Cate Blanchett to play Bob Dylan in an upcoming film.

also, DLB is '65 Dylan, Cate/Jude is '66, which is a BIG diff, so I don't know why he's using one to critique the other.

why on earth is Edelstein looking for "vulnerable human being(s)"?

yeah Edelstein's problem seems to be with the basic premise of the picture, the essential unknowability/slipperiness of this media-persona

saying the Jude section has little to do w/ Don't Look Back is splitting hairs, I think. isn't some of that segment shot-for-shot Pennebaker?

Edelstein's review at least made more sense to me than Anthony Lane's, where he made the somewhat startling admission that he thought the Brit magazine editor was otm o_0

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2007/11/26/071126crci_cinema_lane

there is no mistaking a hard, Brechtian sense of dramatis personae being used like tools

he says this like its a bad thing

like OH NOES, META

Armond's review was written by Addison DeWitt.

(i rote review too.)

are there any movies that anthony lane likes?

isn't some of the Jude section segment shot-for-shot Pennebaker?

I'm not sure, but that's not in DNB cuz the real snippy press conference Jude press conference is almost verbatim from '66. Maybe it's in Eat the Document? Which is '66 footage, shot by Pennebaker but appropriated by Dylan, correct? (I last saw it in Scorsese/PBS)

I thought Eat the Document was Dylan taking Pennebaker's DLB footage plus some stuff of his own and editing it all together

anyway yeah yr correct about the press conference

no, ETD is '66

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0233629/

so he was booed for going electric two tours in a row?

1965 is DLB=acoustic
1967 is ETD=electric

but... he was playing electric stuff by '65 right? I mean the film opens with Subterranean Homesick Blues... he just didn't have the electric band with him on that UK tour...?

I thought everything after Newport he was doing two sets, one acoustic and one electric, but I don't really know

anyway I guess I got the "shot for shot" thing from NYT. I've never seen Eat the Document.

Devotees of Dylan lore will find their heads swimming with footnotes, as they track Mr. Haynes’s allusions not only to Mr. Dylan’s own music but also to the extensive secondary literature it has inspired, from books by David Hajdu and Greil Marcus to films, including D. A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary, “Don’t Look Back,” some of which Mr. Haynes remakes shot for shot.

I could've sworn there's footage of concert-goers complaining that he's a sellout for going electric in DLB, but maybe I am mixing it up with ETD.

DLB=spring of 65
Newport=summer of 65

??So maybe he wasn't electric yet during DLB??? Could I be any more boring? Anyway, I need to see this movie this weekend. Very excited

CORRECTION: Newport electric Maggies Farm extravaganza holy shit Pete Seeger's gonna cut the electric cord=summer of 65

NOW i am boring

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMxJFsyR85o

i thought the newport folk festival was the first, early step of the tour which eventually wound its way to Manchester (where the "Judas" incident happened - now it's the Live 66 discs, one set acoustic, one electric)

i also thought that Eat the Document was the same footage as Don't Look Back, but cut differently

i'm also not a dylanologist by any stretch

also many xposts

'65 UK was his last acoustic tour, I think. "Subterranean" had just been released as a single, the album wasn't out yet.

"I kind of liked being blasted out of my skin"

i also thought that Eat the Document was the same footage as Don't Look Back

No. Pennebaker recently cut unused footage (incl concert stuff this time) for DLB into 65 Revisited -- my take -- for the latest DVD edition.

