How is it that an audio medium has so many good films about it? From the works of Les Blank to High Fidelity, records are a great subject for docs, and Ryan Goble's The Recor Parlour is a fabulous entry into that field. 

The basic story - successful guy risks it all to open a record store. Simple, right? It is, and the methodology of the documentary is equally simple. A single interview, some footage of digging through records, close-ups on records, and a bit more. We aren't bogged down with too much information, in a way this is a cover for a book and not a book, which is perfect because what it's really presenting is a simple idea - follow your dream. 

And I HATE follow your dream films. I mean, really, how many times will I have to sit through the 'I worked hard and I finally made it' spiel that they all boil down to? What makes this different, and incredibly effective, is that rare combination of camera work, topic, and precision of presentation. It is not quite bare bone, or even minimalist, but it takes the idea of Chekov's Gun and gives us exactly what we need, and nothing more, which makes everything that IS presented important, notable. It all lands, and that is what makes a short doc, especially one that runs less than ten minutes, especially wonderful. 

You can watch The Record Parlour on Ryan Goble's site. You'll want to bookmark it, because with talent and vision like Ryan's, he's about to become a major player in this game we call film.