I'm Not There , (Dylan)

[Dennis]

quote:Fikk denne linken av en kompis om filmen om Bob Dylan. Moro er det, mannen fortjener en film, men valget av hovedrollen var dog noe spesiell! []

http://www.kjendis.no/2007/08/23/509840.html

Haaland

Jo, du. Og hun er ikke den énenste...
Offisiell trailer:  http://youtube.com/watch?v=nTKswiQVh8Y

SEKS Dylan'er kan bli i overkant, sånn rent filmmessig, spør du meg. Men forstår jo tanken bak...

Står forsåvidt en del om I'm not there i en herværende Dylanskule [8D]

[Asbjørn]

Je gjorde det IGJEN...

Sorry, Dennis... Skulle quote deg, ikke editere...

Mååå skjerpe...  [B)][B)][B)][B)]

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
silhouetted by the sea
B.Dylan

[Dennis]

No problemo! Moderator-rollen bærer med seg enkelte frynsegoder, i suppose. []

Ja, beklager, tenkte ikke over at det allerede var diskutert der. Artig forsøk på filmskaping forresten. Gleder meg til den dagen Grete Kausland (må hun bli frisk) skal spille James Hetfield!

- Dennis

"Jeg har spilt på et skikkelig United, LEEDS UNITED." - Alf Inge Haaland

[Budda]

Et spørsmål: Er det flere som skal spille Bob Dylan? Synes jeg så blant annet Cate Blanchett som Bob Dylan. Hvorfor skal en kvinne spille en mann

[Dennis]

quote:Originally posted by Budda

Et spørsmål: Er det flere som skal spille Bob Dylan? Synes jeg så blant annet Cate Blanchett som Bob Dylan. Hvorfor skal en kvinne spille en mann

Likestilling, Budda! []

- Dennis

"Jeg har spilt på et skikkelig United, LEEDS UNITED." - Alf Inge Haaland

[Budda]

quote:Originally posted by Mr Kaizer

quote:Originally posted by Budda

Et spørsmål: Er det flere som skal spille Bob Dylan? Synes jeg så blant annet Cate Blanchett som Bob Dylan. Hvorfor skal en kvinne spille en mann

Likestilling, Budda! []

- Dennis

"Jeg har spilt på et skikkelig United, LEEDS UNITED." - Alf Inge Haaland

Hehe, er skeptisk. Synes det så unaturlig ut. Ser at det er ei kvinne

[Asbjørn]

quote:Originally posted by Budda

Et spørsmål: Er det flere som skal spille Bob Dylan? Synes jeg så blant annet Cate Blanchett som Bob Dylan. Hvorfor skal en kvinne spille en mann

Pointen er at Dylan har hatt så vidt forskjellige "faser", uncool folkartist aleine med sin gitar, klodens kuleste type med band som spiller verdens til da mest støyende musikk, country laidback da verden fulgte etter Dylan inn i det psykedelske, gospel-Dylan osv...

Derfor skal  6 ulike skuespillere spille han, hver i sin fase. De mest spesielle er en mørkhudet 13-årig gutt og 38-årige Cate (som Dylan 25 år gammel).

Dvs, egentlig spiller hun ikke Dylan:
'

quote:She added: "The worst thing an actor can do is fall in love with someone they're about to portray, but I'm not playing him - my character is called Jude.

...sier hun etter at:

quote:Blanchett told the Guardian: "I have always loved his (Dylan) music, but I'm terrified about this because I am besotted".

"I watched the press conference he gave in San Francisco in 1965, or whenever it was, and just think, 'I love you'.

Cate - og Bob

Filmen handler dog om:
'I'm Not There' will look at Dylan's early days as a struggling folk-singer, his rise to the forefront of the early '60s folk scene, the controversial switch to rock, the motorcycle accident and his subsequent retreat from public view.

As well as his latter day de-emphasis of recording and his concentration on the concert series known as the Never Ending Tour.


