{"id":24535,"date":"2013-01-31T11:56:09","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T19:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=24535"},"modified":"2013-01-31T14:09:36","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T22:09:36","slug":"sound-city-dave-grohl-2013-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=24535","title":{"rendered":"Sound City (Dave Grohl, 2013): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by\u00a0Mikael Myggen<\/a>. Viewed at the Lobero Theater, Santa Barbara Film Festival<\/p>\n

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Now this is something unexpected.<\/p>\n

I’ve been following\u00a0Dave Grohl of the notoriously famous alternative rock band “Foo Fighters”\u00a0ever since early 2006,\u00a0\u00a0when Guitar Hero 2 was released on consoles. I remember playing\u00a0one of their\u00a0songs\u00a0“Monkey Wrench” on my Playstation 2, and liking the song enough to look into the artist behind it. It wouldn’t be long after before I discovered that Mr. Grohl is an exceptionally talented individual. Not only is he a touring lead singer and guitarist for the\u00a0Foo Fighters,\u00a0a band which he started himself, he was also the drummer for crazy-popular band\u00a0“Nirvana”, who peaked in popularity during the early 90s.\u00a0Nirvana was\u00a0important to the music industry\u00a0for two big reasons: they\u00a0were arguably\u00a0the\u00a0first real\u00a0grunge band to become mainstream, and their debut album “Nevermind” completely shattered sales records all\u00a0across the US. I had known about and been a fan of Nirvana for years, so this discovery was pretty mind-blowing.<\/p>\n

And speaking of blowing minds, that’s exactly the goal of Sound City: to rock your socks off. For the most part, the film is exceptionally\u00a0good at doing this. Sound City is the story of a record company known by the same name, located in Hollywood, CA. The film starts off with Grohl\u00a0talking about how hilariously crappy and run-down the building was when\u00a0he came there to record an album\u00a0for the first time. The film progresses through the 70s\u00a0to present\u00a0day, and talks about some of the things that happened during the\u00a0lifespan of the recording studio.\u00a0Information in the film\u00a0pretty interesting, especially for music buffs,\u00a0including technical things like why the Neve recording board was so amazing for it’s time and even today, how acoustics are different and important for drums, and what the digital boom of the 1980s did to\u00a0the music industry.\u00a0Sound City’s tone is somewhat humorous, and it works well with the content, ensuring that even if you aren’t a music fanatic, you’ll be entertained.\u00a0Watching\u00a0the film makes me\u00a0feel like I’m reading an accelerated version of Rolling Stone. It’s fast, aggressively loud, and in your face, which matches the tone of early rock and roll perfectly. It might be a bit overly aggressive to some, but as the saying goes, “If the music’s too loud, you’re too old”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Another thing becomes clear early on: this isn’t a documentary about Nirvana, the Foo Fighters, or even Grohl himself. It’s about Sound City, and the music that came from it. Sound City\u00a0has one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever seen in a documentary, featuring a ton of music from numerous artists, far too many to list in a single paragraph. There isn’t much silence in this film, and that’s because the film knows how damn good it sounds. Not only is there a ton of music to be heard, there’s also a huge selection of people who were picked to be interviewed\u00a0for the film. IMDB.com lists 52 people in total, all of them having some kind of important relevance to the music industry…although\u00a0I’m pretty sure they actually interviewed more people than the website lists, as I can’t find certain names that were included in the film<\/p>\n

The editing is top-notch, and the pace feels comfortable, although a tad too slow at times. Photographs of the past that are included to show parts of history are sometimes edited to have people “pop out” of them slightly, which is a nice visual\u00a0touch. Colors in the film are nice and vibrant throughout, and the camerawork feels appropriate. The ending of the film almost starts to become a drag, but the film quickly realizes this and starts to mix things up. The mixup in addition to including a special surprise guest at the end really helps to keep the audience’s attention throughout.<\/p>\n

Sound City is definitely a documentary worth seeing, and it marks the possible start of Grohl’s career as a director of films. I’d recommend this film to just about anyone, especially if they have a taste for traditional music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by\u00a0Mikael Myggen. Viewed at the Lobero Theater, Santa Barbara Film Festival Now this is something unexpected. I’ve been following\u00a0Dave Grohl of the notoriously famous alternative rock band “Foo Fighters”\u00a0ever since early 2006,\u00a0\u00a0when Guitar Hero 2 was released on consoles. I remember playing\u00a0one of their\u00a0songs\u00a0“Monkey Wrench” on my Playstation 2, and liking the song enough […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,191],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-santa-barbara-film-festival-2013"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}