{"id":10666,"date":"2015-02-11T10:57:02","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T15:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=10666"},"modified":"2015-02-11T11:12:41","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T16:12:41","slug":"film-vinyl-2000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=10666","title":{"rendered":"Film: Vinyl (2000)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Vinyl2000_poster\"<\/a>Film<\/strong>: Very Good<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0n\/a<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>:\u00a0n\/a<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0n\/a<\/strong><\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a0n\/a<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0n\/a<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Documentary \/ Music \/ Vinyl<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0Alan Zweig explores the psychology that compels (mostly) men like himself to amass enormous LP collections.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0n\/a<\/span><\/p>\n

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Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Long before\u00a0When Jews Were Funny<\/b><\/a>\u00a0(2013), Alan Zweig directed this examination of extreme record collecting, focusing on several figures (mostly men) whose lives are surrounded by thousands of the round music platters.<\/p>\n

Zweig is also a collector \u2013 he\u2019s also the film\u2019s host, narrator, and investigator \u2013 and he shares the same psychological issues as his subjects, albeit in a significantly different flavour. Zweig uses his own state \u2013 a lonely, single older man living in a small apartment packed with items that feed make-work projects (mix tapes, catalogue, re-organizing) of little significance \u2013 to break down the barriers of fellow collectors and ask pointed questions that mandate his subjects do a little self-analysis of their own.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the collectors are evasive, others pause with surprise, and some are almost clinically analytic in describing the peculiarities of collecting en mass objects that go far beyond their content. Record collecting should be about enjoying the music and having something modest that reflects one\u2019s tastes and persona, but there\u2019s a point where rational thought becomes subjugated, if not quashed, by a bug to have \/ to catalogue \/ to display; and when there\u2019s no more room to display, the objects pile up and turn a home into a giant closet in which contents kind of exploded onto the floor, the bathroom, the kitchen, the garage, and into a rented storage locker.<\/p>\n

Having 30,000 records is truly extreme. There\u2019s a moment when Zweig asks an uber-collector if he has his own must-have title, and of course the owner walks over to a cabinet, pulls it out, and Zweig holds it \u2013 a simple task that kind of kills Zweig’s quest then and there.<\/p>\n

At nearly 2 hours,\u00a0Vinyl<\/b>\u00a0is long, but in its own weird way, it works \u2013 this is in spite of Zweig\u2019s episodic on-camera confessions where he\u2019s often brutally chastising himself, questioning his need to have the patently useless, holding onto the clearly worthless, and transferring to tape in organized fashion what will be generally never be heard again.<\/p>\n

As an examination of the psychosis that pushes music fans to extreme points,\u00a0Vinyl<\/b>\u00a0is dead on, and its eponymous subject could easily be steelbook video releases, collector cards, books, vintage electronics, or the voguish limited vinyl releases aimed at collectors in today\u2019s vinyl resurgence who want the artistry of packaging and production design over musical content.<\/p>\n

What one has, how many editions, copies, complete sets, how it\u2019s all organized, and the pride of ownership are just the teasing details of the doc; what Zweig ultimately does manage to achieve is stripping down the veneer of confident collectors, and once their guards are down, in a moment of trust and safety, gets them to reveal some of the deep personal issues that separate extreme collectors from the avid music fan.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt reality shows like\u00a0Hoarders<\/b>\u00a0will come to mind within the first few minutes of seeing Vinyl<\/strong>, but this isn\u2019t an exploitive trashy production designed to make viewers feel better than the dented souls drowning in crap; Zweig wants to improve his life, and he asks frank questions perhaps to find some solutions to manage his own escape, if not find coping mechanisms, and maybe ignite a little change in the lives of his interview subjects.<\/p>\n

The classic LP vs. CD debate does pop up early in the film, and it\u2019s amusing to hear two collectors echo the words of Rush\u2019s Geddy Lee (the warmness in LP recordings that people find soothing stems from a positive reaction to vinyl\u2019s inherent distortion) and Neil Young (digital is a sterile representation of the music, whereas the sound coming from vinyl is pure). The debate rages on 15 years later; Young applied his philosophy to the\u00a0PonoPlayer<\/a>, which plays \u2018high resolution\u2019 audio files that are closer to the \u2018warmness\u2019 of vinyl by offering a frequency range & bit rate greater than CDs.<\/p>\n

Shot on DV, the doc\u2019s lo-fi crudeness works in its favour \u2013 there\u2019s an inherent grunge factor that arguably makes extreme collectors look more sad that they may be \u2013 and fits in to Zweig\u2019s style of making himself the film\u2019s propellant.\u00a0
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The variety of collectors range from the odd women to mostly men, and a few celebrities of sorts, including Don McKellar (colleague of the doc\u2019s associate producer, Bruce McDonald), filmmakers Bruce La Bruce and Guy Maddin, author \/ broadcaster Daniel Richler,\u00a0American Splendor<\/b>\u00a0author Harvey Pekar, and writer Geoff Pevere, whose tale of junking 2,000 LPs is a fascinating psychological snap of \u2018If I can’t have these, no one can<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n

Also glimpsed in the doc is Peter Dunn of the late, great Peter Dunn’s Vinyl Museum chain in Toronto. (LP connoisseurs will no doubt spot the clear album sleeves used by one collector.)<\/p>\n

Vinyl<\/strong> sort of disappeared after its low-key formal release (if not enjoying at best, a token VHS release), but it is available on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2015 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a>
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\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Long before When Jews Were Funny (2013), Alan Zweig directed this examination of extreme record collecting, focusing on several figures (mostly men) whose lives are surrounded by thousands of the round music platters…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[2539,3368,3360,3367],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Vinyl2000_poster.gif","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-2M2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10666"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10707,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10666\/revisions\/10707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}