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On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.

First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight movie pick — something weird and wonderful from any age of film that deserves our memorializing.

Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as experienced by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s recommendation.

The Pitch: Ain’t It Just Like the Movies to Play Tricks When You’re Trying to Be So Quiet?

As if assembling the greatest songbook in the history of Western music through six decades (and counting!) of nonstop creative growth and experimentation wasn’t enough, Bob Dylan has made a surprisingly large impact on the world of film. In 1966, he helped launch the cinéma vérité movement — and captivated audiences with the mystery of who broke that fucking glass — by allowing D.A. Pennebaker to follow him for the landmark documentary “Don’t Look Back.

Over the years, Bob Dylan has borrowed lyrics and lines of writing from other artists, including obscure Confederate poet Henry Timrod. In the early 2000s, Dylan grew interested in Civil War history. He wrote songs about the era and, it seems, discovered Timrod. While experts on the poet believe the line between his work and Dylan’s songs is clear, they don’t seem to mind much. Dylan certainly doesn’t; when asked about the plagiarism accusations, he rolled his eyes.

Bob Dylan lifted lines from a Confederate poet for his music

Timrod did not fight in the Civil War, but he wrote poems about it and its effect on life in the South. While he became known as the poet laureate of the Confederacy, he is a relatively obscure poet in modern times. Not so in Dylan’s Modern Times, though. Careful listeners noticed distinct similarities between Dylan’s 2006 album and Timrod’s poems.

In 2003, Bob Dylan starred in Masked and Anonymous, a movie he wrote with screenwriter Larry Charles. The film featured multiple big-name stars and was the fruit of an extended collaboration between Dylan and Charles. When it came out, though, Dylan told his co-writer point-blank that he would not see the movie.

Bob Dylan did not want to see the movie ‘Masked and Anonymous’

Dylan and Charles initially began collaborating on a slapstick comedy series for HBO. While the network green-lit the show, Dylan immediately decided he didn’t want to go through with it. Instead, he and Charles began working on a film.

The end product was Masked and Anonymous, which stars Dylan as a musician who has recently left prison to put on a charity concert. His co-stars were Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Jessica Lange, Luke Wilson, Val Kilmer, and Penelope Cruz, among others. Dylan was excited about the film,...

In the 1990s, Seinfeld writer Larry Charles learned that his cousin was Bob Dylan’s manager. Eventually, this led to a meeting between Charles and Dylan and a feature film in 2003. Charles directed the film, Masked and Anonymous, and Dylan starred in it, but they worked closely together through the writing process. The film was an overall flop, but Charles said he enjoyed the process of writing with Dylan.

Bob Dylan teamed up with a ‘Seinfeld’ writer to write a movie

Once Dylan and Charles decided to partner up, they spent much of their time writing together. Charles was a writer on Seinfeld and Mad About You, so he had plenty of experience working on scripts. Dylan had primarily written songs at this point, but he enthusiastically threw himself into writing a screenplay.

“I spent a solid two years in a cubicle with him writing,” Charles told Uproxx in 2023. “I mean,...

In 2003, Bob Dylan starred in the film Masked and Anonymous with a number of Hollywood heavy hitters. His co-stars included Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Luke Wilson, Jessica Lange, Penelope Cruz, Val Kilmer, and many others. Dylan didn’t have nearly as much acting experience as his co-stars. While he had a leading role in the film, his inexperience caused some issues. Dylan seemed far more interested in watching his castmates than he was in giving a performance of his own.

Bob Dylan found his co-stars in a film riveting to watch

Masked and Anonymous had a stacked cast at least partly because the actors wanted a chance to work with Dylan.

“I think John [Goodman] really responded to the part, but a lot of the other people responded to just the idea of working with Bob,” director Larry Charles told Uproxx in 2023. “We were able to attract a lot of people because of that,...

In the early 2000s, Bob Dylan teamed up with writer Larry Charles to work on the screenplay for the film Masked and Anonymous. This was not the musician’s first movie. Still, this was the first time he worked on a screenplay in this way. Charles said he worked well with Dylan and that the script was the product of their equal collaboration. Charles noted that Dylan had been researching the Civil War at the time, so the historical era influenced the screenplay.

Bob Dylan took inspiration from the Civil War when he wrote a screenplay

When Charles and Dylan began working on Masked and Anonymous, Dylan pulled out a box of possible character names. He’d written them on scraps of paper with assorted words and phrases. In a similar manner to which Dylan writes songs, they began putting the scraps together to write a screenplay.

