I posted a rather rash and harsh status on Facebook the other day about the critically acclaimed movie Whiplash. I got quite a heavy backlash from my friends for my negative review because I didn’t look up the facts. “Don’t make a movie about drumming if your lead actor can’t drum for shit” was my socially retarded rant. I was wrong because Miles Teller is in fact a great drummer. What led me to believe that he couldn’t play was the discrepancies in what I heard and what I was seeing on the screen. It’s no wonder because the drumming in the soundtrack is utterly insane. It’s the kind of drumming that anyone can appreciate as difficult on a master’s level. Still, I thought the veil of movie magic could have been thicker and that’s just my shitty opinion, okay?!

The drummer Antonio Sanches (he did the soundtrack of Birdman) said it best for me in his interview with Giles Peterson:

“…I have mixed feelings. As a drummer, I didn’t like it too much. As a regular filmgoer that wouldn’t know anything about drums it’s a good movie… to me it’s more like a sports film with an athlete and a coach more than a music student and a teacher. I mean I understand you have to dramatise stuff. Probably if I was a lawyer and I saw ‘The Firm’ I would be like ‘oh come on, thats not real’. But I think the thing that I liked the least about it is that at no point in the film I saw any joy from anybody playing music. That totally defeats the purpose of playing music, so if it’s all tension and anxiety it’s not a very good message if you want to get people into Jazz.”

So if you like tension, drama, good soundtracks, good acting and thrillers, watch whiplash. If you’re looking for a beautiful representation of the Jazz industry, you’re better off watching an old Glenn Miller video.