Dig! 2004

Marta Barber, Miami Herald: I must admit that I came out of DiG! with a certain degree of admiration for Newcombe -- and for this documentary. Read more

Allison Benedikt, Chicago Tribune: After watching your [Anton's] tantrums, abuse and addiction in DIG! I went straight to the record store to buy your music. And that's something. Read more

Ted Fry, Seattle Times: A genuine rock mockumentary. Cautionary? Naw, but sometimes scary, often hilarious and always engrossing. Read more

Bob Townsend, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Its power comes from Timoner sticking with the story over the long haul -- on the road, in hotel rooms, backstage -- getting in-your-face footage and telling a good tale with it. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: I don't know that I've seen a film that better captures the tension between authenticity and ambition that bedevils modern rock music -- the sense that a mass audience is something to be desired and detested at one and the same time. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: The movie, which was seven years in the making, plays like a mid-'90s "Amadeus." Read more

Bruce Westbrook, Houston Chronicle: There's nothing cautionary in DiG! that you couldn't learn by renting the 1986 Sex Pistols-related biopic Sid and Nancy -- or exploring the commercially still-born yet revered career of the Velvet Underground. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: It invites those of us who aren't alt-rock obsessives into the hive, yet it never feels like a dilettante's tour. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Dig! strikes it rich by contrasting the stories of two bands going in different directions and the animosity that builds between them. Read more

Ernest Hardy, L.A. Weekly: Timoner doesn't intrude on the events being filmed or impose editorial comment on what the audience is watching, and there's no need to. Read more

Robert Dominguez, New York Daily News: What emerges is a fascinating portrait of an artist as a self-destructive young man - Brian Jonestown's resident "mad genius," Anton Newcombe, whose drug and drink-fueled antics on and offstage make Jim Morrison look like Jim Nabors. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Dig! a new documentary by Ondi Timoner, gives a cinema verite spin to the endlessly fascinating pop-music soap opera formula of VH1's Behind the Music. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: It's a classic music soap opera, but never told with a more raw scream for help at its center. Read more

Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle: Filmmaker Ondi Timoner followed the entangled rise of these two bands from the Pacific Northwest with an obsessive compulsive's eye for detail. Read more

James Barber, Slate: The movie has become a kind of highway-safety film for the rock community. Read more

Chris Riemenschneider, Minneapolis Star Tribune: In a year that has seen several fascinating documentaries on famous rock stars and their problems, Dig! stands out for being about musicians who only think they should be famous. And, man, do they have problems. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Through that mixture of luck and diligence that makes the best documentaries, Timoner offers a resonant, often painfully funny, drama about two good friends who become enemies against the backdrop of the pop-music business. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: DIG! is part post-grunge version of A Star is Born, part Cain and Abel fable of split fraternal affinities, and part reiteration of the oldest story in rock music: the impossibility of reconciling success with integrity. Read more

Dennis Harvey, Variety: Beyond the lure of going intimately behind the scenes with two excellent indie outfits (one drastically underappreciated), DIG! offers fascinating insights into how some vivid personalities fare in the music industry. Read more

Laura Sinagra, Village Voice: [A] kinetic tale of the love-hate relationship between the Dandy Warhols' Courtney Taylor and the Brian Jonestown Massacre's Anton Newcombe. Read more

Richard Harrington, Washington Post: Ultimately undermined by the fact that the two rock bands Timoner chose to focus on -- the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols -- simply don't matter as much as she thinks they do. Read more