Skip to main content

Dink's Song

By

On a different note, the Coen Brothers have put together a movie, Inside Llewyn Davis, that captures "Village" life in the early 60s.  It seems to presuppose the folk scene before Dylan came to dominate the scene, with the lead character loosely based on Dave Van Ronk, whose posthumous book, The Mayor of Macdougal Street served as inspiration for the Coens.

Joel Coen jokingly compares his movie to Les Miserables, as the film is built around full length folk songs that were common at the time, but rather than rush the movie to theaters before the Oscar nominations, it seems the Coens were content to let the film build up some buzz this Spring with a clever trailer, before premiering it in Cannes in May.  The first screening seemed to be a hit with Elijah Wald, who helped Van Ronk compile his memoirs, but he cautions not to read too much of Van Ronk into the title character.

Here's Van Ronk singing Dink's Song.

Comments

  1. James FergusonMay 20, 2013 at 5:37 PM

    Rave reviews for Llewyn Davis,

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/may/19/cannes-2013-coen-brothers-inside-llewyn-davis

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

Colonel

By
Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!
240 comments
Read more