Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 12:47 am Posts: 46000 Location: Reasonville
Quote:
High Fidelity is a 2000 film directed by Stephen Frears and starring John Cusack. The film is based on the 1995 British novel of the same name by Nick Hornby.
The book and film have essentially similar plots, though the setting, originally London, is moved to Chicago in the film. Cusack plays Rob Gordon (Rob Fleming in the novel), a record store owner in his 30s whose girlfriend Laura has just left him before the start of the film. This breakup leads Rob to recall his five most memorable breakups and to wonder what happened to his girlfriends and why they left him.
Eventually, Rob's re-examination of his failed relationships (brought on by a lucid dream dialogue with Bruce Springsteen) leads to his decision to seek them all out. Rob revisits all bar one of his past girlfriends as a sort of closure to that part of his life. Rob soon discovers that his ex girlfriends were much different. More often than not he is surprised he ever fell in love with them at all.
i don't want to give too much away. i've actually never seen this one: it's a request via PM.
_________________ No matter how dark the storm gets overhead They say someone's watching from the calm at the edge What about us when we're down here in it? We gotta watch our backs
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2007 1:35 pm Posts: 4407 Location: Philadelphia/Los Angeles Gender: Male
Hells yea! If cb doesn't mind my saying so, I nominated this for current MOTW status. I'd just recently rented it to add it to my collection and hadn't seen it in a few years, remembered everything I loved about it. And ya know I'm thinking I should read the book, because I'm also a big fan of the movie "About A Boy", I'm told a Hornby novel as well. There are of course very few times in cinema history where the fourth wall is so blatantly broken where it works as well as it does (Bueller being the other obvious modern example), and the ongoing top 5 lists are a nice touch.
One of my favorite moments is where he realizes truly what kind of a human being Charlie (Catherine Zeta-Jones) was all along and yet he'd been somehow oblivious to it by her unearthly beauty.
A sort of strange thing to consider about this film now however, in my opinion at least, is this is back when Jack Black's schtick was new and was actually pretty funny. If memory serves this was the biggest, most mainstream role he'd had up til that point, where pop culture was introduced to his whole personality, unfortunately he wound up doing only slight variations on it seemingly about 437 times in future films. Hopefully his part in "Tropic Thunder" will be the most original thing he's done in awhile.
Also must give props to Stephen Frears. I think he's got arguably the most diverse directing resume of any modern director. I hesitate to call him necessarily "mainstream", I mean not like he's getting called for any major studio pictures, but he's still done some fairly big name things. But look over his roster, dude's never been pidgeonholed with any particular genre at all. He's all over the place.
"WHAAAAAAAAAT FUCKING IAN GUY?!?!?!?!?!"
unrelated edit: okay I'm officially a loser. I just realized at the time of this posting, I've topped like 5 or so of the top 7 threads here in A&E
for me, this movie has some great, funny moments, but overall, i think it's overrated. i read the book before seeing the movie, and found it an entertaining read, but not much more.
i probably have something against nick hornby, but i can't really point out exactly what.
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 3:02 pm Posts: 10690 Location: Lost in Twilight's Blue
I love this movie.
_________________ Scared to say what is your passion, So slag it all, Bitter's in fashion, Fear of failure's all you've started, The jury is in, verdict: Retarded
This is a wonderful film. The book contains one of my favorite written passages of all time as well.
_________________ i was dreaming through the howzlife yawning car black when she told me "mad and meaningless as ever" and a song came on my radio like a cemetery rhyme for a million crying corpses in their tragedy of respectable existence
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 11:54 pm Posts: 12287 Location: Manguetown Gender: Male
Good, but overrated.
_________________ There's just no mercy in your eyes There ain't no time to set things right And I'm afraid I've lost the fight I'm just a painful reminder Another day you leave behind
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2007 1:35 pm Posts: 4407 Location: Philadelphia/Los Angeles Gender: Male
Theresa wrote:
loved jack black and all the record store scenes
Does anybody else agree with me though, on what I touched on before? That this was the start of the good of Black before he started to phone in pretty much the same character in like 5 other movies later?
Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2005 1:27 am Posts: 4033 Location: tampa
Samwise wrote:
Theresa wrote:
loved jack black and all the record store scenes
Does anybody else agree with me though, on what I touched on before? That this was the start of the good of Black before he started to phone in pretty much the same character in like 5 other movies later?
I completely agree. The character of Barry is by far my favorite thing jack black has done. I love this movie and the dark humor. Great stuff and I only think its overrated if you go in expecting alot out of it. Just take it for what it is.
Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2005 1:27 am Posts: 4033 Location: tampa
Samwise wrote:
Theresa wrote:
loved jack black and all the record store scenes
Does anybody else agree with me though, on what I touched on before? That this was the start of the good of Black before he started to phone in pretty much the same character in like 5 other movies later?
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2007 1:35 pm Posts: 4407 Location: Philadelphia/Los Angeles Gender: Male
Veddar10 wrote:
Samwise wrote:
Theresa wrote:
loved jack black and all the record store scenes
Does anybody else agree with me though, on what I touched on before? That this was the start of the good of Black before he started to phone in pretty much the same character in like 5 other movies later?
I completely agree. The character of Barry is by far my favorite thing jack black has done. I love this movie and the dark humor. Great stuff and I only think its overrated if you go in expecting alot out of it. Just take it for what it is.
Particularly when I later saw the little bit of "Orange County" that I did (had no interest in seeing the whole thing), but I saw a bit of Black's "character" and I just shook my head thinking, are you F'ing kidding me?
And I only bothered to subject myself to the horror that was "Saving Silverman" because at that point I was still living in LA and had tickets to the premiere and the after party was at the House Of Blues (with Neil Diamond taking the stage, no less), and I'd never been there before and wanted to check it out. That movie was about as funny as cancer, but again, same basic deal from Black.
Does anybody else agree with me though, on what I touched on before? That this was the start of the good of Black before he started to phone in pretty much the same character in like 5 other movies later?
it's my favorite role of his; maybe we just started expecting too much from the dude; i do agree with you though; he's kinda become schticky
**"do you even know your daughter?! there's no way she likes that song!"
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2007 1:35 pm Posts: 4407 Location: Philadelphia/Los Angeles Gender: Male
Theresa wrote:
Samwise wrote:
Theresa wrote:
loved jack black and all the record store scenes
Does anybody else agree with me though, on what I touched on before? That this was the start of the good of Black before he started to phone in pretty much the same character in like 5 other movies later?
it's my favorite role of his; maybe we just started expecting too much from the dude; i do agree with you though; he's kinda become schticky
**"do you even know your daughter?! there's no way she likes that song!"
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Hopefully his part in "Tropic Thunder" will be the most original thing he's done in awhile.
not big into cusack and his character came off kinda whiny to me; loved jack black and all the record store scenes 
