Homing in on Dylan's legacy
By Terry Lawson
Detroit Free Press
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In Bob Dylan terms, there has never been anything like the explosive "No Direction Home" (Paramount). It's an examination of the camera-shy Dylan's transformation from a Woody Guthrie-inspired folksinger to the composer-performer who, as the cliche goes, changed the face of rock 'n' roll in 1965 with one incendiary song, "Like a Rolling Stone," and three startling LPs of musical genius: "Bringing It All Back Home," "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde."
The film was directed by Martin Scorsese, and the story is told primarily by Dylan, a narrative pieced together from hours of interviews conducted by Dylan's manager and archive curator, Jeff Rosen. He and Dylan supplied Scorsese with the footage — some professionally shot, some gleaned from private collectors and some culled from Dylan's home movies.
The film, which premiered last week at the Toronto International Film Festival, will make its general public debut Monday and Tuesday as part of the PBS "American Masters" series, in two parts that run a little less than four hours.
But the DVD is longer yet, primarily because it includes complete performances of songs that are only sampled in the documentary.
These include:
For Dylanophiles, this might be best compared to a TV special in which the contents of the Holy Grail are displayed for the first time. For casual or simply less obsessed admirers, "No Direction Home" will be illuminating.
'NAKED'
"Naked," released on DVD 12 years after its movie debut as part of the selective Criterion Collection, still stands as the most memorable and provocative film by English director Mike Leigh. Considering that Leigh would go on to make the four-star "Secrets & Lies" (1996), "Topsy-Turvy" (1999), "All or Nothing" (2002) and last year's Oscar-nominated "Vera Drake," that is saying a lot.
We meet Johnny, played by David Thewlis as a man for whom intense is too mild a description. He unleashes some portion of his rage during furtive sex with a woman in an alley in northern England. She interprets this aggression as rape, and he is soon on the run from retribution by her family.
He wanders the streets of London, talking to himself or railing at anyone within earshot, ending up in the flat of an old girlfriend and in the bed of her roommate (the late, sadly unrecognized Katrin Cartlidge).
The DVD commentary sheds enormous light on Leigh's approach to filmmaking, in which the script is culled from the improvisations of the actors.
Other extras include an informative interview with Leigh and a new introduction by Neal LaBute, the director whose attitude about the human condition would have the endorsement of Johnny.
TV TRIUMPHS
Two of last year's most-lauded new TV series have their initial episodes boxed this week. Everyone knows something of "Desperate Housewives — The Complete First Season" (Touchstone), considering that the satiric soap opera/mystery about the shady goings-on around suburban Wisteria Lane was an instant sensation and recent Emmy winner.
"Battlestar Galactica — Season One" (Universal), shown on the Sci-Fi Channel, is a different story.
The title would lead most people who were around in the 1970s to imagine this is simply an updated version of the network sci-fi series inspired by "Star Trek" and the success of the "Star Wars" films.
But its intelligent writing and excellent cast — headed by Mary McDonnell as the president of the refugee nation and Edward James Olmos as the ship's captain — put it in the same league as "Star Trek: The New Generation."
Both this and the "Desperate Housewives" package are chockablock with commentaries and other extras.
COPPOLA CASTING
1983's "The Outsiders" marked the beginning of a downward spiral from which "Godfather" director Francis Ford Coppola never recovered.
But a two-DVD set called "The Complete Novel" (Warner), using outtakes to expand by 20 minutes his adaptation of the young readers' novel by S.E. Hinton — about some good greasers and their ongoing conflict with pre-preppies in the Midwest of the 1950s — does improve on the original.
And no one can say Coppola can't cast: Appearing in their first roles of any significance are Tom Cruise, C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze and Rob Lowe, in an ensemble that also includes the young Matt Dillon and Diane Lane and the ageless Tom Waits.