Richard Gere/Heath Ledger

Regissøren har forsåvidt store planer med Cate:

quote:He said he also planned to position Ms. Blanchett, who plays Mr. Dylan during his “Blonde on Blonde” phase, for an Oscar. (Mr. Bale corresponds to “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” Mr. Ledger to “John Wesley Harding.”)

...men noen-av-oss har allerede noen "tvilsomme" filmopplevelser med Bob, og selv om han selv ikke skal spille (men uvanlig nok har han bifalt dette forsøket...) er jeg stygt redd den blir for vanskelig tilgjengelig for folk...



Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
silhouetted by the sea
B.Dylan

[Dennis]

Skulle nesten tru du likte fyren, Asbjørn, sånn som du tar deg bry til å forklare [:I]

- Dennis

"Jeg har spilt på et skikkelig United, LEEDS UNITED." - Alf Inge Haaland

[Asbjørn]

quote:Originally posted by Mr Kaizer
sånn som du tar deg bry til å forklare [:I]

Ække mye bry, vettu [)]

The Observer:
The many sides of Dylan

In a new biopic, six actors - including Cate Blanchett - portray aspects of the superstar's life

Paul Harris in New York
Sunday August 26, 2007
The Observer


In a Hollywood with a reputation for liking things safe and bankable, a bizarrely cast film about the life of one of the most controversial singers of all time, opening in just four cinemas in all of America, would seem unlikely to be at the centre of the biggest Oscar buzz of the year.
Yet I'm Not There - a biopic about Bob Dylan being released in November - is doing exactly that. There is nothing normal about the movie, which delves into the fascinating life of the singer-songwriter and promises to be one of the strangest films of the decade.

It boasts six actors playing Dylan, including a woman and a black boy, so its opening marketing campaign was hardly likely to be conventional. But by any standards, opening in only four cinemas is remarkable. Usually that means that a studio thinks its movie might be a disaster, yet I'm Not There has generated nothing but good news.
Industry figures have been surprised by the move. 'It depends on the film. Sometimes you just start small and build on word of mouth,' said Karen Cooper, director of Manhattan's acclaimed arts cinema Film Forum, which is one of two New York cinemas that will screen the film. The other two are in Los Angeles.

The film is backed by the Weinstein Company, whose founder, Harvey Weinstein, has not been shy of touting the work, despite planning its slow release. He has admitted wanting to generate a slow burn of reaction before taking the film national.

'I'm going to play every major city in the United States with this movie,' he said last week. 'I'll play 100 cities at least.'

It is a tactic that has worked before. When Weinstein opened Good Will Hunting he put it in just seven cinemas. That film went on to make Matt Damon and Ben Affleck famous and clocked up $140m (£70m) at the box office. It seems something similar is being tried with I'm Not There. Certainly those few who have seen the film praise its quality.

'It leaps off the screen. The director has created something here that is just so unusual,' said Cooper.

Director Todd Haynes has come up with one of the most surreal biopics of a musician ever. Though the genre has had huge success recently - with movies such as Ray and Walk the Line - this film is on a wholly different plane.

Instead of telling the straight story of Dylan's life, Haynes has opted to split the movie into separate chunks, each one dealing symbolically with a stage of Dylan's career. In each bit of the film Dylan is played by a character who represents what he stands for rather than an actual human being.

Which is why the greatest buzz around the project centres on Dylan's portrayal by Australian actress Cate Blanchett.

'Blanchett's performance as the mid-Sixties Dylan is amazing,' said Cooper. Weinstein agrees: 'If Cate Blanchett doesn't get nominated [for an Oscar] I'll shoot myself.'

But Blanchett, looking eerily like Dylan, shares the role with other A-listers. Richard Gere plays the Seventies Dylan as a cowboy; Christian Bale plays him as he emerges into fame in the early Sixties; Australian actor Heath Ledger plays him as his music took an overtly Christian turn; British actor Ben Whishaw plays a Dylan fused with the 19th-century poet Arthur Rimbaud. The unknown Dylan who arrived in New York in 1961 is played by Marcus Carl Franklin, a black child actor.

