Scene Unseen: High Fidelity: Records For Sale

Film When I first saw the film High Fidelity I knew of the book and I knew it was about music, but I didn't know what it was actually about. I spent much of the preceeding day singing the chorus from The Kids From Fame song under my breath 'High Fidelity ... high ... ha ... high .. ha ha .. high high ... ' (I do this sometimes when I'm working up to see a film - Jane Campion's masterpiece was reduced to 'La, la, la, la Piano, Piano ...'). But once it was over it went straight into my all time top five films about people like me.

I immediately went out and read the book, loved everything about it despite being incredibly difficult to follow at times because the film characters were in my head and some of them are wildly different on the printed page. Then somewhere along the line the two experiences merged and I imagined that some of the scenes from the book had actually been in the film and vice-versa. Marie De Salle didn't sing at Championship Vinyl in the film any more than that version of Sarah Kendrew appeared in the novel. So buying the DVD the day it came out was something of a culture shock as the gates of filmic reality came crashing down.

As always, DVD solidifies all the reasons I loved the film at the cinema but also offers the chance to see all the details that I'd missed then. So we come to the top five list of things I missed when seeing High Fidelity at the cinema and which make me love the film even more. In ascending order ...

Number five ... lip liner. In the scene were Rob gets Laura to admit to a full 9% chance that they could get back together, I spend a lot of the scene looking at Laura's lips and the fragments of liner at the edges. In a film which is filled with unrealistic elements it feels like a moment of realism. I'm not sure if it's a mistake or a really attentive make up artist creating character details. If it is the latter it ties into comfortably into the speech with Rob gives at the end of the film about how he's sick of fantasy women and he wants to settle for the realism. Laura doesn't have perfect make up and that's why he loves her.

Number four. It's the editing, or rather the editing of the to-camera narration. If all this was edited into chronological order it would make less sense than 21 Grams. Taking the Marie De Salle incident, having found out Laura hasn't slept with Ray, he turns to the camera and says 'I feel good ... I feel great ... I feel like a new man ... I feel so much better in fact ... that I go straight out ... and sleep with Marie De Salle.' Cut to a post coital De Salle, and Rob pointing to camera from the bed 'How could this have happened you ask?' He's giving a voice over straight to camera like someone relating a story around a camp fire or over a beer in the past tense while the action is happening. He's telling the story to us while its happening to him, showing us what happened. It should be confusing but it really works. It's an unbelievably trixy thing to be doing in a Touchstone film and one of the early signs that mainstream film was wising up to the indie ethic.

Number three ... it's about film. Actually it's about anything that people have an obsession about. It's equally about stamp collecting, football and trainspotting. When I saw the movie, I thought I was getting bums rush because I didn't understand many of the music references. Then I tried substituting them for film references and realized that I was in the same bracket of these people. There aren't many regular people who can make a stab at putting Woody Allen's films in order by year, or the films which John Cusack and his mate Jeremy Priven haven't been in together (of which High Fidelity is one). It's about storing useless facts about nothing them looking down on people who don't know this stuff.

Number two, the track listing of the Marie De Salle album. Pause your DVD as Rob places the disc in his hifi and glory at the woman's musical range.

(1) Baby I Love Your Way [which is a given because its in the film and she sings it really well.]
(2) Patsy Cline Times Two [which later in the film she refers to as Eartha Kitt Times Two. But I'm not nitpicking in that way. There there is the rest ...]

(3) Ghostbusters
(4) Beat It
(5) Baby Got Back
(6) 911 Is A Joke
(7) I Will Survive
(8) Mmm Bop
(9) My Heart Will Go On
(10) You Can't Have It
(11) The Time Is Now

Now who wouldn't want to see her version of some of those songs. Such range. Is the joke that if she can make Peter Frampton sound good, Hanson are a walk in the park? These tracks were picked for a reason but since the DVD lacks a commentary we'll never know whose joke it was. And now for ...

... number one in the top five and the deleted scene which is the point of this new series of articles.

