DVD/Blu-Ray Pick for 3/12 - 3/19

High Fidelity

So Sean Penn won the Oscar for best actor this year even though Micky Rourke clearly deserved in in a lot of our books, but what's done is done. One of my favorite actors who never really gets any credit for how good he is has never been nominated for Oscar either. That actor is John Cusack. He is a great leading man and what is amazing about his career in movies is that he not only ends up playing characters where the entire movie hinges on how believable and likable that character is, but he consistently pulls it off over and over. He did receive an emerging actor award for his role in Say Anything where he played the young high school graduate all of us young men aspired to be. I didn't even see the movie until I was well into my 20's and I wanted to be as cool as Llyod Dobler. He's been a hitman, a detective, a writer trying to disprove a hotel room was haunted, and all the time making it believable. So this week I'm recommending the one performance that did at least get a Golden Globe nomination, and one of my favorite performances of his as well, High Fidelity. It's a remake of a British movie, but in this rare instance I'm not counting that against it as the story loses nothing in translation. Cusack plays Rob Gorden, a man who can't quite figure out why his relationships never seem to work out. Jack Black is also in it in his break out performance that lead to him starring and sucking in many more movies to come, but that is for another discussion. Enjoy both of them here and let's hope some day he'll be accepting an Oscar because he is truly one of the greats.