'If they pull it off, then I think it will work. It seems a unique way of looking at him, and that is suitable because he is a unique artist,' said Caroline Schwarz, co-director of the Bob Dylan Fan Club. Though Dylan himself gave the film his blessing, he had no input in it. Perhaps he thought that having six actors playing him was enough.







Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
silhouetted by the sea
B.Dylan

[lojosang]

Da vil undertegnede også prøve seg på å komme med ukjent Dylan-kunnskap til en ekspert.

Skye-based poet Rody Gorman has converted the lyrics of some of Bob Dylan?s classic songs into Gaelic. 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' into 'Cnogadh anns an Speur', 'All Along The Watchtower' into 'Shuas mun Chnoc-fhaire' and 'If You See Her, Say Hello' into 'Ma Thachras tu Oirre Fhein'.

http://www.footstompin.com/forum?threadid=90986

Trenge vel for fakerten  ikkje ha nåken signatur heller eg, vel! []

[Asbjørn]

...men det var denne filmen da (I'm Not There)

quote:"I`m Not There" (tittelen er for øvrig navnet på en aldri egentlig utgitt låt fra Dylans navngjetne "The Basement Tapes") kommer ventelig på kino i Norge i januar eller februar neste år.

Den har blitt forhåndsvist i Venezia i disse dager...

http://www1.vg.no/film/artikkel.php?artid=161666

Richard Gere har noen betraktninger:

quote:- Kjenner du Dylan selv?

- Jeg har møtt ham noen ganger; vi er på vennlig fot, uten at jeg kan si vi er venner. På den andre side har jeg et inngående kjenneskap til låtene hans. Sangene hans har fulgt meg tett i 45 år, og har betydd enormt mye for meg. Bob er unik, en kjempe langt over alle oss andre. Jeg er skråsikker på at om 200 - 300 år vil hans verk fortsatt leve. Mens de fleste andre kunstnere fra vår tid vil være glemt. Det mest utrolige er at han som type - eller typer - var noe helt arketypisk fra den aller første tiden.

- Hva er ditt personlige inntrykk av ham?

- En meget vennlig mann, nysgjerrig på livet og lett å ha med å gjøre. Jeg har sett og vært sammen med ham i en del sammenhenger - også som artist. Det er åpenbart at han har en stor og gjennomført glede av selv å bringe sine sanger til et publikum, og ta dem med på sin egen reise i sitt eget univers.

quote:- Ser du ham klarere nå, enn før filmingen?

- Under forarbeide til filmen gjorde jeg en masse research. Og det utfylte nok en del bilde jeg ellers har hatt etter å ha lyttet til ham i så mange år. Den mest interessant og utfordrende rollen hadde dog Cate Blachett.

- Ã... velge en kvinne å fremstille Dylan akkurat i perioden midt på 60-tallet er egentlig genial. Sammen med den dramatiske endringen i kropp og sinn han gikk gjennom, kom tydelige androgyne sider frem ved Dylan, som Cate helt mesterlig fremstiller.

- Kan han tolkes i hjel?

- Utvilsomt. Og helt sikkert ikke. Det finnes et berømt radiointervju, der Studs Therkel vil ha ham til å konkretisere "A Hard Rain`s Gonna Fall"; om ikke atomnedfall var forferdelige greier. Jo, mente Dylan, men sangen handler ikke om atomnedfall. Hva da? Hard Rain!

Bob Dylan er vår største poet, en mann som åpenbart burde hatt Nobelprisen i litteratur for lenge siden. Men den får han vel aldri, til det er han alt for populær, sier Richard Gere.

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
silhouetted by the sea
B.Dylan

[Dennis]

Du vet det sikkert, Asbjørn, men NRK2 sender i kveld en Martin Scorcese-lagd dokumentar i tre deler om Bob Dylan. Første del sendes 22.50 i kveld.

