Thursday, February 28, 2013

F This Movie! - High Fidelity

Patrick and JB know that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like.



Download this episode here. (28 MB)

Email F This Movie! at fthismoviepodcast(at)gmail.com.

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Also discussed this episode: Vertigo (1958), Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Lifeforce (1985)

11 comments:

  1. I feel like I have almost nothing to add...except that besides being an excellent novelist, may I recommend Hornby's collections of his columns for The Believer where he talks about what he's been reading for the last month? It sounds boring and all but it's a lot more fascinating than you would think; there's some gossip, some introspection and some football (and Hornby's novel FEVER PITCH is one of the finest sports books ever written, even if it's about filthy Arsenal). The first one is THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE.

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  2. I haven't listened yet but I love High Fidelity. Sure hope you guys don't shit all over it.

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  3. GREAT show. Seriously one of my favorites.

    High Fidelity is not the romantic comedy with the most serious stuff. Cough The Break Up Cough Cough The Dilemma. Is Vince Vaughn making romantic dramas and studios are just deciding for him that they are comedies?

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  4. Hey guys, great show!! JB you assumed that teens dont really collect things anymore. For the most part, it's a valid assumption. But i think there are still a bunch of teens, including myself, who collect. I'm 16 and I love buying DVD's (more specifically, Blu-Ray's). I love going through my collection, picking out a movie and just reading the cast and crew credits on the back. And because of my obsession with credits, i know that Paul Hirsch edited 'Blow Out', 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off', 'Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol' and, most importantly, 'Star Wars' (along with Marcia Lucas and Richard Chew). Useless information that nobody, except people like us, cares to know.

    I organize my collection by director, putting the film i like the most by the director first and the least last. (For example, Quentin Tarantino. I cant get enough of the scary looking genius. First is 'Inglourious Basterds' and last is 'Grindhouse'. Which, luckily, allows me to include 'Sin City' because of both QT and RR's involvement. Sure, QT only directs a scene but whatevs.)

    So obviously i've given alot of thought (some might say too much thought) to how i want my collection to look. It's probably why i dont have a girlfriend but hey who needs a girlfriend when you got buttloads of movies? Well the answer is me, i need a GF, but alas, i've rambled long enough. So, in conclusion, Mr. JB, teens most certainly do still collect.

    From, @MikeOBry (on twitter)

    (sorry, i always put anonymous and thats seems creepy so there's my twitter.)

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  5. SO many things to comment on in this episode:

    I know that, for me, one of the things my collector's mania stems from is a desire to have physical copies of the movies I love, as Patrick said. I'm just the same way with enjoying the feeling of going to a shelf, searching through my library, finding what I want to watch, putting it in the Blu-Ray player, and taking it in with a "proper viewing experience." I don't want it on my phone or on an iPod. I guess I'm just a quality purist in that way, like people saying vinyl is a superior medium for audio quality.

    Although, it's kind of interesting, because I had no problems switching from CDs to digital music on an iPod when that became more the standard. It's not like I'm still obsessed with collecting CDs and putting them in CD players or something, so why do I still collect movies in physical form when there are digital copies available? Maybe that will change if digital copies become more the standard, but again, visual quality and the importance of a good viewing experience, I suppose, something I don't have to worry about with my music, have a hand in the decision not to make the switch.

    I think my obsession with collecting physical media also has something to do with wanting to be liked and accepted based on my taste in movies and being able to point to my shelf and say "hey, look at all these cool/great/entertaining/award-winning/important movies I have. Aren't I awesome for owning them all?!"

    Regarding "combo packs," I also am one who would much rather get a movie on its own, even if it's staring me in the face for a cheaper price in some collection of titles. I think those are cheesy. I like to be able to display each movie on its own. I'm weird like that.

    High Fidelity is a wonderful movie, though, and I'm glad to hear you all talk about it. Next to "Say Anything," I think it's probably my favorite John Cusack performance (and probably favorite Jack Black performance), and I find a lot to identify with in the movie, as well. I wish I could get into more detail of what I specifically liked about the movie, but it's been a while since I've actually sat down to watch it (even though I had planned to on Valentine's Day and never got around to it), but my memory of the movie is one of great interest and enjoyment the whole way through, and possibly one of my favorite movies overall.

    (On a side note: The brief mention of 2001 made me think to myself "hmm, I sure would be interested to hear a full-length podcast on 2001 someday. I bet that would be pretty interesting.")

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  6. Great podcast, gents, my favorite one since "Prometheus" last year in which you can feel the maturity of the hosts (particularly Patrick being ever-more-comfortable talking about his personal life with authority) giving the discussion its own flavor that is totally "F This Movie." :-)

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  7. Nice podcast guys, I don't have a lot to add to the movie but I wanted to say in regards to why we collect stuff and I gotta say for me its usually just the positive feeling I get from it. Personally I have a lot of Disney variations of Star Wars figures (Darth Goofy, Jedi Mickey to name a couple.) Also it can speak to your character. I remember one thing I saw at a clearance sale was an R2D2 dvd projector marked down from $800 dollars to 450 and the projection wasn't even that great but automatically the whole "Help me Obi Wan Kenobi" scene would kick in my head and I would smile. Sadly I didn't have the money to buy it then but if I got the second chance I think I would have to do it. So to wrap up yeah for me it takes me back to a better day before the damn kids with their rock music and RC cola crap.

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  8. ON the question of collection...

    I think part of my wish to collect is wanting a good library. With music and movies, I've always been pretty ready to show someone something new. I made a lot of mix tapes in high school, just to introduce people to new kinds of music. Same with movies, but without mixtapes. I'm still always ready to show a movie or loan a disc if I know the person well enough.

    Some of it though is just that for a long time, the only way I could get to see what I wanted was to buy them. Got into that habit, never got out of it.

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  9. I've gone completely digital for everything aside from books. I just can't let go. Music, movies and games are just files to me, but a book has a personality. A self-contained story that I feel something is really lost when it becomes just a text file in a kindle. Like a man with a lobotomy. Smother that soulless thing. With effort I can see how that would apply to vinyl for some people, but movies were never a defined medium to me. Film maybe if you have your own projector? DVD always felt like a temporary solution. But the digitizing of books feels criminal. Are you burning them in a factory somewhere while German music plays Amazon?

    I'll probably get over it eventually, but for now that's my old man sentimentality I can't let go of.

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  10. I'm also a collector, and interestingly I loved this movie when I was in high school but subsequently rejected it out of a perception that it was trying too hard or posturing in an artificial way or something like that. I think there's a chance that it was starting to hit too close to home (although I've always been a collector of things before it was movies), so now I wonder what I'll think if/when I return to it.

    I was taught in the tradition of Lacanian psychoanalysis, so my explanation for the collector phenomenon is that from the beginning of our emergence into society we all have this psychological lack, this feeling that something is missing and if we could only find it that our life would finally be fulfilling, meaningful, etc. The role of collecting is to fill this lack, although obviously only in a temporary way, which is why we always need more and why we're able to give up certain things once we've had them for a while (they lose that quality of being fulfilling).

    Also, as a side note, I think there's something really special for us about Criterion and a few other publishers. They really make objects worth collecting.

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