High Fidelity: Records For Sale

It's one of the great scenes in the book and was shocked when I read it because they hadn't included it in the film. Rob is invited around to an expensive house where a rich woman bent on revenge tries to castrate her husband musically by selling his singles collection off for peanuts. When Rob starts to delve in he realizes it's a collectors dream, a hundred items which he thought he would never see in his life. Rare pressings on original labels, that kind of thing. To buy or not to buy. It's about honour amongst collectors (even if they're shits) and fits in with one of the book's themes about how music has little to do with what you are its who you are.

So it was a revelation to see it on the dvd and its just the lovely funny thing which really does the book pages justice. It even has the well known face of Beverly D'Angelo as the scorned woman. And when you see it the first time you wonder why it wasn't included in the film - it would be one of the scenes people would be talking about when they left the cinema or years later at the pub because its one of those stories any collector has about the one that got away.

There problem is its four minutes long and to include it in the film would have slowed it to a standstill at just the wrong moment - I think it should gave gone in just after Joan Cusack calls him a 'fucking asshole'. And that would be wrong because the transition from that to Rob's revelations about why Laura broke up with him are perfect. Also it doesn't feel like the rest of the film, which takes place in roughly the one neighbourhood and for the tone of the film it's important to maintain that mood. Also it doesn't make any sense - right the way through we hear that Rob has no money and suddenly he can pull £1100 out to buy the singles - it's a capital investment but were are you getting it from? Laura's loan? Isn't that spent already?

All of which said it does have a delicious ending. He talks D'Angelo into selling him an Otis Reading for $50. She asks him if he saw The Sex Pistols (original pressing of God Save The Queen). He says he did. 'It's free ...' She says and we cut away. We never find out how scrupulous Rob actually is ... What would you do?

Scene Unseen: Introduction

Film I was reading an article the other day in an old film magazine I had lying around which listed the top one hundred best scenes in film and while most were undoubted classics it was boringly predictable. The 'You Talkin' To Me?' scene from Taxi Driver, Linda Blair's head spinning around in The Excorcist and the 'No, I'm Your Father!' bit from The Empire Strikes Back. I've always been a fan of the other moments which seems insignificant but could open up other possibities. For example, what might have happened in Travis Brickle had taken his date to see the Clint Eastwood film, The Eiger Sanction which is playing in the cinema across the street from the porn cinema he's attending instead -- could a relationship have actually developed?

Also, why aren't deleted scenes included in these surveys? Although they don't appear in the final film, in some cases they can be just as exciting, funny or moving as anything the director, editor or studio thought we might want to see and through DVD we can enjoy them as they stand and ponder how different the film could have been if it had been included. 'Scene Unseen' is new occasional series which will highlight some of these moments at the fringes of some popular and not so popular films with the hope that the reader will want to look at them with a new perspective (and it'll give me a reason to visit parts of my DVD collection I haven't been to for a while).

TV My So-Called Life is being rerun on one the larger US cable networks spawning a number of articles re-appraising the series. Television Without Pity's Sarah D. Bunting's My So-Called Reruns takes the view that that I've had now and then that the series wouldn't be quite so culty if it had gone on for another few series -- could it have continued to be so acute and insightful into a seventh or even eighth year? Menuel Mendoza notes that ...

Today, "My So-Called Life" would be a hit - if it got on the air in the first place and found a similar audience. Its average ratings of just under 9.9 million viewers would put it in front of Fox's "hit" soap "The O.C." by 600,000 viewers and with similar demographics, which is what really counts with advertisers.

Which underlines how undervalued the series was at the time. [both via tvtattle]

Life Overtime in work tonight for the first time in years, so a thirteen hour shift. I think the key phrase is never again. Liverpool City Centre is flooded with people in suits and hats from the Grand National meet and look pie eyed. I think I'm going to bed to watch Friends ...

Film It all started one day as I sat in The Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds watching Ba wang bie ji in a sold out screening getting excited by the machinations of Chinese opera. It was one of the saddest yet exciting films I'd ever seen. The following week, when someone shushed me during Como agua para chocolate because I was getting into the story, I knew what my first hobby/love/interest was.