- Dennis

[Asbjørn]

quote:Originally posted by Mr Kaizer

Du vet det sikkert, Asbjørn, men NRK2 sender i kveld en Martin Scorcese-lagd dokumentar i tre deler om Bob Dylan. Første del sendes 22.50 i kveld.

Jepps. Den er tidvis faktisk OK []  (bare spør Håvard []).
Første del er interessant også fordi den gir et bredt bilde av amerikanske artister anno 1955-60, mange artige innslag der ja.

quote:No Direction Home er historien om hvordan Robert Zimmermann fra Minnesota ble hele verdens Bob Dylan. Ikonet og etter hvert legenden Bob Dylan. Dette er essensiell kulturhistorie og en dokumentar om en av de viktigste bidragsyterne i amerikansk kultur i etterkrigstiden. Dokumentaren tar for seg perioden frem til 1966 â€" og har fortjent nok høstet lysende kritikker fra et samlet og lamslått kritikerkorps. For dette er den definitive dokumentaren om Bob Dylan.
Underveis i filmen blir det sagt, fra en som stod han veldig nær (tror det var Joan Baez), at Bob Dylan var - og er - et komplekst menneske som det er vanskelig å forstå og bli ordentlig kjent med. Jeg sitter igjen med det samme bildet, selv etter å ha sett Martin Scorsese sin tre og en halv time lange forseggjorte og grundige dokumentar. Jeg ble litt klokere, men kanskje ikke så mye som jeg håpet. Men det er ikke Scorsese sin feil â€" han har gjort hva han kan, og det er ikke rent lite. Saken er at Bob Dylan snakker sjelden i klartekst, verken i arkivklippene fra 60-tallet eller i det ferske intervjuet som er gjort spesifikt for denne filmen. Han velger isteden å formidle sine meninger gjennom sine tekster, altså låtene. Og det er det. Stort sett.

Scorsese har en interessant tilnærming. Han har først fokus på Dylans inspirasjonskilder og dveler en del ved den amerikanske musikkulturen, således handler filmen om mer enn bare Dylan. Woody Guthrie står spesielt sentralt i første del. Dylan kommenterer begivenheter fra sin oppvekst i Minnesota og hele veien frem til filmen avslutter med turneen i England i 1966.

Scorsese bruker veldig lite tid på utviklingen av, og de prosesser og ideer som lå bak, album og låter. Isteden settes Dylans bidrag i en sosial-historisk kontekst. Dylan er imidlertid hele tiden reservert i forhold til å redegjøre for meningsinnholdet i sine tekster og legger aldri skjul på at det er musikken som hele tiden har vært hans drivkraft. Han har aldri vært spesielt politisk eller sosialt motivert. Men det er selvsagt ikke er til å komme bort i fra at han ble sin generasjons protestsanger, og dette blir også behandlet inngående. Det samme blir hans overgang fra protestsanger til det å bli en mer eksperimentell musiker â€" med reaksjoner og synspunkter både fra sitt publikum og han selv.

Bob Dylan har aldri vært noe lettfattelig intervjuobjekt. Scorsese har likevel overtalt ham til å gjennomføre et nytt og eksklusivt intervju til denne dokumentaren (ifølge IMDb møttes faktisk aldri Dylan og Scorsese!). Men selv om det nye intervjuet sjeldent får frem mye nytt og spennende, bidrar det likevel til at dokumentaren får en retrospektiv dimensjon, noe som helt klart beriker den.

Likevel vil jeg påstå at de mange arkivklippene, fra konserter, intervjuer og ikke minst opptak foretatt backstage, er det mest interessante. De ferske intervjuene, med de som stod Dylan nærmest i denne perioden, fremstår selvsagt også som en uvurderlig del av helheten. Mange fascinerende historier, meninger og syn knyttet til Dylan.

