(Craig Zobel, 2007, USA, 106 minutes)
As previously mentioned, my sister visited this weekend. Among the films we saw were The Boss of It All and Great World of Sound. Both movies involve conniving businessmen and their shady schemes. Of the two, I preferred The Boss of It All, partially because it was a better constructed, better directed film, but mostly because of its sharper, more cynical humor. My sister, however, preferred Great World of Sound and, in a discussion over lunch, made a pretty good argument for it. I asked her if she would write up her comments and she very graciously did. So, by way of Siffblog, here's Nancy Fried Foster's review of Great Wall of Sound.
In Great World of Sound, two small-time talent scouts audition musical acts in the American South and Midwest and sign any act that will front a portion of the cost of making a demo. It is a first film and has limitations: a low-budget look and some tentative directing and acting. But the movie also has its strengths, chief among them its sincerity and its respect for the musicians who perform their rock, gospel, folk, punk, and sui generis songs. The tone of the movie is direct and earnest and its central problem matters, and in a gentle and genuine way, the movie is patriotic. It opens our hearts to all the musicians - regular Americans who play quirky and sometimes regionally inflected music - and it affirms some values that we might still hold dear: being true to oneself and fair and good to others.
She added in a further comment to me:
(btw, I saw something on the web that indicated that all but two of the musicians in the movie didn't know they were in a fake audition until it was over)
Image from Rotten Tomatoes (Pat Healy and Kene Holiday).
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