For rock fans, there was only one film that mattered last year - Davis Guggenheim's entertaining guitar documentary It Might Get Loud. This enlightening film took three generations of guitarists - Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, U2's The Edge and Jack White - and threw them together in a studio to discuss their careers and techniques.
Those wanting a taste of guitar love can check out the film's website (sonyclassics.com/itmightgetloud). A trailer shows White building a primitive guitar out of a piece of wood, and an audio widget features a great demonstration of the Whole Lotta Love riff by Page.
Zeppelin made their own rock film, the recently remastered The Song Remains The Same. (There's no official site, but the fan site ledzeppelin.alexreisner.com/tsrts.html0 does a good job.) Filmed in 1973, the movie features concert footage of the band at Madison Square Garden. Because of some ham-fisted directing, the concert scenes had to be padded out with some Tolkien-esque fantasy sequences that are either risible or marvellous depending on your point of view.
Controversy has always surrounded this film - is it fully live, or was it doctored in the studio? Hard rock fans will find The Garden Tapes website (thegarden tapes. co.uk/tgt.html) an enlightening analysis of this pressing rock issue.
Zeppelin may be the world's greatest band, but they didn't make the world's greatest rock film. That honour goes to Rob Reiner's classic This is Spinal Tap (spinaltap.com), which, of course, is a fictional feature. The stars of the first 'mockumentary' then became real and performed many times as a live band.