Scorsese har fått boltre seg fritt i et nedstøvet arkivmateriale som aldri før er blitt vist offentligheten. Kombinert med intervjuer av nyere dato, har han redigert denne dokumentaren på en aldeles briljant måte.

Dokumentaren byr selvfølgelig også på Dylan-musikk, men nesten overraskende lite, og det kunne kanskje vært mer? Jeg mener likevel å erindre at man får høre store deler av blant annet Like a Rolling Stone, Mr. Tambourine Man, Subterranean Homesick Blues, Maggie's Farm, Blowin' in the Wind… På DVDen er det selvsagt flere live-opptak!

Dette er kort sagt et must for fans av Bob Dylan â€" og det er nok også den målgruppen som dette er mest matnyttig for. Likevel vil filmen også fungere som en meget god introduksjon til fenomenet Bob Dylan â€" til de som er på begynnerstadiet, men ønsker å bli kjent med legenden. Og det burde de aller, aller fleste.

For ordens skyld, mitt forhold til Dylan er at jeg eier 5 album (som jeg har hørt mye på) og liker musikken svært godt. Jeg er nok mer musikkinteressert enn særskilt Dylan-fan, så om du sitter i samme båt som meg, er det overhengende fare for at også du vil like dette!

No Direction Home er rett og slett en mesterlig film. Ikke rart, ettersom den er laget av en mester innen sitt fag â€" og handler om en mester innen sitt fag.

There's a woman by the river
With some fine young handsome man
He's dressed up like a squire
Bootlegged whiskey in his hand

B.Dylan

[Asbjørn]

Når filmen (I'm Not There) blir anmeldt i Toronto (nok en forhåndsvisning), skjer akkurat som jeg fryktet... Filmen blir ansett som vanskelig tilgjengelig. ...men fortsatt skamroses Cate Blancelett...

REVIEW: I'M NOT THERE
Bob Dylan movie a rolling shambles




Todd Haynes' noble failure I'm Not There is missing something, and it's not his elusive subject Bob Dylan, whose presence is felt through song, spirit and one parting glimpse.

It's the single word "still" that should have been added to the title.

Because in seeking to explore and understand the enduring mythos surrounding pop culture's most mercurial and reluctant icon, Haynes (Far From Heaven) has fallen into the same tar pit that has claimed other reckless adventurers, Dylan included.

The landscape is littered with botched Dylan movies, the ones that attempt anything more than a simple recitation of the historical facts. Masked and Anonymous, Renaldo and Clara and Eat the Document were all swallowed whole by the inherent folly of attempting to impose some kind of poetic structure on a man whose career has been spent denying his poetry and dodging his image.

As a character says of Dylan in I'm Not There, which has its North American premiere today at the Toronto International Film Festival: "Even (his) ghost was more than one person."

Haynes at least realizes the impossible task he has set himself. Recognizing the many faces of the "original vagabond," to use Joan Baez's bittersweet name for her former lover and rival, Haynes has assigned the role not to one Dylan lookalike, but rather to six actors of varying resemblance, gender and impact: Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Ben Wishaw and Marcus Carl Franklin.

They pop up at various points in this jumbled narrative, which begins with the most shrouded of Dylan's many legends: his 1966 motorcycle crash, which marked a clear divide between his protest folk and rock of the tumultuous early 1960s, and his later evolution into a simple "song and dance man," as he would disingenuously call himself.

Haynes posits a very different outcome to that crash, which he uses as poetic license to drift in and out of the official Dylan story, or what passes as such, all of it set to the man's evergreen songs.

Most of the usual biographical touchstones are there: the early Woody Guthrie influences, the romance and rivalry with Baez on the protest song trail, the electric "sellout" at Newport, the retreat to country simplicity after the motorcycle crash, his fractious marriage to former Playboy bunny Sara Lownds (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg).