My first film (at the cinema I think) was Pete’s Dragon of all things. From there I couldn’t say. My first conscious 18 film was Robocop which I saw on video when I was 13 or 14. I saw The Empire Strikes Back before Star Wars; my first film star crush was Virginia Madsen in Electric Dreams or possibly Elizabeth Shue in Adventures in Babysitting; The first film I recorded from the TV was Starcrossed the early James Spader classic; My first DVD was The Opposite of Sex. The second was Pleasantville. The first film I walked out of was Batman and Robin, which is probably the worst film I’ve ever seen.

Site News Or rather an apology. We had hoped to bring you the second part of the Liverpool FlashMob Story tonight, but due to circumstances beyond our control (I haven't written it yet) this will be shown instead at a later date.

TV The new Off The Telly publishes with a massive BBC 2 retrospective. Has it really been forty years? It's an absolutely rivetting piece of writing which does eventually underline the problem the channel has now -- what its for -- as in places it becomes a greatest hits of the the other three main BBC channels. What will its identity be like when all homes become digital?

Film The Passion of the Christ has a paradoxical status. Considering it’s a film spoken in two ancient languages, with subtitles which tells the story of the last twelve hours of a man’s life which is based upon of the important stories of the past two thousand years which features the minimum of characterization, Bergmanesque supernatural elements and an expectation of the audience that they will know that story already and that they will be able to follow some of the minutest religious references committed to film, it’s been released like a Hollywood blockbuster on hundreds of screens and the people going to see it seem to be treating the experience like any other film, taking to their seat with popcorn and coke. I’ve had conversations with people who say that don’t like watching subtitles films, or costume dramas, or horror films and they’ve every intention of seeing this and it's produced massive box office.

But its not a film I would recommend, not in the traditional sense, not in the sense that I’d tell everyone to go and see Zatoichi for example. It’s not a pleasant experience. Parts are horrific, taking body shock and torture to a new level. There are moments of shocking ambiguity in which it isn’t clear what is happening or why. I haven’t read many reviews which look at it in a traditional sense of how good the acting, music or cinematography are – even though in some cases all are extremely good and with some depth considering the short time frame within which they have time to develop.

With my complicated religious status I can’t really comment on how accurately the events are presented, or if everything is philosophically correct. It didn’t move me to convert (which I believe has happened to some viewers) or make me to want the film banned. Looking at it purely from this dispassionate place then, I was moved by Christ’s mother’s overall attempts to come to terms with what is happening to her boy. I can imagine that as Jesus grew and his conviction in who He was became clearer she could feel him slipping away from being her son to the Father of humanity. I was especially moved that the only time He simply becomes her son again is in death when he is taken from the cross and she claps him in her arms and she is able to comfort him. Ironically the film works best as a human story, about man’s inhumanity to himself and the cost.

Blogging in the style of .... Kottke's Remaindered links weblog

Future of the internet modelled on 'The Lawnmower Man'

Sir Peter Ustinov dies

Santa Fe

The First London Marathon was on this day in 1981

Archbishop says 'Footballers Wives' underlines everything that's wrong with morality in the UK (oddly enough I tuned in for the first time ever late the other night and Mark Gattis was doing a cameo as a sleazy agent type. Wierd but classic.)

Google redesigns (and for some reason feels a little bit sexier, if that's the term to use)

All of the actors who've played Him (my favourite is Mel Blanc (Bugs Bunny, God)
. . . Old Grey Hare, The (1944))

Living in Europe (community weblog for people in my part of the world)

Education Nine year old schoolboy re-designs rail system in St Petersberg:

"was the image of the notoriously traffic-clogged Ulitsa Bukharestskaya shown on television news that inspired Vadim Turgel, nine, to design an overhead railway to serve the whole city. "I thought it could save St. Petersburg from those terrible traffic jams," Turgel said. Turgel's railway, raised on inflated bags, is a sophisticated design and might just work, engineers who have examined the young inventors' proposal say.