They also used...

In 2003, Bob Dylan starred in the movie Masked and Anonymous. He co-wrote the feature film with writer Larry Charles and had the opportunity to act alongside a number of Hollywood stars, including Jeff Bridges and John Goodman. Charles said he enjoyed working with Dylan, but he had to shut down some of the musician’s most out-there ideas. One of these was to make everything in the film a dance number.

Bob Dylan wanted to add dancing to a movie he wrote and starred in

Dylan and Charles met when the musician wanted to produce a slapstick TV series. While the project never came to fruition, they started working together on the screenplay for Masked and Anonymous. After completing the script, Charles stepped behind the camera as director, while Dylan became one of the lead actors. Starring alongside him were Bridges, Goodman, Val Kilmer, Jessica Lange, Penelope Cruz, Luke Wilson,...

In 1966, news broke that Bob Dylan had been badly injured in a motorcycle accident, but nobody seemed to know the details. Nearly 60 years later, details about the accident are still muddy. Dylan hasn’t spoken much about it, but others have divided themselves into two camps. Some say the accident left the musician with serious injuries, while others doubt it ever happened. According to Dylan biographer Daniel Mark Epstein, the musician did have an accident, but not in the way people might think.

Bob Dylan | Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Bob Dylan hurt himself in a motorcycle accident

In 1966, Dylan retreated from public life after a motorcycle accident. Details about his injuries were few and far between, but, according to Epstein, the accident was nowhere as severe as people thought.

Bob Dylan | Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

“There was a motorcycle, and there was a very weary, clumsy poet who wanted to ride on it,...

When Bob Dylan published his memoir Chronicles: Volume One in 2004, many experts on the musician noted that he lied his way through the book. This wasn’t necessarily surprising to them, though. Since he became a public figure, Dylan has told a number of fictions and half-truths about himself. While this might be damaging to another celebrity, it fits the image Dylan has crafted for himself.

Bob Dylan | Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Some suspect that Bob Dylan included a number of lies in his memoir

In interviews and his memoir, Dylan has told stories about running away from home as a child, losing contact with his parents, joining the circus, and more. Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin said that entire sections of Dylan’s memoir were essentially fiction.

“Jesus Christ, as far as I can tell almost everything in the Oh Mercy section of Chronicles is a work of fiction,...

Bob Dylan grew up with his parents and brother in Minnesota, but he once told a blatant lie about his upbringing. Some suspect that lying about his past is a pattern for the musician, but he got caught in a lie about his family life. A reporter made the relatively easy discovery, and Dylan was humiliated.

Bob Dylan | William Lovelace/Express/Getty Images The musician grew up in Minnesota

Dylan was born in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1941.

A Bob Dylan super-fan has purchased the ultimate rock collectible: the Hibbing, Minnesota house where Dylan lived from 1948 to 1959 https://t.co/1XxpDyMoTX pic.twitter.com/14y6dAGeW8

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) July 12, 2019

“Minnesota has its own Mason Dixon line,” Dylan said in an interview on his official website. “I come from the north and that’s different from southern Minnesota; if you’re there you could be in Iowa or Georgia. Up north the...

This week Bob Dylan turned 80, and singers and musicians have been covering his songs for roughly 60 of those years. Still, it’s always a treat when someone digs a little deeper into Dylan’s catalog than “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” or “Like a Rolling Stone.” On her new collection of Bob remakes, Chrissie Hynde brings back the oft-neglected likes of “Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight” and “Every Grain of Sand,” and the Dylan Broadway musical Girl from the North Country (set to reopen in the fall) includes...

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By Hank Reineke

Director/co-writer Larry Charles acknowledges it was an employer - the curmudgeon-comedian Larry David, who unwittingly served as the midwife of the Masked and Anonymous project. David’s disinterest in popular music – and rock n’ roll music specifically - was no secret. Cornered and trapped in a one-sided conversation with the passionate and gregarious television writer and music fan Eddie Gorodetsky, the co-creator of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm was anxious to escape the conversation. He suggested to Gorodetsky his interest in discussing the vagaries of Bob Dylan’s mercurial career - and the rock n’ roll world in general - would be better served by engaging in a chat with Curb writer-director Charles. Gorodetsky did just that. He soon discovered both he and Charles were huge Dylan fans, the two discussing the often mysterious singer-songwriter’s career at length.