But how does it feeeel? Like a rolling shambles, most of it. The multi-actor conceit quickly gets old, and it is bound to confuse anyone not immersed in Dylan lore, especially since Haynes assigns the various characters names other than "Bob Dylan." At the same time, the director risks losing the attention of fans who seek genuine insights.

Haynes brings very few new ideas to the table, apart from obvious appreciation for a fellow rule-breaker. But his most controversial casting decision is the film's one stroke of genius.

In assigning Cate Blanchett the most important time period in I'm Not There, the mid-1960s heyday when a reluctant Dylan was being hailed as the voice of a generation, Haynes recognizes Dylan's feminine features and his disconnection from the male-dominated rock fraternity, where noise often stomps intellect into submission.

Blanchett looks and sounds like Dylan, a tribute to her chameleon-like ability to inhabit any persona she puts her considerable talents to.

Amongst the five men who also mimic Dylan, Christian Bale comes closest to capturing him at his most thoughtful and sensitive. Bale's previous experience with Haynes, as the star of his 1998 glam-rock celebration Velvet Goldmine, no doubt help prepare him for this project.

Most puzzling about I'm Not There is the segment in which a bespectacled and fuzzy-faced Richard Gere plays Dylan in his John Wesley Harding/The Basement Tapes/Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid period, circa 1967-75. Whatever Haynes and Gere had in mind for this muddled interlude resists all rational thought. It fails even as comic relief.

In the end, I'm Not There is a battle between two iconoclasts, Dylan and Haynes, with neither of them coming out the better for the test. The quixotic quest to define the indefinable icon awaits future fools and dreamers.





There's a woman by the river
With some fine young handsome man
He's dressed up like a squire
Bootlegged whiskey in his hand

B.Dylan

[Asbjørn]

...men se der []

Believe the Blanchett hype on 'I'm Not There'

Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream" is clearly one of the worst films the auteur has made in years.  

The dialog is atrocious. Scene after scene feels like a bad "Saturday Night Live" skit. Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor must have been wondering what they were getting into after signing on to this one.  

Luckily for the fortunes of the Weinstein Co., they screened a much better movie immediately after: Todd Haynes' "I'm Not There."

In this accomplished and fascinating look at the life of Bob Dylan -- as played by six different actors, including Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger -- the best "Dylans," by far, are the two Aussies.

Under the pseudonym "Jude," Blanchett plays Dylan as he travels with his band to London in the early '60s. It is there that the singer gets flack from both fans and critics for changing his sound.

This portion of the film, which is intercut with the five other story-lines, is inspired by the Beatles' 1964 film "A Hard Day's Night." It is hands-down the most entertaining and compelling portion of the picture.

The film's outspoken distributor, Harvey Weinstein, had relentlessly pumped up Blanchett before the "I'm Not There" premiere at the Venice Film Festival. But this time, it wasn't just Harvey bluster -- she is phenomenal.

At times you completely forget it's the same actor who was parading around on screen a few days earlier as the Queen of England in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" or that a woman is so believably playing a male role (really).

And as for Oscar? Her chances are probably better in the best supporting actress race than best actress, but the potential for a nod and a win are there.


Photo: (Top) Richard Gere, director Todd Haynes, and Heath Ledger pose at a photo session to present the movie "I'm Not There" at the Venice Film Festival in Venice on Sept. 4, 2007. (Bottom) Cate Blanchett arrives for the gala of 'Elizabeth The Golden Age' during the the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto Sunday, Sept. 9, 2007.




As for Ledger, he portrays a Dylan infatuated with the fame of making movies concurrent with the breakdown of his marriage.  

Ledger doesn't try to mimic Dylan like co-Dylan Christian Bale does, but he completely conveys the frustration between his personal and professional lives during the early '70s.

It's another nice turn in Ledger's growing body of excellent work.







There's a woman by the river
With some fine young handsome man
He's dressed up like a squire
Bootlegged whiskey in his hand

B.Dylan

[Asbjørn]

'I'm Not There' digs deep

Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery directly after seeing "I'm Not There."



