Here are capsule reviews by Tennessean.com feature writers of selections from Nashville Film Festival..

The good, the bad and the ugly at film festival

Rating: 4 stars
Tom Dowd and the Language of Music,
Mark Moorman, 89 mins.; 9:15 p.m. Thursday, 1 p.m. Friday.

The music we hear on the radio and file away in our mind's ear is the product not only of how the musicians sounded but also how they were recorded and produced. Now that biographies have been written or filmed about most of the great musicians, a new wave of history is focusing on figures behind the mixing boards, and Tom Dowd was one of the greatest of all. A gentle genius with extraordinary ears and vast technical know-how, Dowd was staff engineer for Atlantic Records from the 1940s on, which means he recorded Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Otis Redding, Eric Clapton, the Allman Brothers and countless others. This enthralling film, a 2003 Sundance entry, tells the twin stories of Dowd's extraordinary life (which ended in October 2002 after 77 years) and the evolution of recording, from mono disc cutters to modern digital. Through interviews with giants of music and vintage footage from inside the studio, Dowd comes across as no less an artist than the legends he captures on tape.

— Craig Havighurst

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