Bob Dylan turns 76 today and we’re ranking Dylan’s 10 best film performances, dating back half a century to 1967. The key word is “performances,” which encompass acting work, concert films, and documentaries. It’s often hard to know when Dylan is acting and when he’s being himself (whoever that is), but whenever the iconic singer-songwriter appears on film, one thing’s for certain: you’re watching a performance.

Bob Dylan’s ‘Don’t Look Back’ Gets Deluxe Treatment With New Blu-ray Set

For this reason, we’re lumping everything together, ranking the films based on the depth and richness of performance. It was hard not to include the televised 1965 press conference in San Francisco, which sees Dylan effortlessly (and hilariously) shoot down reporters’ attempts to have him label himself, but we limited this list to feature-length films. Don’t look for Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There” or any...

In the mid 2000s, ex-con and handyman Gary Faulkner traveled to Pakistan several times to hunt down Osama Bin Laden on a mission from God. The story was reported by GQ in 2010, and now six years later, Faulkner’s story has finally been adapted to film. Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage stars as Faulkner and the film follows his attempts to capture Bin Laden and his various conversations with God (played by Russell Brand). The film co-stars Wendi McLendon-Covey (“Bridesmaids”), Rainn Wilson (“The Office”), Paul Scheer (“Human Giant”), Denis O’Hare (“Michael Clayton”), Will Sasso (“MADtv”) and Matthew Modine (“Full Metal Jacket”). Watch an exclusive featurette from the film below featuring Cage discussing the film and Faulkner below.

Read More: ‘Army of One’ Exclusive Stills: Nicolas Cage Hunts Down Osama Bin Laden In Pakistan On A Mission From God

The film is directed by Larry Charles. He’s best known as...

In the six years since he reunited with the Coen Brothers for a brilliant remake of the classic John Wayne western True Grit, Jeff Bridges has struggled to connect with audiences in multiplexes, releasing little-seen flicks like R.I.P.D. and Seventh Son. But right now he's starring in one of the most critically-acclaimed movies of the year, the neo-western Hell or High Water. He plays a U.S. marshal days away from retirement that tracks a pair of bank robbers (Chris Pine, Ben Foster) across Texas. We spoke to Bridges about...

Less than 15 years after its U.S. theatrical release, Christopher Nolan's Memento is already being eyed for a remake. The film's remake rights were acquired when Exclusive Media Group's extensive film library was sold to Ambi Pictures in September, and among Ambi's first orders of business is to remake Nolan's Oscar-nominated, mind-bending thriller, Variety reports.

"Memento has been consistently ranked as one of the best films of its decade," Ambi chief investor Andrea Iervolino said in a statement. "People who've seen Memento 10 times still feel they need to see it one more time.

Bob Dylan may be best known as a legendary singer-songwriter, but he's also earned the title of director, actor and inspiring film subject over the span of his five-decade career. To commemorate the singer's 74th birthday, THR rounds up Dylan's most memorable movie moments. 1. Masked and Anonymous (2003) Dylan played the role of Jack Fate, a former rock legend with a dying career who is forced to make a comeback, in the Larry Charles-directed music drama. The film, also starring Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz, Jessica Lange, Luke Wilson and John Goodman, featured a soundtrack comprised almost entirely of covers

read more...

"Everything dies, baby, that's a fact," sang Bruce Springsteen in the song "Atlantic City." "But maybe everything that dies someday comes back."

The Boss might have been singing about this week's happenings in the world of television, events that proved once again that TV is a rest home where nothing ever truly dies and everything can someday return to life (with only a minimum of zombie-creepiness). In the world of television (which includes streaming online video, where everything from last night's Jimmy Fallon shenanigans to the most ancient and obscure TV arcane is just a click away), there is a galaxy of possibilities cobbled together from pop culture jetsam; there are alternate universes where amazing shows by unlikely auteurs exist, or where those shows debut when we want them to instead of years too late; and there are realms where the inability of anything to become permanently lost in the...

While the 2013 Sundance Film Festival is in full swing this weekend, we thought it would be fun to look back a decade and remember the best films of the 2003 event. The award winners that year include American Splendor, Capturing the Friedmans, All the Real Girls, My Flesh and Blood, The Station Agent, Stevie, Thirteen, A Certain Death and Whale Rider. And other major movies premiering at the fest include The Cooler, The Shape of Things, Tupac: Resurrection, Pieces of April, The Weather Underground, Northfork and the Bob Dylan disaster Masked and Anonymous. The U.S. also got its first look at 28 Days Later, In America, Bus 174, Bend It Like Beckham, Laurel Canyon, The Secret Lives of Dentists and Irreversible. To commemorate such a great Sundance (which spotlighted some filmmakers returning this year, like David Gordon Green and Michael Polish), we’re spotlighting some of our favorite scenes from some of the movies listed above. Not...