A new form of teaching was been developed in the old Soviet Union which discounted the idea of random inspiration in favour of a form of focused problem solving. TRIZ bombards kids with questions and asks them to think of a logical answer. So for example, ask them, 'What is wet on one side, but dry on another' they'll think it through and say a window with keeps the inside dry when it rains. This understanding can then be extrapolated to form the backbone for some new design or descovery. See if you can answer this one: "How to free a bird stuck in a vertical tube that sticks out of the ground?" (answer here)

Life I've just posted the following question to AskMe but I'll put it up here to for anyone who's a non-member / disinterested. I'm bored with the World Wide Web. Can anyone help? Whenever I log on in the evening I seem to find myself looking at the same websites. I check my favourite weblogs, read the usual news sites, check through the trends at blogdex, check the visitors to the weblog, write said weblog then go to bed. For some reason it feels like I'm in a rut. Google searches 4,285,199,774 and I end up seeing the same twenty-five or so. Is this it? Has the web flat lined or would things be different if I was on broadband, and is dial-up my downfall? Can anyone suggest ways in which I can make my time online more interesting? Perhaps some websites they find invaluable or reliably interesting (beyond something you would post on the front page)? What else do you do online when you're not using Metafilter? I need web therapy ...

Crime For some reason this reminds me of the Woody Allen film Take The Money and Run, which also featured a long timer, What Led a 92-Year-Old to a Life of Crime - Anger, Money Woes, One Last Adventure?:

"Whatever the prompt, on Dec. 9, 1998, a week before his 87th birthday, Rountree entered the SouthTrust Bank in Biloxi, Miss. "I was kind of dumb about it. I just walked in and told the gal behind the counter to give me money," he said. "Then I told her not to say anything until five minutes after I left." But as the old man was making his getaway, someone followed him and he was arrested within minutes, according to police records. He was eventually given three years' probation, fined $260 and told to leave Mississippi."

To be honest I wish I had this kind of energy now...

Advertising As a rather confused reaction to reading Naomi Klein's No Logo you'll notice that I've signed myself up as an Amazon Associate. With any luck I'll generate enough gift vouchers to pay for the extended cut of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King when it's released.

Life Can I have my hour back? What do you mean I have to wait six months?

Cinema You may remember a few weeks ago I talked about the campaign which is fighting against the proposed closure of the York Odeon. One of the campaigners Tim Addyman (who appears in the photo on this page dressed as an Orc from The Lord of the Rings) dropped off a comment to offer an update:

"Thanks for the mention and support of our campaign to save the Odeon cinema in York. First and foremost its the last remaining city centre mainstream cinema and an important facility for both residents and visitors. Secondly its a unique Odeon building design, with now unique original sign, and retains original art deco features, both on show and hidden under later modernisations. The owners have let it become increasingly shabby over the years but Screen 1 (in the former circle) is still a great place to see a film, with stadium seating for around 800. It is thought a final decision will not be made about its future until June, which is the financial year end for the Odeon company, but we live in hope and will fight on."

Some of Mark's photos of the cinema can be found here. I'm in agreement that its a great example of that design of cinema and there shouldn't be any reason that if the chain were to invest as they have a great number of cinemas across the country it could be a success. Don't forget you can sign the petition here.

Life I time travelled today. Well not really, there wasn't a capsule, I couldn't see history disappear in front of me and I didn't have a girl with me asking what was happening every five minutes, but it felt like I'd time travelled. I was trotting across Sefton Park for some fish and chips. On my walkman I was working my way the the HITS 4 compilation, original cassette release, and once A-HA had faded I was in the grips of Fergal Sharkey's 'You Little Thief' and as I walked across the field I could be in any time. The signifiers, all of the minutia which remind us of the times we live in had dropped away. I could as well be in the 1980s, Thatcher in government, Noel Edmunds still on tv and reading Transformers comic. But then as I stepped through the trees and into Lark Lane I was nearly knocked over by a Fiat Punto and I was back in the naughties.

Life Remember all those months ago when bewildered furniture shop owners turning up on morning television trying to get to grips with the few moments when their place of work was the most popular for a five mile radius and yet somehow managed no sales? Or when a mass of people turned up at a department store in New York to worship a T-Rex? That was flashmobbing, and wierdly its a trend which seems to have disappeared as quickly as it started. A check through the main news sites reveals that nothing has happened since at least Christmas and in some cases earlier than that.

