Movie Details
| Title: | All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records | |
| Director: | Colin Hanks | |
| Year: | 2015 | |
| Genre: | Documentary | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 09.16.16 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 09.16.16 | airplane | i'm skipping Fantastic Fest this year in order to go to Peru and Bolivia on an Ancient Aliens guided tour with Giorgio Tsoukalos. Yes, it's kind of unexpected, but whatevs... it was awesome. So because of this, two things are happening: 1) my movie total this year will probably be an all-time low, and 2) i had the opportunity to watch movies on an airplane for the first time in many many years. Things have changed. On my United flight, each seatback had a touch screen where i could choose from a flight of films, tv shows, and even casual games like Bejeweled to play while enduring the coach seating. The problem is that the system is wired to pause anything anytime a flight attendant or pilot gets on the mic, and, because it's on a plane, anything R-rated gets chopped to hell. So although there were an actually decent roster of films to choose from, I didn't want to spoil my experience of actually watching something like Captain America: Civil War by seeing it on a damn airplane. So that led me to this doc, directed by Colin Hanks, telling the story of Tower Records. A little personal history: My local Tower was not local at all. When I was "discovering" music in middle and high school, I lived in a redneck city in Maryland. About once every 8-12 months someone's parents (most usually my mom) would OK a trip into the city for some serious music buying. These trips consisted of a stop at Phantasmagoria, which at the time was a CD store somewhere in a basement in Wheaton, MD (and would later move to become a music venue but I was off to college by that time) specializing in rare industrial, techno, and other bizarre genres, then on to the Tower Records in Rockville, MD. Tower was like the ultimate music store. Not only did it have all the stuff that any Sam Goody or other mall music store had, it was also the place to look for the japanese import singles, the rare EPs that you had only heard existed third-hand, and I swear they even stocked a couple bootlegs. I had no illusions that the Rockville location, which I remember being in a strip mall or something, was the original (there were other far larger and more extravagant locations around the DC area even), but it still held the crown for me and my own personal realm of exposure. I spent a lot of damn money in that place. So, anyway, fast forward 20 years and now i have an interest in this doc. As a movie it's ok... kind of a by-the-numbers doc that you could probably guess the plot synopsis of... but the interview subjects are interesting and there's a few nice tidbits thrown in like the Elton John stuff and just in general it's a nice puzzle piece which fits in the overall picture of American rock and roll. I found it to be worth watching. |
