Dick, you shame the state of Illinois and the Land of Lincoln. Your resolve is weaker than the recent attempt to change the state flag. Enjoy being primaried in '26, you coward.

Of course, D.A. Pennebaker's Dont Look Back (1967) and Martin Scorsese's PBS documentary No Direction Home also cover those years well. But The Other Side of the Mirror, unlike biopics like A Complete Unknown, lets the subject do the talking. The magic is gone as soon as you try to replicate it.

Only two years after his Newport Folk Festival debut, though, Dylan's "finger-pointing songs" now point toward the future of Rock, as he plugs in his guitar and debuts "Like a Rolling Stone" to a famously divided audience:

The next year, in the typical poet's uniform of suede boots and a black turtleneck, he explodes with kaleidoscopic ballads of sublime beauty, like "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Chimes of Freedom:"

In 1963, Bob Dylan, a ragamuffin in a work shirt, seems like he's channeling radio transmissions from the Great Depression, asking "Who Killed Davey Moore?" and painting social-realist portraits of American hardship in "North Country Blues":

In 1963, Bob Dylan, a ragamuffin in a work shirt, seems like he's channeling radio transmissions from the Great Depression, asking "Who Killed Davey Moore?" and painting social-realist portraits of American hardship in "North Country Blues":

I recall NPR’s Tim Riley, in his review at the time, writing that Dylan is the only person who can make “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” sound like a threat.

You can practically hear the cigarette ashes fall like snow onto the tinsel-covered tree. The harmonica solo is a dry wheeze, the tempo keeping time with the drag of Dylan’s shoes down slush-covered sidewalks. The whole album is a really weird, really thoughtful approach to the Christmas album.

I feel the same way about Spencer Williams. I’m hoping he’ll get the same treatment someday.

Now that the sweating has subsided, I went ahead and purchased My Heart is That Eternal Rose from Vinegar Syndrome (I must have missed their release earlier this year). Fingers crossed for a future Nomad Blu-Ray release in the US 🤞🏻

I’m obliged to speak vaguely because the unpredictable ebb and flow of sex and death in these films is what makes them, and movie-going in general, so sublime.

Tam’s style is such that while he exemplifies Hong Kong’s New Wave cinema, he also sees through it and subverts its already innate narrative subversions; I’m reminded of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his manipulation of melodrama. Tam’s perspective feels uncannily modern, even post-ironic.

Nomad is sweaty, horny, and unpredictable. The smudgy transfer and erratically translated captions on the DVD I rented really heightened the sense of whiplash later on in the film. Eternal Rose, which I caught at the cinema, is pure, bloody, movie magic—with a suitably melodramatic title song.

I may use this space to occasionally add bon mots from the text, but for now, I’ll echo the brave freedom fighters of that bitter war: “¡Los fascistas no pasarán!”

Of the Spanish Civil War, Albert Camus wrote, “Men of my generation have had Spain in our hearts. It was there that they learned…that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit and that there are times when courage is not rewarded.”