• Screen/Play #3: Once, Begin Again and the Authenticity Problem

    April 8, 2015 - By 

    In Irish writer-director John Carney’s musical comedy-drama Begin Again, released last year, troubled New York music executive Dan (Mark Ruffalo) sees young songwriter Gretta (Keira Knightley) perform at a downtown open mike session and, smitten with her music, gives her his card. He promises that with a bit of production pizazz and a half-decent video (maybe a Norah Jones vibe) she could have a real radio hit. Gretta rejects his commercialising instinct. She just wants to be real – let the songs speak for themselves and all that. The haggard but good-hearted Dan finds her idealism endearing and naive. ‘Name…

  • Screen/Play #2: Record Shop Retail in Empire Records and High Fidelity

    March 5, 2015 - By 

    For someone like me who has only ever had a passing interest in music-buying and hit puberty around Napster’s ascendance, the record shop as a location resided almost exclusively in the general cultural imagination as opposed to my regular routine. Inevitably my idea of what record shops and the people who work there were like came to align with the enthusiastic but elitist list-making devotion immortalised by Stephen Fears’ High Fidelity (2000), based on Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel, and brought to life by John Cusack’s world-weary shop owner Rob Gordon and his pair of ‘musical idiots’, played perfectly by Jack…