Posted On: Tuesday - June 17th 2025 6:35PM MST
In Topics: Music Movies ctrl-left
It's been a while since Peak Stupidity has posted a movie review. A Complete Unknown is the name of this movie about Bob Dylan, which was released last year. If you know anything about the musician, the music, or the times, then you'll of course be familiar with the song that the title refers to.
I saw the movie recently, but I hadn't seen the preview (now called a "trailer" - lets just call it a preview):
Since I just now watched that, let me just say that the preview sure has the story jumbled around as far as the timeline. The movie stayed on a linear timeline, which is generally a good thing.
As long-term Peak Stupidity readers would have read time and again here, I will not have my time wasted by movies with agendas (ones I don't like, that is). This was movie number 3, and I already barely remember the other 2 I'd started off watching, for ~ 25 min. on one and only 5 or so on the other. The review would not be here if I hadn't made it through this movie, so let me say that there doesn't seem to be much of a woke agenda in A Complete Unknown.
Obviously a historical movie about the mid-1960s is going to show things I don't like - a quick scene of some Black! (Martin Luther Kang's crowd, I think?) guys in suits that get Bob Dylan writing a song, and then, well, the whole scene, man! However, this movie was pretty clean, as far as Wokeness goes, and we're talking 2024 here! Shocking!
The actors in movies don't matter a lot to me. If I can believe they are those people, then that's good enough. The guy playing Bob Dylan sure had me thinking he was, as did the pretty woman playing Joan Baez. Since there were obligatory* underwear scenes including the latter, I looked pretty closely, and I will say that they even reproduced my memory - from record album covers, I guess, that she's a little hippy. Ooops, I can see that might be confusing to the reader. Joan Baez was a normal-sized hippie, but in the movie, the actress is just a tad wide at the hips. Do they actually cast people to have the same figures? The guy playing Bob Dylan was skinny, as I'd expect of Bob Dylan. Oh, Johnny Cash, played by some guy, has a decent part in the movie. I had no idea that he'd been a big influence on Bob Dylan.
This movie is no comprehensive biography of Dylan. The story starts as he arrives in NYC, and it ends only a couple of years later. It's about the huge folk music, turning to protest music, scene in those mid-'60s years, and Bob Dylan sure was in the right place at the right time. One might also say he played a big part in creating that scene.
I don't know how closely this movie adhered to the details of this portion of the life of Bob Dylan, originally Bob Zimmerman from Minnesota, but early in the movie, he meets Woody Guthrie, folk music legend, slowly dying in a hospital, as middle-aged Pete Seeger spends lots of time keeping him company. This is where the music starts. He played a song or two for Mr. Guthrie, and both Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger saw what a talented songwriter this young Bob Dylan was. If any viewer might have aspirations of being a music star, the movie might make him a little optimistic. It shows Dylan playing in a few bars and then rising to the top, chased down by adoring fans, in no time... seemed like 6 months flat. Must be nice. Did he write any songs complaining about all that within his repertoire. Yes, I think. Commenters might want to name a few.
About the music, finally, A Complete Unknown did a nice job with that. The appropriate great Bob Dylan songs can be heard during certain scenes, and there is plenty of re-enacted concert footage. Not all songs were played through in the concert scenes, which is to be expected, but more importantly, they weren't played through as other scenes, as in a musical. That's what I couldn't stand in Rocketman, what could have been a much better movie about Elton John. I don't like musicals, and this wasn't one.
We've all heard lots of Bob Dylan songs here and there. I can't say I've ever owned an album, as I was never that much of a fan at all. I've enjoyed the songs he's written as sung by other artists, such as The Byrds. There's the well-known Puff the Magic Dragon "by" Peter, Paul, and Mary, one that I can honestly say I've never heard the songwriter's version of.
Because it's about folk music and shows what a big influence Bob Dylan had, this movie has me appreciating him more. (I also hadn't known how big his repertoire was.I've heard about all the songs the movie had playing - he wrote a LOT of great songs.) This isn't spoiling the movie, as it's all known by older music fans, but a big part of the latter half of the movie involves Dylan's interest in other musical styles. I thought his going electric was MUCH later, maybe the 1970s sometime, but it was during the end of those few (couple?) of years of the protest-folk music heyday. This is per the movie timeline, and at that '65 Newport Folk Festival, again per the movie, the fans were pretty pissed off at Dylan's having left them without their protest-folk hero. Perhaps these scenes were in the movie to get just a little bit of action in. (There was one minor fist fight otherwise - this is not quite in the Action Movie genre.)
A song featured at the beginning was So Long (It's been good to know ya') by Woody Guthrie**. The song is ancient sounding that it seems like from a century ago. Well, no, it's only been 90 years.***
So Long is played again in the ending scene, as Bob Dylan leaves the disappointed fans and his most loyal and pretty girlfriend and rides his motorcycle back to New York. Woody Guthrie had died too. The was a poignant and appropriate ending for this story of the American folk and protest music heyday.
Peak Stupidity is somewhat SHOCKED, SHOCKED, to have liked a movie from not only this century and this decade, but last year! If you don't like the music at all it would suck, I imagine.