What happened? Boredom possibly. The shock of the new giving way to over subscription? The anonymity of the event ruined because too many people knew what was happening? A prime example would be an event organised for David Blane in his box in which more people turned up to watch the mob happen than to actually take part. The fact that some wanted to turn these events into a source for direct action to be making a point about something they believed in -- a protest -- which wasn't the point at all. So what happened to the people who were too late for the fun, who joined the bandwagon after it was over? Who turned up for the only flashmob to happen in Liverpool?

I saw the afformentioned interview on the tv show RI:SE and later reports on the local news, visited the websites and signed up to the two Yahoo Groups dedicated to Liverpool Flashmobbing. For about a month the message board was filled with traffic from people who were eager to take part. Two issues were abundantly clear. Most members didn't really know what the point was. They kept offering suggestions which indeed involved making a point about something -- like turning up somewhere which is no-smoking and lighting up on purpose (repulsive) or going to a company which had screwed people on some back end car insurance deal and waving your driving license (not subtle and excludes public transport junkies). Watching other successful flashes elsewhere was disheartening as I realised that again I'd be missing something interesting because of madness and apathy.

Then the organisers began to offer vague hints that something was going to happen. Until from nowhere they said that we should be expecting something. And so on the 22/08/2003 at 4:03pm the following email arrived...

"THIS IS IT!!!

You are cordially invited to the historic event that is, Liverpool's
First Flash Mob!

Firstly I want to remind all what Flash Mobbing is all about; it is
about having fun in a harmless unique way. I ask you to uphold all
normal morals and respect the properties we pass on the way.

THIS IS NOT ANARCHY!

So please follow the instructions no matter how random they seem and
please enjoy it.

Here are the Key points to Saturdays Flash Mob.

1. At some point Friday evening/Saturday Morning synchronize your
watch by using either the speaking clock or the following web site:

http://www.timeticker.com/main.htm

2. Between 11:20-11:40am on the 23rd August and based on the door
number you live at you should locate yourself in one of the following
City Centre Locations. Act casual and don't group up too much

If your house or flat is an odd number go and wait outside the Gap
Store on Whitechapel

If your house or flat is an Even Number go and wait outside the Job
Centre in Williamson Square (opposite the Playhouse)

3. ALL of you must bring a plastic cup the kind you get at kid's
parties or on the side of a water cooler and if you own one a digital
watch. Also please bring some spare change, less than a pound will do!

4. At some point a MOB rep will arrive, you must approach them saying
in your worst Russian Accent 'Have you got the film?' the rep will
then give you the printed instructions. If you are part of the Flash
mob and are asked this by someone you must reply with the phrase 'The
Film is safe' Read the instructions carefully and then keep the
instructions about your person.
PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE INSTRUCTIONS IN THE PUBS/ON THE FLOOR

5. These final instructions will provide the destination of the MOB
site, and you should arrive at that destination at the time that it
states. Aim to get there on time, if you are early; stall, if you are
late hurry! Although no one will need to rush.

6. The instructions will contain everything you need to know MOST
importantly the time to leave the MOB site by. The dispersal is just
as important to the success of this MOB as is the arrival. Everyone
should leave as quickly and orderly as they can and truly disperse.
PLEASE DO NOT LOITER; ENSURE THE SUCCESS AND PROMPTLY LEAVE.

7. After the Flash Mob, carry on with your lives as per normal; await
instructions for the next Flash Mob.

8. At all times remember to have fun and respect the places you visit
and pass.

9. If this goes well I promise that the next one will be the first
ever Celebrity Flash Mob.


GOOD LUCK FLASHERS!

This was the stuff, cloak and dagger, mystery, suspense and the future promise of point nine. What was with the plastic cup? Some kind of organised begging or something else? Was the spy-type behaviour in point four part of the theme? So many questions ...

Friday night came and in the absence of a digital watch I synchronised my mobile phone clock. On the Saturday I turned up in town far too early and found myself trying not to look suspicious as I waited for the person with the instructions to arrive. I'd watched a bit of The Hunt For Red October to try and perfect the very worst of Russian accents. At just about the right time, someone who looked even more out of sorts than me arrived with a large bag and stood outside the job centre. I watched tall gangly man approach and follow the instructions and then stepped forward myself. I'd once shouted a slogan at a clerk in Burger King for a free Whopper so I knew the form. Sean Connery would have been proud of my performance and I got the instructions of where to go and what to do. As I dashed off towards the venue, somewhere which couldn't have been more appropriate, all kinds of possibilities seemed to be open ...