I thought it was weird that the movie spun the Judas thing as a sort of chaotic defeat with the curtain crashing down, when in reality ("reality") Dylan yelled to the band PLAY FUCKING LOUD and they kept rolling

yeah I was waiting for the "play fucking loud" response too

There's a dropped-in 'flashback' of Protest Dylan doing a song in front of some crates in Mississippi 1963, with black men standing in the b.g., in DLB that is replicated w/ C Bale in I'm Not There. (I don't remember if it's the same song, the one about Medgar Evers)

I think it is the same song, Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

i have yet to meet anyone in this life who thinks dylan should not have gone electric. who are these people?

ha in the dissensus dylan blog wars of a few years ago, i remember reynolds and matt woebot defending the grouchy earnest mancunians who thought dylan was ruining and prostituting everything. "seemed like nice kids" or something.

xp

no, that's not the song in THAT scene in DLB. "Hattie Carroll" is the song Pennebaker shoots longest in '65 tour in DLB, but cuts off the last verse. Which then appears by itself in 65 Revisited. Is this confusing enough?

you can see his Newport '63-65 perfs in yet another doc:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=3250

ha I guess I should stop pretending like I remember what's in Don't Look Back off the top of my head

OK, the Protest Dylan clip in DLB is of him doing "Only a Pawn in Their Game."

Did anyone (besides my friend) recognize the Richard Lester ref that is not Beatles-related? The old society dames in wheelchairs: Petulia.

Tried to go see this on Sunday afternoon but it was sold out. Hopefully I'll get another chance before it leaves theaters.

Cate and the young kid are most mesmerizing. Billy the Kid (Gere) and Heath-Charlotte plot least rewarding.

yeah, totally. also, i hate to say it, but i agree w/Anthony Lane. Once Richard Gere showed up, the whole movie fell apart for me. i also didn't get why Bale played Jesus Dylan??? I thought the conceit of the movie was changed persona=new actor. anyway, really confused by the Bale/Ledger characters too. this was fun, but only for bits & moments, and wasn't really satisfying.

Newport scene was great, The Beatles were HYSTERICAL (that whole sequence was great) Julianne Moore was awesome. David Cross was kinda lame though. He looked just like Ginsberg, though. Spooky.

“I’m Not There” is bravely conceived, but some of the reconstructions of the folk movement could have come straight out of “A Mighty Wind,”

Anthony Lane OTM^^

I watched "Eat the Document" a couple night ago, and can confirm it takes place during the 1966 European tour (part acoustic, part electric, as on Bootleg Series vol 4). The movie is bewildering. Dylan is disoriented throughout, except when on stage when he + the Hawks are in top form. The footage is very shaky; if this is Pennebaker, a lot of editing would have had to happen before release. There's a great scene with Johnny Cash looking more druggy than Dylan. Obv. the taxi ride with Lennon is a big deal, although like "Cocksucker Blues" way more boring than the hype would suggest.

guy who gets involved w/ her and makes Blanchett jealous = ? anyone in particular?

loosely based on Bob Neuwirth, maybe? Not that he & Dylan passed around Edie Sedgwick, but rather as his companion during the '65 tour.

The third weekend, the Weinsteins almost tripled the number of theaters -- and the total gross went down by a third: $920 per screen.

So no, this is not gonna cross over (surprise).

it doesn't make any sense backloading quality releases into the last two-three months of the year. is it the public's fault for giving a fuck about awards, or the academy members who can only remember films they seen/had hyped to them from six weeks before voting?

There's plenty of circular short-attention-span credit to go around.

INT would do about as "well" at the b.o. in any season, though.

i planned to see this tonite but it quit showing last night. :(

the idea that this was ever gonna be a hit is pretty absurd. even among my art-film friends some of them aren't going because they don't like dylan, and a lot of my dylan-fan friends aren't going because they think todd haynes is up to something sneaky and they don't like the idea of it. the natural constituency of the movie is pretty small.

(but as a member of that small constituency, i'm glad haynes got to make his movie.)

'65 UK was his last acoustic tour, I think. "Subterranean" had just been released as a single, the album wasn't out yet.

-- Dr Morbius, Thursday, November 29, 2007 9:02 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

yes. tho maybe the album was out? i think they play a copy of it in dont look back but maybe it's a dubplate? the tour was in april-may. also although he played an electric guitar at newport in 1965, the 1966 UK tour was a lot... more electric.

xpost

this has had great reviews and i would have expected a pretty large urban-area hit. as with mid-60s dylan, maybe it'll do better in the uk lol.