the audience applauded

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The French band Air initially caught my ear in the Fall of 2001 when I began to volunteer at Northern Michigan University's student radio station Radio X. We had a copy of 10,000Hz Legend and I quickly became a fan after playing a few tracks from it during my program. After a couple of years of listening to them, I found out about this film through a small advert that Astralwerks had inserted in a copy of the Virgin Suicides soundtrack entitled 'La Collection Francaise', detailing certain releases by French bands on the label. Eating, Sleeping, Waiting, and Playing was one of the items mentioned. I was intrigued and purchased the video through Amazon. Mills travels with Jean-Benoit Dunckel, Nicolas Godin, and their highly talented backing musicians and documents their activities as they tour their debut album Moon Safari, successfully portraying the band in a down to earth, humble fashion. The variety of footage is very beneficial, as everything from the band performing live to being woken up by the film crew is documented and arranged in a logical order. The only real gripe I have concerning the cinematography is when individuals not related to the band are being asked various questions by Mills and the camera will often slowly pan to something off to the side of the patron, almost projecting the sense that the interviewer doesn't really care about what they have to say. Although there a few times when these mini-interviews don't produce anything of substance, most of them garner interesting responses worthy of focus. Aside from the feature itself, the DVD contains Mills' music video work for the band up to the point when the documentary was shot, a gallery of original Mills artwork for the Moon Safari album, and a storyboard for the Kelly Watch The Stars video. If you are into Air, you will more than likely enjoy it. It may be hard for those unfamiliar with Air to really get into it, as it does focus directly on the band. However, those who appreciate quality cinematography may be pleased by some of the camera work within the film.

Terrible. After watching an amazing concert DVD, Stop Making Sense, we put this in and were sorely disappointed. The documentary features a combined 10 minutes of music interspersed with interviews with people on the street that I couldn't care less about, answering asinine questions such as what they think of McDonalds. Who CARES?!The cameraman must have thought it was neat to pan around in circles. He did that a lot. The sound during the few music portions was terrible, and the film cut between songs in the middle of them, with no fadeouts. I learned nothing of interest of the band, nothing of interest of their fans, and saw very little of the music that supposedly made me care about them in the first place.A total waste of time, save the MTV music videos tacked on to the special features.

is this flick not good. i had read elsewhere that it was boring, tedious and unrewarding, but i usually have more stamina for "boring" things than most. that just usually means someone was expecting something different. so i was expecting just long periods of inactivity while the band waited around to play, and not much music--but you know, with some point, or method of entertaining me. and it even failed with these expectations! it's horribly shot on black and white gunky-looking video. when someone does mutter something it's often hard to hear. this could all be forgiven, but...mike mills, who shows creativity with the videos he did for air--thankfully included--has no instincts or ideas for a music doc. periods of watching the air guys sitting saying little or nothing are broken up by banal man-on-the-street interviews about what music means to people, etc. i have seen a doc he did about paperboys which also failed to elicit much from his interviews that was not trivial and uninteresting. it just isn't his forte (the interviews in one of the air music videos did manage to get by with the charm of their banality, somehow). oh yeah, his other idea is to rip off godard's stones doc ("sympathy for the devil") by slowly panning around in a circle a lot. while this works pretty well onstage (as it did with the stones' sessions), it is just retarded during interviews. the camera drifts off to the side and stays there, recording nothing of visual interest, while part of the subject remains on the edge. it's just pretentious and pointless. at least he cops to the ripoff by duplicating a scenario from the godard film to show it's quite intentional. but what was the point? he seems like an extremely creative and talented guy, esp. with graphics. but i do not think he is at all good with documentaries, and this movie is the calling card for that idea. fanatics only! (the casual fan will be better served with the dvd magazine circuit, one issue of which--i think #6--features air and can be rented. it doesn't offer a lot, but it's a handful more than this.)

Before watching this film I couldn't help but think of the mostly depressing and generally boring documentary done on Radiohead--"Meeting People is Easy." To my surprise E.S.W.P was quite different and was amusing with its behind the scenes look at Air and their backing musicians. The questions asked by Mike Mills produced some entertaining and revealing moments, although I must admit I became somewhat annoyed with some of the respondents after awhile. Regardless, this is definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of Air, and the music videos included on the video and DVD are amazing, especially "Kelly Watch this