Category: Film

Two Bob Dylan documentaries

I recently watched Dont Look Back (1967) and Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese in outstanding Blu-ray editions from the Criterion Collection.

Rolling Thunder Revue chronicles Dylan’s 1975 tour. Scorsese made the strange decision to add fictional characters in with the real people. It makes you wonder what’s real and doesn’t add anything to the film. Howard Alk, who shot the footage in 1975 which is the basis for most of the film, doesn’t get much credit, just a brief acknowledgement in one of the supplements. Alk did a great job capturing Dylan’s performances close up. The restoration demo on the Blu-ray shows how much work went into cleaning up the footage and what a great job they did.

Dylan’s performances are excellent, much more passionate than usual for him based on the six of his concerts I have seen. Most people won’t agree but I like Desire (the 1976 album many songs here appear on) more than 1975’s Blood on the Tracks which is usually regarded as one of Dylan’s masterpieces. One of the supplements is a performance of “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You” with revised lyrics which are not as good as the original version. Dylan has revised lyrics to other songs and I have not heard one that improves on the first version. Dylan always revises his performances of songs and I admire this. He doesn’t treat the records as the definitive version. The film has a great electric version of “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”.

“This Land is Your Land” was used to close out the concerts but it’s not in the film. It wasn’t in the Bootleg Series 5 two-disc set taken from the concerts. It was in the 14 disc set released around the same time as the Scorsese film.

I then watched Dont Look Back which in which D. A. Pennebaker documents Dylan’s 1965 tour of England. It mostly focused on interactions with the media and other people involved in the tour and has little music. It does have the great placard video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues”

Dylan is very confrontational throughout but a lot of the people he meets clearly don’t understand him.

This was a solo acoustic tour but he had already released Bringing It All Back Home which has many electric songs.

great

One of the musicians on the Rolling Thunder tour:

Signal 30

“Signal 30” is a gruesome 1959 driver’s ed film made by the Highway Safety Foundation. I saw it in driver’s ed class in the late 1960s or early 1970s. I always said it was filmed in red and white.

Here are more similar movies (for anyone who could stand to watch more than one). “Red Asphalt II (1980)”and “Drive and Survive (1977)” are age restricted; you have to watch them on YouTube. I haven’t done it yet.

Sound effect in ‘The Man in the White Suit’

The Man in the White Suit is a great comedy from Ealing Studios starring Alec Guinness. It is now available on Blu-ray disc. Guinness’s character invents a fabric that doesn’t wear out which infuriates both labor and ownership.

This thread is excellent.

Blobfest 2020: July 10-11

This year, Blobfest will be online because of the pandemic. It’s a great event and I encourage you to support it.

Here’s where you can get merchandise such as posters and shirts and also the schedule.

This has the schedule
This is one of the films that will be shown on a double bill during Blobfest. It’s very funny.
The Little Shop of Horrors is much more famous than A Bucket of Blood but they are very similar and a lot of the same people were involved in making both films.

Blobfest 2020: The Home Edition

Blobfest is an annual celebration of the 1958 film The Blob. It is held in Phoenixville, PA where most of the movie was filmed. The best part is that you can watch the film in the theater that is in the movie. I have been four times. They always show double bills of The Blob and a similar film from that era. Blobfest raises money for the Colonial Theatre and I encourage you to support it.

This year, Blobfest will be virtual.

The Criterion Collection has excellent Blu-Ray and DVD releases of the film.

Universal Studios logo

I saw this tweet and found other stuff on the logo on YouTube. The logo has changed over the years.