never seen a record before; same idea as my watching a young kid stand befuddled at a rotary pay phone back 10 years ago (honestly had no idea how to work it).
Oh well. Rant off.
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
just for test
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This is not my sandwich.
Don't blame John for that.. Check this out for entertainment:
http://www.google.com/search?q=nick+hornsby
Note that ALL of the top 10 shown are about the movie or the book, and many, many other people got it wrong too.
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- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Am I the only one that noticed that this was basicly just the latest John Hughes movie?
I saw them play last year; unbelievable.
at the time, it was their last tour and last album. but now i hear they are recording together again and wil most likely tour.
Has anyone picked up the Ghost Dog soundtrack? Apparently all the songs are by the RZA (from the Wu-Tang, I think). I saw the movie, and was really impressed with the background song that plays whilst the dove flies ("this is what it sounds like/ when doves fly" :-b) The rest I didn't notice so much, so I'm angling for some feedback from someone who's chumped up the change for it already.
Perhaps you've had the experience of reading a good book, liking it a lot, going to a movie based on the book, and disliking the movie. I figure that the reverse of this is a probable experience for this story (_High Fidelity_), so I'm not going to rush out and read the book by Hornsby. I like reading in general. Don't get your knickers in a twist.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.