A head-spinning take on the many personas presented by the work of Bob Dylan, the latest film from director Todd Haynes is a dense, dizzying, multifaceted way of approaching the life and meaning of an artist, and pretty great whether you're a dedicated Dylanologist or not.

While his glam-rock gloss "Velvet Goldmine" was undone by a heavy-handed conceptual nod to "Citizen Kane," here Haynes is able to (almost) always keep all the plates spinning. At first, as scenes shift from one actor to another portraying Dylan in his various guises, it seems perhaps a little too on-the-nose. (A little too "Across the Universe" might be more like it, but that's another story.)

Slowly -- especially as it crosses between the domestic dramas of Heath Ledger (think "Blood on the Tracks"), the speed-freak op-art hep-cat jive of Cate Blanchett (shades of "Blonde on Blonde" and the film "Don't Look Back") and Richard Gere's outlaw in exile (a la "The Basement Tapes" and Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," for which Dylan did the music and appeared as a character notably named Alias) -- the film accumulates a strange, galloping momentum, moving faster and faster and drawing the audience along.

And that's leaving out the rambling troubadour and the born-again preacher.

As much as people will talk of Blanchett, Ledger, Gere and Christian Bale, it should be noted that there are three other fine performances in the film.

Julianne Moore plays a Joan Baez protest type and Michelle Williams an Edie Sedgwick ingenue, and Charlotte Gainsbourg appears as a version of Dylan's ex-wife Sara Lowndes, known to many as the "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands."

There's also a fun, quick cameo form Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, again showing the way in which Haynes wisely opens up "I'm Not there" to more than just empty "you had to be there, man" nostalgia-tripping. (The conception and portrayal of the 1960s in the Beatles-derived "Across the Universe," on the other hand, is single-minded and deadly dull, like reading Rolling Stone in the '80s.)

Gainsbourg's performance in particular does a great deal toward rooting "I'm Not There" in something with more emotional resonance than just recognizing the references. Williams has a danger and energy really hinted at only by the Sedgwick bio-pic "Factory Girl," whereas Moore has the slightly rueful recollections of Baez down cold.

If anything, it's a shame that Haynes couldn't somehow have kept moving forward, as for me the most recent Dylan persona -- that of a dustbowl riverboat gambler -- is a personal favorite.

The theme of reinvention has been a constant one in Dylan's work, and Haynes was shrewd to pick up on it as a thread to hang his story together with. In Martin Scorsese's documentary "No Direction Home," Dylan himself talks of wanting to exist in a constant state of "becoming," and in his book "Chronicles: Volume 1" he mentions how while writing the protest music that would originally make his legend in the 1960s he was largely reading and thinking about the Civil War.

Or, as he says on the "Live 1964" CD, "I've got my Bob Dylan mask on. I'm masquerading." -- Mark Olsen




There's a woman by the river
With some fine young handsome man
He's dressed up like a squire
Bootlegged whiskey in his hand

B.Dylan

[Asbjørn]

'I'm Not There' shows the many faces of Bob Dylan


TORONTO, Ontario (AP) -- Bob Dylan is not at the Toronto International Film Festival. But six shades of Dylan are present with "I'm Not There," a swirling, shifting ramble through the many lives of one of the most enigmatic figures in music history.


Cate Blanchett is one of the many actors portraying Bob Dylan in the film "I'm Not There."

Different actors -- including Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett -- play incarnations of Dylan at various phases of his public and private life.

Among the personas: an 11-year-old black boy (Marcus Carl Franklin) riding the rails with a guitar and calling himself Woody Guthrie, Dylan's early inspiration; a surrealist sage called Arthur (Ben Whishaw) speaking in symbolic riddles, representing Dylan's fascination with poet Arthur Rimbaud; and old coot Billy the Kid (Gere) traveling the Old West in self-imposed retirement from the modern world, a parallel to Dylan's rootsy sojourn as a reclusive country squire around Woodstock, New York, where he hung with the Band and recorded "The Basement Tapes."