Well, we've got to embed ONE Dylan song, at least! Though he sang songs I favor more, this is the one the title comes from.
PS: You (might) know how, before the internet, you'd have to be lucky to be able to get complete song lyrics, as only sometimes they might have come printed on the album cover or liner notes****? Well, folk music is one genre in which the lyrics do matter a good bit. Bob Dylan's words are not hard to understand. Somehow, I missed this one line in The Times, They Are a-Changin' maybe THE biggest protest song from this era, at least as far as the acoustic folk songs:
Come mothers and fathers throughout the land,The mothers and fathers were probably right most of the time. The times, though, they WERE a-changin', not least due to subversion instigated by lyric writers and some Communists behind the scenes. (Not shown in the movie.) Wait, is Peak Stupidity calling Bob Dylan a Communist? No, real Communists tend to have crappier music, written by people in dull, olive-drabbed clothing. OK, then don't ask me about John Lennon.
and don't criticize what you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.
Your old road is rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand,
For the times, they are a-changin'.
* Or maybe "obligatory" only applies to (a younger) Signorney Weaver in Aliens movies.
** I saw his son Arlo play in concert years ago.
*** Woody Guthrie wrote this one about the Dust Bowl years, in 1935. It was released again in 1951 with some different lyrics, and was covered by The Weavers.
**** Thanks, SafeNow, for the correction on that.
Comments:
Ganderson
Thursday - June 19th 2025 8:57AM MST
PS
I never counted them all up, but they sure did a lot of Dylan tunes, Going all the way back to 1966.
I figured you all would be very disappointed in me if I didn’t post the following: https://youtu.be/KUUhu6Fi9ds
“Waterloo, du är mitt öde mitt Waterloo…”
I never counted them all up, but they sure did a lot of Dylan tunes, Going all the way back to 1966.
I figured you all would be very disappointed in me if I didn’t post the following: https://youtu.be/KUUhu6Fi9ds
“Waterloo, du är mitt öde mitt Waterloo…”
Moderator
Wednesday - June 18th 2025 7:39PM MST
PS: Hello again, SafeNow. Yes, she had the legs - I just pasted in ABBA's "Waterloo" live from 1975 on TUR - they are just as leggy and more!
Long ago I wrote a post long ago about the similarity of "Harper Valley PTA" and "Billy Joe McCalister" (jumping off the Tallahatchie bridge), actually "Ode to Billie Joe", not that they were similar in mood.
https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=810
"The Day Billie Joe McAlister quit the Harper Valley PTA"
Here are the best combo-lyrics I could come up with at the time:
"It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.
I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay.
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat.
And Mama hollered out the back door "y'all remember to wipe your feet."
And she said, "I got a note here from the Harper Valley PTA".
Well, the note says, "Mrs. Johnson, you're wearing your dresses way too high.",
and Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas,
"I'll have another piece-a apple pie, you know it don't seem right."
Well, there's Bobby Taylor sittin' there, and seven times he asked me for a date,
and Brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie Joe
put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show.
Well, Mr. Harper couldn't be here 'cause he stayed too long at Kelly's Bar again.
That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today.
And boy was sure surprised when Mrs. Johnson wore her miniskirt into the room.
Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, by the way.
And Mama said to me "Child, what's happened to your appetite?"
And then you have the nerve to tell me you think that as a mother I'm not fit.
Well, this is just a little Payton Place, and you're all Harper Valley hypocrites.
Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge,
and now Billy Joe Macallister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
No, I wouldn't put you on because it really did it happened just this way,
the day my Mama socked it to, the Harper Valley PTA,
and me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge
and drop them in the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge."
You gotta keep 2 songs in your head at the same time. It's like being a liberal or something...
Long ago I wrote a post long ago about the similarity of "Harper Valley PTA" and "Billy Joe McCalister" (jumping off the Tallahatchie bridge), actually "Ode to Billie Joe", not that they were similar in mood.
https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=810
"The Day Billie Joe McAlister quit the Harper Valley PTA"
Here are the best combo-lyrics I could come up with at the time:
"It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.
I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay.
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat.
And Mama hollered out the back door "y'all remember to wipe your feet."
And she said, "I got a note here from the Harper Valley PTA".
Well, the note says, "Mrs. Johnson, you're wearing your dresses way too high.",
and Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas,
"I'll have another piece-a apple pie, you know it don't seem right."
Well, there's Bobby Taylor sittin' there, and seven times he asked me for a date,
and Brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie Joe
put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show.
Well, Mr. Harper couldn't be here 'cause he stayed too long at Kelly's Bar again.
That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today.
And boy was sure surprised when Mrs. Johnson wore her miniskirt into the room.
Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, by the way.
And Mama said to me "Child, what's happened to your appetite?"
And then you have the nerve to tell me you think that as a mother I'm not fit.
Well, this is just a little Payton Place, and you're all Harper Valley hypocrites.
Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge,
and now Billy Joe Macallister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
No, I wouldn't put you on because it really did it happened just this way,
the day my Mama socked it to, the Harper Valley PTA,
and me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge
and drop them in the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge."
You gotta keep 2 songs in your head at the same time. It's like being a liberal or something...
