Dylanology, 12/7.

"The reason why many Dylan fans fixate so strongly on his mid-60s career is that it passed by so quickly: between 1965, with the release of Bringing It All Back Home, and 1966, when his motorcycle accident took him off the road (he returned to touring eight years later), he released two more albums, Highway 61 Revisited... and Blonde on Blonde..., meanwhile touring to increasingly schizophrenic audiences." For Stop Smiling, Michael Helke surveys Early, Middle and Late Dylan via this year's avalanche of theatrical, DVD and CD releases.

"Celebrations of reinvention have come easily to poetry, fiction, music and dance but with much difficulty to the still costly art of moviemaking," writes Kent Jones in his piece on I'm Not There for the Nation. "The comparatively inexpensive nonnarrative films of Kenneth Anger and James Broughton aside, a very special temperament is required to follow in Whitman's footsteps with the expenditure of millions of dollars hanging over your head and a flock of smiling executives pecking away at you as you're trying to get your movie in the can. 'Rebel' or 'maverick' doesn't even begin to cover it. Only militant aesthetes need apply, and I can think of no better term to describe Todd Haynes."

The New York Times' AO Scott reviews The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963 - 1965: "It's a remarkably pure and powerful documentary, partly because it's so simple. The sound mix is crisp, the black-and-white photography is lovely, and the songs, above all, can be heard in all their earnest, enigmatic glory, performed by an artist whose gifts are at once mysterious and self-evident."

Posted by dwhudson at December 7, 2007 9:46 AM