Weird and wild as it is, Dylan liked the concept and gave co-writer-director Todd Haynes the rarest of gifts: the rights to use his music in the film, both in his own versions and many covers.

"I still really can't believe it, given who he is and how ornery he can be and how much he doesn't want people to continue to do this to him," Haynes said in an interview at the Toronto festival, where "I'm Not There" played in advance of its November theatrical release.

Haynes, whose films include "Safe" and "Velvet Goldmine," was a Dylan fan as a teen but had not listened much to his music again until his late 30s, when he began the screenplay for his 2002 drama "Far From Heaven."

As he burrowed back into the music, Haynes began reading biographies of Dylan and was struck by the man's transformations.

"The thing I just kept hearing from every account of Dylan was about this life of serial change, in a way far more profound to a culture than David Bowie's different chameleonlike changes or Madonna's that would come decades later. These changes had deep intellectual, cultural, almost physical effects on Dylan's audience," Haynes said.

"He undermines the things you count on, your touchstones. He shakes up the things that people used to build their own selves on. Every time you grab on to him, he's somewhere else. I thought the only way to do anything in a film about him would be to dramatize that fact, to use that as the sort of principle to organize the narrative, or many narratives."

So the formative Dylan is a black kid tramping about the country, insisting he's Guthrie, until a kindly woman tells him, "Live your own time, child. Sing about your own time."

Bale plays a figure named Jack Rollins, exploding onto the folk scene doing early Dylan anthems such as "The Times They Are A-Changin'," then turning his back on his career and re-emerging years later as a singing pastor, representing Dylan's born-again Christian era.

Ledger's a '60s movie star named Robbie Clark who rose to fame playing folk god Rollins, with the actor's fractious personal life and failed marriage tracing Dylan's own faults and missteps.

"It's not a puff piece on Bob Dylan," Haynes said. "There's different characters, and they can be really nasty, misogynistic, and again, because there's no final say, there's no single winner."

Though played by a woman, the musician who goes electric in the mid-1960s presents the closest parallel to the real Dylan, with Blanchett delivering a remarkable personification of Dylan's look and mannerisms as he is challenged by critics and scorned by once-adoring fans.

Blanchett's Jude Quinn, an acoustic hero to folk devotees, plugs in at a New England music fest just as Dylan did at Newport, shocking and even enraging his audience. "I'm Not There" handles the slap in the face to fans with an opening salvo that features Jude and his band blasting the audience not with electric guitars, but machine guns.

Later, a legendary 1966 Dylan show in Britain is recreated faithfully, with a fan shouting "Judas!" Jude responds just as Dylan did, exclaiming, "I don't believe you!"

From the start, Haynes had planned the gender switch for that period of Dylan's life.

"It was really smart of Todd to cast a woman to play it, because I think it increases that break," Blanchett said. "The distance, the enigma of Dylan and the performer.

"It's very mysterious and incredibly poetic, and if the audience is expecting a straight narrative, then they're going to be surprised. It's kind of true in a way to his music, which is what Todd really tried to do."
Haynes has yet to meet Dylan, having worked with him only through intermediaries. Dylan also has not seen the film, which Haynes is sending to him.

"I can't wait. I'm really excited about him seeing it," Haynes said. "Maybe I'm being foolishly naive, but in terms of that sense of humor about himself and in terms of that sense of wanting to stir things up and change the sort of authorized views of himself, I think he will appreciate at least what we tried to


There's a woman by the river
With some fine young handsome man
He's dressed up like a squire
Bootlegged whiskey in his hand

B.Dylan

[Dennis]

quote:Originally posted by Asbjørn

'I'm Not There' shows the many faces of Bob Dylan

Trodde aldri jeg skulle si at Bob Dylan er pen. [)]

- Dennis