Review: Sound City

Take out the final half hour, which is pretty much just and advert for the album they brought out at the same time and Dave Grohl's directorial début is an entertaining look behind the music made at the legendary Sound City studios.

Films like these sink or swim with the quality of the contributors and the film covers an eclectic mix of music, thankfully not just focusing too much on the heavy-hitters like Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty (as after watching the 4 hour film about him I've had my fix of how Damn The Torpedoes was made). The doc also touches on the analogue versus digital debate, but doesn't really go into that much depth with only Trent Reznor playing a slight devil's advocate, instead where the film shines is how the talking heads manage to convey how it was something more than bricks and mortar that managed to magic of the music recorded in the Los Angeles studio.

Review: Foo Fighters - Back & Forth

A documentary that traces the rise of the Foo Fighters to the stadium filling rock band of today, Back & Forth is always entertaining thanks to the way Dave Grohl and his band-mates can tell a tale, but the lack of real drama or conflict means this lacks what made other rockumentaries like Dig! classics. Try as they might, its hard believe that no matter how many times they tell you its that much of a challenge to make a record in a garage when Dave Grohl's garage is the size of a house itself.