Moderator
Wednesday - June 18th 2025 7:32PM MST
PS: See, I didn't check on all that stuff that usually goes into movie reviews, Possumman. That's pretty interesting though. He did a great job singing. I had no idea the Kung Flu held up the movie. Here I thought Hollywood was an "ESSENTIAL" industry.
Moderator
Wednesday - June 18th 2025 7:30PM MST
PS: Nice rendition, Mr. Anderson. I looked up Grateful Dead Bob Dylan covers, and AI says they did 35 songs! However, AI also says that he's not so sure of himself. Wiki comes up with about a dozen. I like "Masterpiece" and "Tangled up in Blue". (The latter might have been only by the Jerry band.)
Possumman
Wednesday - June 18th 2025 4:51PM MST
PS. Probably the coolest part is Timothy Chalamet learning to play guitar and harp for the movie and doing his own singing thanx to the covid delay in actually shooting it.
SafeNow
Wednesday - June 18th 2025 2:29PM MST
PS
Antidote to Sigourni disappointment. File under never missed leg day at the gym.
https://youtu.be/dzqK4QzxpBQ?si=1RYlAN4SYJux-Dd-
Antidote to Sigourni disappointment. File under never missed leg day at the gym.
https://youtu.be/dzqK4QzxpBQ?si=1RYlAN4SYJux-Dd-
Ganderson
Wednesday - June 18th 2025 6:53AM MST
PS
I https://youtu.be/2_JjFeeYOLs?si=Qe040xsfV5dB6pj5
I https://youtu.be/2_JjFeeYOLs?si=Qe040xsfV5dB6pj5
Moderator
Wednesday - June 18th 2025 5:27AM MST
PS: Fair enough, your not seeing the movie, SafeNow. Your anecdote about "Like a Rolling Stone" emanating from speakers one after another across the campus is not something that would happen today. We are too fragmented in culture AND the music generally sucks. (That is, even if the lyrics were very meaningful.)
Flat ass on Sigourney Weaver? Yeah, I can see that, but at my age, the whole package was very nice. It seemed like that was her thing in all movies of the series. Otherwise, why pay $3.75 for a ticket and popcorn?
Ha, youtube commenters are hilarious sometimes. I am not a "member" or whatever who can write in comments, but just as with the on-line forums that I might get to with some good info from a search, sometimes the stuff is 10 years old. Replying is of no use.
Flat ass on Sigourney Weaver? Yeah, I can see that, but at my age, the whole package was very nice. It seemed like that was her thing in all movies of the series. Otherwise, why pay $3.75 for a ticket and popcorn?
Ha, youtube commenters are hilarious sometimes. I am not a "member" or whatever who can write in comments, but just as with the on-line forums that I might get to with some good info from a search, sometimes the stuff is 10 years old. Replying is of no use.
SafeNow
Tuesday - June 17th 2025 9:59PM MST
PS
It is sacrilegiously impossible for me to watch an actor being Dylan, because I am so old that I actually lived through the film’s events starring the actual Dylan while I was in college. And so I haven’t seen the film and cannot comment on the review. But I will strongly agree that the song lyrics were superb and impactful, which was later confirmed when Dylan won the Nobel prize for literature. As for Rolling Stone, it was not possible to walk across campus without hearing the song continuously, coming from multiple speakers turned outward through open windows, because so many students felt obliged to share this. By the way, they used to be called liner notes, not album inserts.
As for Sigourni’s underwear scenes, I must note for the record that she has an incredibly flat, virtually nonexistent, rear end. A few years ago, I watched the final scene in Alien, and scrolled to read the comments. One commenter said ‘Wow…what a great ass!,.”. A reply commenter quipped “You don’t get out much, do you.”
It is sacrilegiously impossible for me to watch an actor being Dylan, because I am so old that I actually lived through the film’s events starring the actual Dylan while I was in college. And so I haven’t seen the film and cannot comment on the review. But I will strongly agree that the song lyrics were superb and impactful, which was later confirmed when Dylan won the Nobel prize for literature. As for Rolling Stone, it was not possible to walk across campus without hearing the song continuously, coming from multiple speakers turned outward through open windows, because so many students felt obliged to share this. By the way, they used to be called liner notes, not album inserts.
As for Sigourni’s underwear scenes, I must note for the record that she has an incredibly flat, virtually nonexistent, rear end. A few years ago, I watched the final scene in Alien, and scrolled to read the comments. One commenter said ‘Wow…what a great ass!,.”. A reply commenter quipped “You don’t get out much, do you.”
1) How does anybody - this song or any other - translate the lyrics to where they fit the melody well and still not change the meaning? Maybe they did change the meaning a tad?
2) I am so used to the English version that the lyrics/melody fit sounds a little awkward here. Yet, this was the original!
3) I remember reading that Agnetha especially was stage shy. She had to make herself look like she was enjoying it. I like how, after one verse or something, someone seemed to have made a signal "move around more, you two!"
4) The chorus sounds like "Waterloo, muppet Swedish chef, muppet Swedish chef, Waterloo". See, you could make fun then with absolutely ZERO animosity either way back then. What a world!