Mik’s Mindstorms

If you haven’t got the film or the book yet, I really advise you to go out now and go get either of them, preferably both though. I first saw the film quite a while ago, in University to be precise. The film started with a turning record on a turntable and a piece of vinyl is always a way to attract my attention. When seeing the film the first time, I got hooked on it: the countless awesome quotes it had, the continuous enumerating of such-and-so top five lists and one of my favourite actors, John Cusack, in the leading role. This month I decided to buy the book and after finishing it, I can say two things: a) the book is brilliant b) the movie becomes even more brilliant after reading the book; the cast in the film is just awesome, John Cusack as Rob Fleming, playing the way too much rationale guy that’s doubting about everything, Jack Black is the raving lunatic Barry, and even Dick and Laura are perfectly chosen. Somehow they also managed to put almost an entire book into the movie, only ommitting some of the less important stuff. The movie also has some cool additions that would immediately fit in the book, would Nick Hornby decide to rewrite it (for those who have seen the movie the “Ray enters the shop” part). Well, I can say up till now, I think I did only like one book-movie combination so much, and this book has really left me wanting to explore more of English literature. Even more so after the big disappointment that’s called Dutch “literature”, of which only authors that are either sexually frustrated, plain crazy or major attention whores (in both the male and female meaning) seem to reach the wide public. Anyway let’s not get me started on that; what are you still waiting for, go out and buy High Fidelity immediately!