Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Steineded How sad is this?

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Python Hyena Touch the Sound: A Sound Journey With Evelyn Glennie (2004): Dir: Thomas Riedelsheimer / Featuring: Evelyn Glennie, Fred Frith, Jason the Fogmaster, Roger Glennie: Compelling idea for a documentary about the mystery of sound and its affect on people. Directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer who introduces Evelyn Glennie as an almost deaf musician who experiences life through sound. Traveling around the world she visits schools where she demonstrates a whole new way to relate to sound. She instructs one student to strike a drum while her hand and arm feels the vibration. She travels to odd locations such as a farm where ruins prospect much life for sound with various objects. Glennie herself is an expressive sort who cannot always explain her feelings and reactions to various sounds yet her face mirrors her pleasure in discovering new sound and variations. She is the main human focus of the film while others are more brief. This is intriguing but also somewhat boring as she spends endless time usually in one place too long as if beating us over the head with its theme over and over would get the word out about this film. Viewers can share in her joy and enthusiasm but not with the film that propelled from it. The result is an intriguing and curious film that often drags through long segments that seem to go on forever in order to touch our senses to sound. Score: 5 ½ / 10

chuck-526 This film is a wonderful "experience", sort of like a very extended music video, or something you'd get from a VJ (Video Jockey, remember that term?). In spirit it reminded me of Fantasia. It also reminded me of those 60's "happenings", except there's no need to drop acid here.The images are all "realistic" things you might see with your own eyes (no microscopic nor aerial nor computer-generated nor artificial images). At the same time, they're arresting images: things you've never seen before, or a different way of looking at something, or deep meditations on an everyday event. The camera relentlessly moves back and forth between indoors and outdoors, guided by continuity of themes, people, and sound. Match cuts abound. Just a couple examples: We watch a feather falling through the air, then at the moment of impact the image changes to ripples spreading over the surface of a pond. We watch traffic crossing a bridge as the bridge towers that look like columns are emphasized, then the image changes to different columns that hold up the roof of a large building. The audio is mostly either percussion performances or "found sound" (much of the rest is philosophizing), sometimes synced with the images and sometimes independent. Some of the performances are fairly conventional (except on a higher plane than usual), others are improvisational and highly experimental. Several are so far off the beaten track they seem to call up the context of "modern art".Often a theme jumps back and forth from audio to video to audio to video to audio. And sometimes images get pretty imaginative: for example heat waves making buildings in the distance shimmer is reminiscent of water, so next we see a fisherman casting, then we see buildings with greatly exaggerated shimmering as though looking through actual water. Rather imaginative, since the last time we could get our bearings we were in the middle of a grid of streets. It's obvious there was extensive editing and not everything is presented in chronological order: Evelyn's hair may be blond, then red in the next scene, then blond again in the scene after that, and so on. In one sense deafness is the foundation. But in another sense deafness is largely irrelevant. If I remember right, there's one long scene, another short scene, some scattered images, and some scattered bits of dialog that refer to deafness, or only make sense with deafness as a background, Maybe it totals something like 3% of the screen time. But that's it. It seems possible that a sufficiently obtuse viewer could watch the whole thing and never realize Evelyn Glennie is deaf. If you're looking for an uplifting moralistic tale about surmounting handicaps, this film is beyond that - it just assumes that as given without ever talking about it.At first when I read "one of the best percussionists in the world", I thought "yeah right, why have I never heard of this person?" But after listening all the way through the film, my dubiousness vanished. Not everything good is in the U.S. Even if you usually find percussion to be just "background noise" or "accompaniment", the musicality here is undeniable. It's obvious the percussionists listen intently and watch each other and adjust, reminiscent of improvisational jazz. I suspect if seen with enough understanding, this documentary explores a whole philosophy in a coherent way. (I don't really know if that's what the filmmaker intended or not.) What I do know is I didn't see it that way ...and I don't care (and maybe it isn't that way anyway:-). If you're waiting for "something to happen" or "some profound insight", you quite likely will find the film unbearably tedious and slow. It doesn't seem to me to welcome being approached that way.

lgarrick-1 I found this movie completing inspiring. The director did a magnificent job of blending visual metaphors for sound throughout.This is a documentary about the only woman percussionist who happens to have a 90 percent hearing loss. She uses her body to sense the slightest movement in sound waves and creates amazing rhythms, sounds and melodies.Don't expect a quick start, but hang in there, this is rich, rich film, full of wisdom about the senses, sound, music and life. Definitely not for someone interested in the usual musical documentary or superficial treatment of a topic.

D A In this sensual meditation on the perception of sounds, the masterful compositions of Director Thomas Riedelsheimer frames the exquisite subtleties of subject Evelyn Glennie's percussion based improvisations, which at times produces a transcendent immersion into the essence of sound stimuli and the creative process no musical film has ever captured as well. Alas, the film works best when capturing Glennie's spiritual exaltations to noise- through the immersed directing we can raise our own perceptions of sight and sound simply by reflecting and relating to the character's rapturous posture as the rhythm she spontaneously concocts becomes more and more intense. It is in these sublime moments that Glennie's philosophy, which advocates silencing one's own chattering mind in order to hear the chorus of sounds we all play with together, comes to the fore. Unfortunately these notions are constantly watered down by the excessive use of environmental shots interspersed to show us how this woman perceives everyday sounds around her. I felt that the lack of narrative forced the filmmaker to put too much stock in capturing the surroundings, which definitely was appreciated at first, but ultimately much of the beautiful, amazingly detailed imagery did feel superficial and ended up making the film feel a little too light. As far as taking this piece as some sort of alternative concert video however, this is an experience not to be missed by anyone who even dabbles in instrumentation, as well as anyone who simply wants to feel...more...