The trouble with my generation is we all think we're fucking geniuses.*

Last night after work I camped out on the sofa with a pillow and a blanket and watched a rented movie since my damn DVR won't let me watch any of my favorite shows I've recorded. I watched "Music & Lyrics," which, for a crappy romantic comedy really wasn't bad.

I rather like Hugh Grant as an actor. His personality or life's choices notwithstanding, I find his facial expressions and British accent to be charming and I just like watching him in a movie. (Warning: Stream of Consciousness to follow) So then I thought about going to rent Bridget Jones or oh! Oh! About a Boy. And then I remembered how I've been wanting to rent High Fidelty because I hadn't seen it in years and I'd just recently heard the clip on NPR the other evening where Jack Black tells the dad customer that he won't sell him "I Just Called to Say I Love You" because "it's sentimental tacky crap. Do we look like the kind of store that sells I Just Called to Say I Love You? Go to the mall." So then I thought A Nick Hornby double feature! Because, if you're new here, Nick is one of my FAVORITE writers.

For the most part, I think Nick's books have translated well into the movies. People always say the movie's never as good b/c you have to leave out so much of the book, but I've not really found that to be true with Nick's books. No major parts of the story cut. Since I'm so in love with Nick Hornby's writing, what strikes me as pointedly missing from his movies are some of my favorite lines from the book, which I just don't understand b/c they would typically translate so well into dialogue. For instance, in the book, when Laura asks Rob how he's doing and he says he's fine and she says that she's glad to know that he's happy and he says, "I didn't say I was happy with my life. I said I was fine, as in no colds, no recent traffic accidents, no suspended prison sentences, but never mind." Don't you think that would have worked well spoken to the camera, as so much of Rob's lines are?

(As a side note, don't you also find it quite ethnocentric that Hollywood changes the location of all Nick's books from London to America? They left About A Boy there b/c they made the very wise choice of casting Hugh Grant as Will, and then Toni Collette as Fiona and it all just works beautifully. On the other hand, John Cusak makes a fine Rob Gordon and I think it was also very well played, but I guess he doesn't do accents or whatever because they had to move it to Chicago. And then in Fever Pitch, not only did they change continents but they changed the sport entirely from Hornby's beloved football [soccer] to baseball. Fucking please. I can't even bring myself to watch that one.)

If you've not seen High Fidelty before, you must rent it for the simple fact that that scene where Jack Black comes in and blasts "Walking on Sunshine" is the first and only scene of his in any movie then or since in which he makes me laugh out loud. And even though John Cusak sports some pretty bad hair in the movie, he really is spot-on as Rob Gordon.

Top Five John Cusak Movies of All Time
(in chronological order)
1. Class
2. Say Anything
3. Bullets Over Broadway
4. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
5. High Fidelty

*from Nick Horby's A Long Way Down