Movies About Music
 

How many movies have you see about Music? Anything music related whether it's a fictional documentary like Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind & Walk Hard or a fictional band like That Thing You Do! or bunch of friends going to a concert Detroit Rock City. Or a day-in-a-life movie with a prominent soundtrack like American Graffiti or Dazed and Confused.

This is a movie I stumbled upon on cable one night after waking up in the middle of the night - it wasn't aired on prime time. It's about the cult following of 8 tracks of all things. There so much open honesty and enthusiasm for something so passe that these 8-track enthusiast begin to change your perception of the device. It's also a interesting look at the per-internet music experience, and how people collected music before P2P filesharing, YouTube, Spotify, LastFM, iTunes etc etc

So Wrong They're Right 8-Track Documentary Trailer


So Wrong They're Right


Recommendations:
(Untitled) - Frownland
Sound of Noise - Frownland

I wish Whiplash was about music.

Two hilarious music films.

The trailers are hilarious.

I've never seen (Untitled) but Sound of Noise is amazing.

I really like August Rush. Music is the main focus but there's also a good story to it.

I really enjoyed "Love and Mercy", about Brian Wilson and his ups and downs. Of course it helps that I am a big fan of the beach Boys' late 60's/early 70's period.

I thought it did a very even-handed job of portraying the tensions in the group. It would have been very easy to do a hatchet job on Mike Love, but rather than doing that the producer just presented things in a way to show how different were the perspectives that Love and BW were coming from; Love was interested in commercial success, Brian in music as art.

There is something remarkable about a film that manages to make the song "California Girls" sound threatening, almost sinister.

I Dream of Wires



It's a fairly solid look at the history of modular synthesis, which is a subject I'm increasingly fascinated by. It does seem a bit elitist in favor of analog sound though, which is pretty stupid considering that digital sound is 1. objectively more flexible to work with, and 2. extremely prevalent in modulars today. Besides that it's great.