It’s time for a collection of posts on what we can gain from others’ experiences in different fields. Last week, we examined the Music Biz, but why stop there?
Tag: Bob Dylan
You know how when you are too close to something you can’t even see it? Sometimes I find myself in a movie and I miss the true glory of a particular scene. Taken out of context, some work shines even brighter.
I love this scene.
To me it is “Desire”. I watch it and I hear Bob Dylan’s album and the whole Rolling Thunder tour (or at least the recordings of it that I have heard). I love the longing, the inexplicability, the recognition, the silliness and the passion. And the song is great too.
SORRY! THIS LINK WAS TAKEN DOWN. NONETHELESS THE QUESTIONS REMAIN…..
How do you free yourself from the burdens of the past? How do you enter the present when the past shackles your every move? How do you move culture forward?
Hat tip (again) to Open Culture.
I find it very rare that I end up telling stories of movies, particularly short films. That is what happened when I first saw Nash Edgerton’s SPIDER, perhaps my favorite short of recent history. I found myself doing it again when he started making videos for Bob Dylan. This is his most recent video and it, like Dylan’s Christmas tunes, has a good sense of goofy fun — although I miss Nash’s signature mayhem.
I am relieved that Mr. Edgerton’s finally made a feature, because there’s too much story inside it for me to ever tell well. You just have to see it. With no stars, no fancy VFX, just talent in craft, he spins an excellent yarn. Discipline, the avoidance of the unnecessary, the commitment to the declared agenda, has long been one of my favorite attributes in cinema, and this man’s got it. The NY Times agrees (“Mr. Edgerton, with crack timing in the editing room and a sure hand on the Steadicam, is a coldblooded professional. His craft is frightening.”) so hopefully this film will prove that people do care for good movies, even without the hype and star trappings.
As some of you might know from my tweets when I first saw it, I dug this movie. Someone once complimented me for making many films that captured the awkwardness in sex on film as it is real life. Film history is filled with the fluff in both sex and violence. Nash stages fights as the mess they are and it does wonders for bringing us in to the movie and keeping us there. It’s just one in a number of approaches that makes this film work. He makes it look easy — and is not. Still, it makes me wonder why we can’t get noir right. This is good pulpy fun played for real without winks and nods.
Check out the trailer below, and please see it soon, as we have to vote for the work we want with our dollars.
Was it the semi-narrative, the accusatory question (How does it feel?!), the multiple meanings of the chorus, the propulsive rave up, or just the great tune over all, but how many songs manage not to just stick for decades but rise to the pinnacle of great rock songs? And then to get the namesake and the creator together in their fifties still rockin’ it before multiple cameras and a giant swarm of fans loving every minute.
It’s definitely entertainment:
(hat tip to Amos Poe for this one!)
