User Reviews

This short (nine minute) piece is an "extra" included with a Velocity Home Entertainment DVD that offers a feature film, NOISE, starring Trish Goff and Ally Sheedy. It is a mini-documentary that depicts essentials of the feature's theme, i.e., the distasteful ubiquitousness of invasive noise within a major metropolitan area such as New York City, for which ostensibly only the good-willed have the ability to cope. A substantial portion of the work is given to comments on film by one Alan Fierstein, whose Soho District of New York City company, Acoustilog, Inc., performs professional acoustic measurements. He differentiates between the terms "sound" and "noise"with a description that would be hard to beat for clarity: sounds are "desired", whereas "noise" is "less than desirable". Fierstein measures sounds with a "sound level meter", and a "frequency analyzer" that assesses various tonal pitches -- bass, midrange, and treble (including sibilance). This methodological consistency, however, tends to beg the question as it relates to the feature film NOISE, wherein two apartment house residents are at odds over harrying loud media sounds. Fierstein affirms that one who retaliates against a noisy neighbour, such as within the full-length film, is frequently considered as being in the wrong, damned for a natural desire to find tranquillity. Fleeting snippets from NOISE are utilized to illustrate this form of irony, although they are only partially effective, as also is the Tony Spiridakis directed film that is somewhat enfeebled by overmuch cutting and an inexperienced and hardly dynamic female lead in Goff. This short featurette also incorporates Man in the Street type of interviews with nine New Yorkers who discuss means of overcoming noise-based rudeness, one of whom makes a convincing point when she states that people "don't come to New York (City) for peace and quiet, and if they find it, they're lucky." This concise but pleasing documentary will strike a chord with those who have ever struggled against a tiresome and thoroughly offensive assault upon their auditory senses.