Bob Dylan - Don't Look Back (1965 Tour Deluxe Edition)
|
List Price: Our Price: $31.99 You Save: $17.96 (36%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $21.19 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Bob Dylan - Don't Look Back (1965 Tour Deluxe Edition)
Movie Review: Don't Stop Looking.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is probably a more true and revealing portrait of the world's greatest songwriter than any interview with Ed Bradley on Sixty Minutes could ever be. We see Dylan in his youth which seems an impossible eternity ago and he is already, by the time the film starts rolling, a massive phenom. The British press are tertiary characters in his life and they appear as both foils and fans.
The one thing that I would say most describes this documentary is the word "alive." It is a living, breathing document of what life was like for St. Dylan before he went electric and alienated all of the folkies. The black and white is artful and adds to Don't Look Back's importance.
We see Dylan as a boy and as a man. He labors over his lyrics while smoking and drinking the nights away with his friends. I had a good laugh when they showed the girls screaming over his presence. It's humorous to think of Bob as a sex symbol. He is accompanied by a giggling Donovan along with playful band mates and a hyper-vocalizing Joan Baez. Keep an eye on the left of your screen during the introduction and you'll see a distant Allen Ginsberg conversing to someone off-screen during Bob's card flopping "Subterrean Homesick Blues."
This movie is fresh after nearly forty years. I'm glad Pennebaker was there to record our hero in his glory.
Movie Review: Cultural change caught on film
Summary: 5 Stars
I last saw Don't Look Back when I was a kid. I've always like Dyaln's music and his importance in changing pop culture. 35 years had gone by since I saw the film. I bought the film on a weekend whim, figuring it would be entertaining, and perhaps a bit nostalgic.
The film is far more than just a candid, grainy black and white behind the scenes chronicle of Dylan's last acoustic tour in 1965. It was the birth of cinema verite. Don Pennebaker spoke at a film class I was in several years after the film came out, and described how he had a devised a system that used the quartz movements of the Acutron watches (one of the world's first electric watch movements) which were accurate to 1 second a month, and used them to sync film and sound recording independent of each other. This meant that film and sound no longer needed to be tethered to each other via cable to provide synced sound with images; and *that* allowed the filmmakers to be far less obstrusive than documentarians had been to that point. Most of the people in the movie have little awareness that they are being filmed, let alone filmed for posterity, and the results are wonderfully candid.
But most striking is observing Dylan's maturation as an adult and cultural icon over the course of the film. On his arrival in England, he's a bit feckless and precious. Clever and immature. Under the wing of Joan Baez, who at that point must have thought that she might be invited to share the tour with her young protege. But it's soon clear that Dyaln is the hippest person in any room, his appeal and intellectual depth transcending his entourage and every situation he enters. By the time, later in the film, that he has the famous encounter with Terry Ellis (the Science Student) and the man from Time magazine, he's a different person from the first scenes. Baez has disappeared with no explanation. Albert Grossman has moved to the background, after his great confrontation with the hotel manager earlier in the film. The Dylan at the end of the movie is sharper, more acerbic, and looks older... and it's just a few weeks later. Somewhere during this tour Dylan eschewed his folky roots (as seen in archival footage of him singing Pawn in the Game early in the film) and explodes as a genuine pop star... the man everyone wanted to be. Amazing.
Just as amazing is that when this film was made in 1965, Bob Dylan already had a substantive body of work, and had just turned electric (there's an early scene in the hotel listening to a test pressing of Maggie's Farm). He was just becoming the rock star Dylan that caused so much controversey at the time. And here it is 40 years and 30 albums later, and he's *still* discussed almost as much as he was then. I can't think of any other entertainer whose career has been as relevant for as long a time as he has. Amazing...
This film is a must for anyone who wants to understand how our music and culture took a sharp turn many years ago. Pennebaker's methods were a revolution in film making that caught a revolution in the making. Great stuff.
Movie Review: Legendary doesn't mean watchable
Summary: 2 Stars
I might've expected too much .I'd seen Monterey Pop , which is by the same director and liked the energy of that .I'd heard a lot about this 'legendary' film . Too much of it is too slow .
We already know Bob is hip - luckily there's some different aspects to the film , when the promoter is talking with TV stations negotiating a fee for Bob's appearance .
There is interrupted music making and it is made obvious Bob is a celebrity , but he spends most of the film behaving like an idiot . In a way , I suppose this is a 'puff piece' , something to make Bob seem hip to all the kids .
Bob is acting in this , so why not just watch something where we're sure he's acting in character ? Hang out for the DVD release of Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid .
Subtitles would have helped - a bargain basement release almost redeemed by the commentary .
A disappointment . Let the buyer aware - rent it first .
Movie Review: Essential On So Many Levels
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw "Don't Look Back" again the other day, my first time in a number of years. I actually was prompted to this after seeing the recent Bob Dylan interview on "60 Minutes" (to promote his equally astonishing memoir "Chronicles-Volume 1"). Were you as astonished by the "60 Minutes" piece as I was? In any event, "Don't Look Back" is essential on so many levels: first and foremost, it gives us a never-since equalled candid view at life (on the road) with Dylan. While it does contain a number of performances, "Don't Look Back" is not a concert movie. It's more a pre-concert movie than anything else, watching Dylan getting ready to perform in the "Green Door" and other performing halls' waiting rooms. The film also remains essential as a looking glass onto England, 1965, with its gritty, if not to say seemingly always gray outlook and feel to it.
Back to the "60 Minutes" interview. When I was watching it, it felt so familiar. Even though the interviews are separated by almost 40 years, Dylan played the "60 Minutes" interviewer in very much the same way he played the British journalists in 1965, although admittedly in a somewhat nice fashion now. Watch again the "interview" Dylan did with the reporter from "Time Magazine" towards the end of "Don't Look Back", it's the highlight of the movie for me.
The live performances in "Don't Look Back" are equally essential, if for no other reason that you are watching Dylan in Spring, 1965 (almost 40 years ago to the day!), a mere months before turning electric at the Newport Festival. From an audio perspective, the performances in "Don't Look Back" are very similar to the material covered in the 2 CD set "Dylan Live 1964", issued in Spring of 2004. The staying power of "Don't Look Back" 40 years later is proof that this movie is essential for any Dylan fan. Highly recommended!
Movie Review: A Parochial View of Bob Dylan...
Summary: 4 Stars
I'd give this documentary a solid B. There is some fantastic footage, great clips of Dylan writing and playing music, and interesting dialogue between him and Joan Baez. However, at times it is very hard to understand what the people in the documentary are saying. It is also incredibly frustrating to see Bob Dylan being such a jackass to the majority of people that he encounters throughout this film. I don't believe that this is necessarily a fair portrayal of the person he actually is- but maybe that's just me being naieve. He is opinionated, and animated, and this is surely evident in this film. I saw Bob Dylan recently in concert, and it's great to see what he once sounded and acted like live in the mid 60's, for better or worse. Recommended for "patient" Dylan fans.