Wednesday, 10 November 2010

HIGH FIDELITY

"I have to say my all time favourite book is Johnny Cash's autobiography *Cash By Johnny Cash*"

Theres nothing more fluid than John Cusack narrating his own bigraphy of a film. He's so enthusiastic, so enigmatic, so vivid and completely likeable mostly to men as a kind of empathy as his struggles clearly reflect ours, but his ... are celluloid.

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Some of the anecdotes are nothing short of artful and epic:

Arranging music collection autobiographically the night of a big break up
* we have all somewhere kept a gift we intended for someone because we desired something back
Compendiums of Top 5 lists; Records to play on a Monday morning, records to play at Laura's father's funeral, breakups (we have all compiled our 5 worst breakups).
Alter-Ego persona of Rob Gordon, one minute he's the entrepreneur of a highly popular record shop with elitist views on contemporary audiophile-ism. The next, he displays the hormones of a 16 yr old boy with a crush on every girl but his own loving one. A very modern and HONEST look at men in popular culture.

Apart from a killer soundtrack including, I want candy (Bow Wow Wow, Leave Home (Chem Bros.), Your Gonna Miss Me (The 13th Floor Elevators). The actors fulfulling small and pivotal roles and just fantastic, Cusack's sister Joan plays and annoying bitch again to a tee, Jack Black - animated as ever and as much a genial music geek in real life as he portrays on screen (which must have been a dream job), Todd Louiso - the quiet unassuming musical library (the banter between to the two latter is sensational), Catherine Zeta Jones - who plays a beautiful and alienly brutish lover & of course our holy saviour Tim Robbins, whose involvement in the film is just perfect, from his Steven Seagal hairstyle to his Kaftan he plays a great enemy of Rob's (in particular the fight scene(s) in the shop).

Overall a fantasic watch, I must have seen this film 20+ times, and will see it plenty more.