Bob Dylan - 1975-1981 Rolling Thunder and The Gospel Years
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Jerry Wexler, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Regina McCrary, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Scarlet RiveraBrand: Music Video Dist
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 240 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-04-04
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Mvd Visual
Movie Reviews of Bob Dylan - 1975-1981 Rolling Thunder and The Gospel Years
Movie Review: A very valuable work for serious Dylan students
Summary: 5 Stars
Well, I've seen all 5 hours on both discs, and all I can say is WOW. The work Joel Gilbert put into it is obvious, and although it is an unauthorized biography and therefore Gilbert didn't have access to the clips from Dylan's performances that the Scorsese biography displays, it will undoubtedly become definitive source material for any serious future researcher of Dylan's life and work during this period.
It starts off somewhat slowly, but as the DVD leaves the Rolling Thunder era and enters the Gospel phase you begin to realize what a full sense of what was happening in Dylan's life is being cumulatively created. The Gospel section really tells a very credible story, maybe because the interviewees are generally more vibrant personalities than the ones in the Rolling Thunder section. Regina McCrary was a surprisingly good interviewee, and Jerry Wexler and Joel Selvin are hoots! All their segments were great fun to watch. Even A.J. Weberman ranting away toward the end was entertaining, although what he was saying about the content of the songs didn't make any sense to me :-) Dwyer, Kasha and Glaser all filled important backgrounder roles, although I wished Kasha and Dwyer had spoken much more about their personal encounters with Bob and somewhat less about generic born-again Christian themes. Yet it's also important for the documentary to address those themes, because they help explain Dylan's behavior and his effect on those around him. The piece where Glaser describes his conversation about Dylan with Bill Graham, and the one where Selvin talks about his wife getting a phone call from Dylan, are both gems. Spooner Oldham is not as scintillating a personality in his interview as some of the others. But I appreciated his being in there to give the perspective "from the band".
I don't mean any of the foregoing comments to take away from the Rolling Thunder section, which is also very good. But Dylan's life is like a puzzle, and until there are enough pieces put together you don't get the sense of seeing the whole thing. The sense you get from the Rolling Thunder piece is of Dylan SEARCHING. He's getting involved with Hurricane Carter, trying out all these "roles" on stage, filming everything, bringing people into and out of the show (Ramblin' Jack Elliott's disappointment at the way he was treated before the '76 RTR tour really came through), confronting Joan Baez vs. Sara (which I'm surprised there were not more comments about from the other interviewees), making -- or not making -- the chaotic band arrangements that Rob Stoner describes so well, etc. I thought there was probably a little too much Hurricane Carter in there, but he's a very good interviewee. Claudia Levy was fascinating to me; watching her made me wish Gilbert had been able to interview her husband Jacques. Comparing her versions of reality to those of Ramblin' Jack and Stoner and Scarlett Rivera really made the narrative come alive. Scarlett Rivera, by the way, is a very interesting interviewee in her own right. But the sense you get out of the Gospel section is of Dylan FINDING ... which then gives that section a kind of clarity that by its very nature can't be achieved in the Rolling Thunder section, where he's still searching.
The extensive use of the animated graphics was an innovative attempt to break up the "talking-head" monontony. At times I thought there were too many of them, vs. still shots of Dylan doing the shows, or still shots of the interviewee back at the time being discussed, which a more conventional documentary would have used. But the graphics always were relevant to the discussion in the interviews. The changing of the camera angles on the interviews and switching from color to B&W was done quite professionally. Gilbert has excellent interviewing skills as well. How he got these folks to say some of the things they said was rather incredible. Finally, I really liked the menus - the way the scene selection menu was put together with the turning pages was visually excellent. I know something about DVD authoring, and I know stuff like that takes a lot of extra work to make it look as good as it does on this disc set.
Summary of Bob Dylan - 1975-1981 Rolling Thunder and The Gospel Years
Director & Producer Joel Gilbert (Bob Dylan 1966 World Tour The Home Movies, 2003 and Bob Dylan World Tours 1966-1974Through the Camera of Barry Feinstein, 2005) weaves the story of this monumental period of Dylans life and music through revealing insiderSimilar DVD Movies
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