Watch DiG! Movie Online
July 7th, 2010
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Watch DiG! Movie Online.
Movie Title: DiG! DiG! is available for streaming or downloading. |
Sure, “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster” got all the fancy in 2004, but my popular rock-doc-as-car-crash of last year was this: “DiG!”
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Seven-some years in the making, it’s director Ondi Timoner’s crazy fancy letter to two men — Anton Newcombe, leader of The Brian Jonestown Massacre; and Courtney Taylor, head of the Dandy Warhols. Both groups ignited like Apollo 11’s on the start pad of the 1990s music scene but slowly sputtered assist down to the ground unprejudiced as spectacularly.
Newcombe seems like a musical genius who can’t resist imploding at the worst possible times and places, while Taylor has the drive and accessibility to succeed without the crucial spark of crazed brilliance. Their friendship/rivalry takes a lot of turns during the course of this film, which was mostly recorded on handheld cameras as the events unfolded.
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Everything that’s legal and irascible with the music industry is here: the inescapable mechanics of the game; the perils of drugs, egomania, overambition, pride and possession of mass quantities of obnoxiousness. Anybody who thinks they might want to invent music for money should inspect this film first.
Plus, there’s a lot of immense, racy footage here: Newcombe’s ill-advised handling of a Georgia roadcheck; a run-in with David LaChappelle; and especially the BJM’s disastrous, Andy Kaufman-esque meltdown in front of relate execs at the Viper Room (you gotta like any fight scene that ends with “motherf—-r broke my sitar, man!”) .
The movie’s only necessary weakness the fact that Taylor voices the film narration. Yes, he was there and can comment on the events unfolding with a clear air of authority, but his reading also gives the lines an unignorable bias. It’s a regretable trip that tilts the movie to a slightly unfair angle, but it doesn’t sink “DiG!”
Plus, this movie had one of my accepted supporting “performances” of the year: long-suffering BJM sideman Joel Gion. If he doesn’t parlay this movie into a career as a comedy star, he’s not trying hard enough.
I lived in Portland saw the Dandy Warhols early on and view that they were icy because they approximated a music I was always into, 60’s psychedelia, and they brought their beget sensibilities to it. I had the same reacton to the Brian Jonestown Massacre when I heard their early records. Anything that references that kind of 60’s swirl in music is lovely by me and I gravitate to it – Reasons I am fans of both bands -
HOWEVER-
I would never claim that either of these bands has a one up on the other one because I don’t deem either band is one of the alltime greats and I don’t care how either achieved their musical goals concerning the reasons given. I don’t care about b.s. arguments that claim “hey, man BJM is titanic because they were prolific and didn’t sell out” or the Dandies were mountainous because “they found a method to design it work and that’s what you have to do.” At the slay of the day, all you are left with is the music and if you like it huge, but the suggested argument that separates the two (one sold out, one didn’t) is bogus. All the bands from the 60′ sold out (whatever the hell that means) at one time or another and the ones who didn’t wished they had. So what? Any entertainment deal involves a deal with the devil at some level and to suggest otherwise, or that the people who develop “unheard” music are somehow “more pure” is nonsense. Why brand a relate deal at all, in that case, if everything that comes from that intial decision is a frickin slippery slope to being compromised? IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THUS.
As to the hyberbole of the movie as if it is pitting two dapper bands against each other, the “5 years ahead of their time” is righteous rhetoric, but nothing more. Supporters of both bands can claim the Dandies’ or BJM influence on music all day long, but as both were so influenced themselves (and never sold many records) who can claim a rightful timeline as to their either band’s influence on anyone, unless you’re talking about the heirs to BJM, none of which has had that distinguished success on the kind of level the film wants us to net.
To stress again, I am a fan of both bands, and I loved the movie, but the resulting success vs. sell out argument is, ultimately, a tired and musty out cliche from an era that, ironically or not, had huge influence on both bands.
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