No Direction Home: The Soundtrack (The Bootleg Series Vol.7) - Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan - No Direction Home - Film Only

Advantages: Masterfully edited, full of astounding footage both familiar and otherwise...a classic.
Disadvantages: None.

Martin Scorsese's brilliant documentary tracing the progression of Bob Dylan from endearingly awkward Duluth teenager to other-worldly, speed-fried Icon is as stunning a piece of work as any of the director's classics, and leagues above most of his output from the preceding decade. Utilising a wealth of revelatory, rarely-seen footage and interview material, No Direction Home is, for the first half at least, as much about America in the pause-for-breath moment between the beat writers of the 1950s and the counter-culture student movements of the mid-to-late 1960s as it is about the life and work of Robert Zimmerman. It is - clichéd as it sounds - a sweeping, engrossing portrait of a time and of a place, scouring the terrain leads from the rattle-tattle zap-pow gyrations of Ginsberg and Kerouac to the pound pound pounding of Odetta ...

DavidJay 04.09.2008 · Read full review
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Review of No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (DVD)

Make Sure You Remember Your Direction Home, So You Can Watch This

Advantages: Great Set That Offers An Interesting Insight Into One Of The Most Interesting Eras In His Career
Disadvantages: Mainly For Fans, But May Offer An Incentive To Get Into Him For Those Who Aren't

footage of left out material from Don't Look Back, a Dylan biopic from 1965, of Love Minus Zero/ No Limit and Does She Need Me (I Can't Leave Her Behind), a recording of Dylan trying out a new song in his hotel room, the full performance of which can be found on the Genuine Bootleg Series Volume 2, and some other bootleg disks. Comparing this to the likes of Don't Look Back, this is more of a biography and focuses less on what Dylan did, and looking instead at how he developed as a musician and how he dealt with certain situations. This is also a cram-packed biography, packing in almost three and a half hours to cover the period of about 10 years. Ultimately, this is the era of Dylan that is often the most fascinating and is when his fame was at its peak, although i would implore anyone that likes it to explore other albums outside the 60s ...

Robin_Hod12 08.04.2009 · Read full review
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Review of No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (DVD)

A LEGEND IN HIS OWN TIME.

Advantages: Sharing musical history from an American Viewpoint.
Disadvantages: None at all.

When I bought this DVD from Amazon at the modest price of 14.99, I thought that it would simply be a compilation of historical songs of Dylan. However, having watched it, I found that what it presented was a journey of discovery that goes back to the late 50's, and shows the music that was part and parcel of this great artists' background, and the influences that made the artist what he is today. Interestingly enough, the DVD was comparable to a series that I have been watching on the BBC about the roots of folk music in the UK, and was an interesting contrast, in that it covered the same timescale though from an American perspective. Dylan comes over in the DVD as articulate and reasonably well educated although it appears that most of his education was from his experiences in the sixties, mingling with artists and poets alike ...

thingywhatsit 06.03.2006 (09.03.2006) · Read full review
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Review of No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (DVD)