Soundtrack done by one of my favorite bands, Explosions in the Sky.
Re: Finding New Shit on TV
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:38 am
by BiggDick
last night finally watched The Social Network...well, got halfway through it, at least. Fell asleep right around the scene Zuck gets appletinis with Nick Timberlake.
Pretty good so far! Very well written dialogue and characters. Feels a lot sharper than most biopics. (Does this count as a biopic?) The Trent Reznor score jams hard too.
I been reading up on just how accurate the depiction is - both in terms of characters and general story. Cuz, man, young Zuck was such a doosh! Like, smart as fuck and witty too, but holy shit what an asshole.
I also didn't realize how critically acclaimed this movie is. Lot of folks seem to think it's goat. And like yea it's good, prob really good, but...goat? I dunno.
been bugging the bumble babe to go see A Complete Unknown since Christmas, the day it came out
finally just saw it!
It's...really good.
I thought Chamalet nails young Bob's voice and mannerisms. Ed Norton might be an even better Pete Seeger than Pete Seeger, and that chick who plays Joan Baez is a total fox too.
I liked act one a lot more. It just felt like a better story or something. Act two (basically everything after the screen going dark and then captioning, "1965") starts to feel a tad bit slightly too much like a biopic, where things start to happen a little too conveniently and such.
I like, though, how it focused on just a 4 or so year window of his life though. It keeps his youth and such a mystery, without the flashbacks to childhood and other cliches.
The music's all really good, especially cuz they all apparently learned to both sing and play everything they sang and played for the movie. Bob and Joan's characters sounded better together than Bob and Joan ever did in real life - the "earnest choir girl meets drunken hillbilly" vocal styles were always just too much of a contrast for me.
Having already known and seen much about early Bob, including the actual footage from the electric performance at the festival, I know a certain storytelling liberties were taken for this movie. Others leave me wondering... I'm gonna have to research how accurate certain events and character interactions really were.
I also noticed several easter eggs and such for Dylan dorks throughout the movie - mostly nods to lyrics. I felt dumb, though, when Bob ran into the random dood in the elevator, and I got excited he was meeting a young Robbie Robertson, especially when the dood gave some line about The Weight. But it turns out it the dood was some other guy I wasn't familiar with, dangit.
About as well executed as a Dylan biopic could be. I put it right up there with The Social Network (if that counts as a biopic) and Walk Hard (if that didn't stick a whoopie cushion onto the chair of the entire biopic genre)
Trying to decide whether it's good for a non-Dylan dork. I think it's an entertaining enough story on its own, a good introduction to possibly the best era of Bob for the lay person, and a good illustration of possibly the best era of Bob for the established fan.
Overall though, really really good. Would watch again.
Re: Finding New Shit on TV
Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2025 9:32 pm
by BiggDick
okay, fine, criticisms:
- I've generally perceived young Bob as more of a class clown attention whore. He literally shows up to NYC with this "hey look at me and my carnival act" sort of shtick. The character in the movie portrays his young self as actually kinda reserved, even if it makes nods to the mysterious carnival upbringing Bob claims. (once fame hits, though, the film seemed true to what we know about real Bob)
- this covers the exact same time frame in which Bob Dylan gets The Beatles stoned, but there's nothing about that? There's only one mention of the Beatles, IIRC, and it's a fleeting one when the folk dogmatists encourage Bob to not try to be like the Beatles.
- related, but: there's no other substance-fueled benders in this time frame? Dude was into a whole universe of drugs, particularly in this era. Johnny Cash's character is great too, acts completely loaded in every scene he appears, and even asks Bob to go out for drinks together after one show.
But even if that was a big part of this era of Bob, maybe the writers or whoever felt like there was enough of a story here besides all that. And considering the "goes electric" moment might precede an even more strung-out era of his career, maybe they're saving that for the sequel.
Let's give it the working title of...ohh..."Rainy Day Women."
Re: Finding New Shit on TV
Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2025 11:20 pm
by Overlander
If you haven’t, you should watch the music documentary “New Basement Tapes”