To be continued.

End of Part One. Next episode: Room To Maneuver

Film A Brief ScreenSelect update. A copy of the film Duets was a bit stodgy. I logged onto the site and let them know last night, and today they've dispatched a whole other film as a replacement without the need to see that one. Very impressive. On the other hand they seem to have issues with actually sending new releases. Instead of Seabiscuit they're quietly sending out all the Gwyneth Paltrow films on my list. Very intrigued to know how they select which film to send next. Perhaps the clerks are bored there and playing with people's heads?

Nature As I stepped out of work at lunchtime a seagull flew in and hovered in front and above and seemed to move backwards to keep in step with my move forward. It hung in the air just looking at me, then it seemed to shake its head and fly off. Have things got so bad that a bird can't even be bother shitting on me?

Blogging in the style of .... I HATE MUSIC

Le Mepris Dir: Jean-Luc Godard

I used to think there wasn't anything more disheartening than the conversation about film in which the person you're talking to says that they don't watch subtitled films because they find the words distracting and they spend most of the time looking at them. 'But what about all the great films your missing' I shout at them 'You're willing to watch any old shit just because its in English?' That's what I used to think until I saw this pseudo-intellectual wankfest, an example of a poster that's better than the movie. The reputation of this film is based on one detail. Bridget Bardot's arse. She spends much of the film naked and we get to see it a hell of a lot. And in technicolour. It's the first thing we see at the start of the thing, along with the rest of her nakedness, and it's there all along against fabulous back drops. Which would be fine and a perfectly good way to spend ninety minutes depending on your mood. It's a pity you're distracted all the time by the plotless, joyless machinations of everyone else involved.

Apart from the fact that the film within a film of Homer's The Odessey looks like a less likely prospect than Jim Belushi in K-9000 at the box office (do we really need to see so many statues in makeup), was it at all necessary to make so many scenes massively long by having the dialogue translated between the French and English characters by someone who is actually there. It's a stylistic choice and it might have worked in France, but for the international market, it means we hear the dialogue in French, read what it says in the subtitles then hear it again in English. For minutes on end. I have no idea what they talked about for this very reason. It's the kind of film in which people make pronouncements and look intense and have issues about the nature of their being and humanity. But for some reason it feels as profound as deciding not to clip your toe nails on a Sunday because it might be bad luck.

Fritz Lang plays himself, its rumoured because he was hard up and need the money. His appearance doesn't feel as prestigious when you know that. And if you wanted to punch leary John Voight in Anaconda for a poor performance under no pressure, just see Jack Palance here making a pass at Bardot. He reminded me a lot of someone I went to school with who used the chat up line 'We'll dance and then I take you into the corner and kiss you.' It worked for him, and for some reason Bardot leaves with leatherface at the end even though they share no language. I've a theory about Palance. At some point in his early forties he woke up one morning looking like he did in City Slickers, up until then he was young as he is here. I've never seen him in some missing link between stage.

Film students will probably notice the similarities with Jean-Luc Godard's good film, Breathless (A Bout De Soufle) in that the middle half hour consists of a couple hanging around an apartment insulting each other and getting in the way. But whereas in that film, Godard was playing about with time and editing and lalalala, here real human emotions go out of the window as Bardot mopes about and her boyfriend sits in a bath in a hat smoking a cigar. I can't imagine how tedious this section was to watch in the cinema, although on tv its like seeing the last half hour Big Brother Live in French without the ability to vote anyone off.

The ending of the film is exactly the kind of thing which gives art house a bad name. Having gone through all this nonsense to do with the boyfriend not being able to get his head around accepting money for doing actual work on the screenplay, Bardot buggers off with Palance one of the world's worst drivers, who manages to get them both killed in a road traffic accident between two lorries. Cut to the boyfriend, fully aware of the deaths but not seeming to care either way. It's the kind of moment which happens in films like this as a way of saying something profound about the fragility of human life. But its actually elitist shite designed to make the viewer feel either thick or in the target audience's case self-satisfied because they think they understand what its all about. Idiots.