Just watched "It Might Get Loud" on blu-ray.
Although the previews kind of lead a viewer to think it's a 90 minute jam session between Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White, it's really more extended individual interviews with and a history of each guitarist's career. The parts where all three musicians are together in a large warehouse style studio discussing each other's songs and playing styles, sometimes playing bits of tunes together only comprises about 30% of the movie which concludes with the three playing a great acoustic version of The Band's song "The Weight." There's some nice deleted scenes included on the disc, my favorite being Page discussing and playing bits of "Kashmir" with the other two musicians.
The one thing that many people including myself will probably come out of watching this movie is a greater appreciation for Jack White who while could be criticized as too "retro" and perhaps contrived with his stripped down rootsy blues style, has an infectious passion and energy for (his) music that is hard to ignore. There's a few staged bits with White alone where he's with a 9 year old (uncredited) boy who's dressed like White and meant to represent White as a child with the elder Jack "teaching" the boy rudimentary blues that's a little odd.
As expected, The Edge spends a lot of time showing how he uses his massive arsenal of effects with guitars to come up with different sounds. One of the out takes shows him basically doing a soundcheck as the film crew sets up that's pretty cool to watch as he plays snippets of several well-known U2 songs like "Until The End Of The World." There's one interesting and rarely seen early 1978-ish performance of U2 playing a pre-1st album song "Street Mission" that I'm sure the band wished had never been filmed (Bono looks and acts like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever).
But it's Jimmy Page however who comes across as the musicians' musician of the three and often basically schools the other two about songs, music in general and playing who are clearly in awe of Page.
The sound and video quality are pretty much top notch. The archive footage from all three players and their respective bands (U2's is mostly Elevation tour footage) is a bit rough in places and in U2's (2001 live stuff) case looks to be upsampled video from 480 to 1080p. I think there could have been a bit more separation giving the individual players a wider aural soundstage during the "Summit" portions of the film where they're playing together. One thing I liked about this blu-ray release, is you can listen to the film's audio and have the *commentary track subtitles* displayed at the same time thus getting both "perspectives" in one viewing.
Might be a bit to dry for most people and I personally wish there'd been more actual performance stuff with the three players together instead of the individual interview and archive footage stuff, but it's definitely worth a look.
T.B.