Ten years after: High Fidelity

As I noted a decade ago: "It’s got a great beat – and, yes, thanks to a nifty soundtrack of tasty pop classics, you really can dance to it – so I’ll rate High Fidelity a solid 100-plus. Adapted with surprising faithfulness, if not the highest fidelity, from Nick Hornby’s sassy and slangy novel, this is a sharp and smart comedy-drama about growing up, taking stock, letting go, setting course and settling down – the top five challenges facing the overgrown-adolescent lead character played so vibrantly by top-billed John Cusack." I'm not quite sure if enough time has passed for this one to qualify as a oldie but goodie. But it remains a career highlight for Cusack and just about everyone else -- including director Stephen Frears and co-star Jack Black -- involved.

Blast from the past: Clint Eastwood talks about Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

In this 1997 interview, Clint Eastwood has some nice things to say about working with Kevin Spacey and John Cusack (and scriptwriter John Lee Hancock) while we talk about his film version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. And he's very gracious when I try to fit this offbeat project into the context of his entire career. But what I enjoy most about re-watching this archival interview: Eastwood's whole attitude. Like, yeah, he read the book, he liked it, he wanted to make a movie version of it, and that's that. And if anyone had a problem with his trying to film an unfilmable novel... well, screw 'em, he was already at a point in his career where he could do any damn thing he wanted to.