Great World of Sound

The two movies planned for today were skipped completely and instead I went and saw Great World of Sound which was on my schedule in the future and moving it would allow me to see American Shopper which there has been some buzz about.

Great World of Sound is one of my favorites of the festival now, closely competing with Rocket Science for best narrative. The story follows a young man, played by Pat Healy (who also appeared in this year's Rescue Dawn), who becomes excited by the prospect of working for a company that seeks out music artists in an effort to discover them to become the next big thing. It starts with him pairing up with another new guy played by Kene Holliday and travelling to a city to lodge up and audition some new stars in their hotel room. What transpires from there is a lot of hilarious comical bits with musicians auditioning, cut together in such a way that it never really gets tiring or overdone. Each of the artists are so uniquely endearing that you don't notice how many are actually run through the entire length of the movie until the credits are shown. As a side note, there is an unsubstantiated claim via the movie's IMDB entry that 80% of the performers auditioned were not in on the fact that this was for a movie. It is rather notable as a point of style that each of the shots filmed in the hotel rooms contain very documentary-like handheld DV cam footage.

I recognized the director's name Craig Zobel from somewhere and then immediately realized he was one of the co-creators of the infamous web cartoon homestarrunner.com. While HomeStarRunner may not be up everyone's alley, you definitely have to admit the creators have a knack for writing, comic timing, and creatively sequenced sketches. All of this definitely comes out in Zobel's co-written screenplay, throwing in little random one-liners here and there that seem almost forgettable or unscripted, but yet do seem scripted as they somehow contribute to the character development. This is actually a very big writing trait of HomeStarRunner that has always worked successfully, albeit in a completely different context.

The soundtrack was done by David Wingo who also did the soundtrack for the absolutely amazing George Washington.

I'm reasonably confident that this movie would be well received by many people, even regardless of whether they like or dislike the subtle sense of humor in HomeStarRunner. The entire audience seemed to actively enjoy this one.

Audience Watch: Nothing to report here. Harvard Exit always has good audiences.