4K Blu-ray and DVD transfer available
Martin Scorsese’s rollicking, star-studded account of Bob Dylan’s iconic 1975 tour is getting the Criterion Blu-ray treatment on January 19th. Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder Revue has received a new Scorsese-approved 4K digital transfer with new interviews with Scorsese, editor David Tedeschi, and writer Larry “Ratso” Sloman. The Blu-ray and DVD also includes restored footage of never-before-seen Rolling Thunder Revue performances and excerpts from author Sam Shepard and poets Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman.
In 1975, in an America defined by both the self-mythologizing pomp of the upcoming bicentennial and ongoing sociopolitical turmoil, Bob Dylan and a band of troubadours — including luminaries such as Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, and Joni Mitchell — embarked on a now-legendary tour known as the Rolling Thunder Revue, a freewheeling variety show that was part traveling counterculture carnival, part spiritual pilgrimage.
Director Martin Scorsese blends behind-the-scenes archival footage, interviews, and narrative mischief, with a magician’s sleight of hand, into a zeitgeist-defining cultural record that is as much a concert “documentary” as it is a slippery, chimerical investigation into memory, time, truth, and illusion.
At the center of it all is the magnetic Dylan, a sphinxlike philosopher-poet singing, with electrifying conviction, to the soul of an anxious nation.
The restored footage includes never-before-seen Rolling Thunder Revue performances of “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You” and “Romance in Durango,” and of a never-before-seen cut of “Tangled Up in Blue. A trailer and English subtitles are also included.