Larry Charles doesn't direct a lot of movies, but when he does his star of choice is quite obvious. Though he has had a long career in television, working as a writer on shows like Seinfeld, Mad About You and The Arsenio Hall Show, since he made his way onto the big screen he has directed four features and three of them have starred Sacha Baron Cohen (the exception being 2003's Masked and Anonymous, which, strangely enough, starred Bob Dylan). From 2006 to 2012 Charles directed Cohen in character-based comedies Borat, Bruno and The Dictator, but for his next project he's found a new star. Variety has learned that Russell Brand has been cast as the lead in Larry Charles' Pierre Pierre. The script was writteh by Edwin Cannistraci and Frederick Seton and was featured on the annual Black List (a list of the most popular unproduced scripts written during a...

Oscar-nominated Fat City actress Susan Tyrrell has passed away at the age of 67, Austin360 reports.

A friend of the actress tells the site that Tyrrell died on Saturday in her home in Austin, Texas. A cause of death was not immediately available.

Remember other celebrities we lost this year

Tyrrell was diagnosed with thrombocythemia, a rare bone marrow disease, in 2000. Though she had both her legs amputated, Tyrrell continued to act, appearing in Masked and Anonymous and Kid Thing.<>

Read More >...

Susan Tyrrell, a Best Supporting Actress nominee in 1972 for director John Huston's Fat City, has died, her family confirms to People. According to susantyrrell.com, the actress died Sunday, and had been a resident of Austin, Texas, since 2008, it was reported by Austin360.com. In the John Huston boxing drama, which also starred Jeff Bridges and Stacy Keach, Tyrell, then 26, played Oma, a falling-down drunk. She later said that although Huston wanted to cast Faye Dunaway in the role, Tyrrell convinced the director to give her the job because a 26-year-old drunk would be more interesting than a 35-year-old one.

Susan Tyrrell, cult film staple and Academy Award nominee, passed away on Sunday at the age of 67. Although Tyrrell spent her career playing somewhat unsavory types, her talent did not go unrecognized. She made her transition from the theater to film with 1971's "Shoot Out," and, by the following year, was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in John Huston's "Fat City." She went on to star in over a dozen off-beat films, including "Angel" and "Cry-Baby." Her health began failing in the early 2000s; she lost both of her legs due to the rare blood disease Essential Thrombocythemia. Despite her ailments, Tyrrell continued to star in movies such as "Masked and Anonymous" (2003), "The Devil's Due at Midnight" (2004) and, most recently, David Zellner's "Kid-Thing." "Nothing was off limits with her -- she didn't mince words, she loved what she loved and she hated what she hated...She will be sorely missed,...

From the classic western "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" to the painful ego-trip that was "Masked and Anonymous," Bob Dylan has a pretty extensive, if varied, movie resume for a rock star.  But in a career that netted him a Best Song Oscar for his work on "Wonder Boys," Dylan has yet to see one of his albums adapted for the silver screen -- until now.  Dylan's  "Blood on the Tracks" will be turned into a feature length film from Brazilian-based Rt Features.  "Blood on the Tracks" is widely considered to be...

In recent years, Bob Dylan's work has come to the screen in films like Martin Scorsese's documentary No Direction Home , Todd Haynes' innovative biopic I'm Not There. and the bizarre, star-laden ensemble Masked and Anonymous (written by and starring Dylan himself). There's also said to be, in the works, a narrative feature to star Brad Pitt, based off his 1986 song, Brownsville Girl . Today, Rt Features reveals that they've secured the rights to another Dylan-based narrative, inspired by his 1975 album, Blood on the Tracks . Album highlights include Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue," (often likened to "Brownsville Girl" for its non-linear storytelling), "Idiot Wind," "Simple Twist of Fate," "Shelter from the Storm" and "Lily,...

Rourke Will Be The 254th Celebrity To Have Hands &

Footprints In Chinese Cement On Monday, October 31st

(Hollywood, Calif., October 18, 2011)–The most famous place in Hollywood, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (www.chinesetheatres.com), is set to honor its 254th celebrity, Oscar(R)-nominee Mickey Rourke, with his own hand and footprints ceremony on Monday, October 31 at 11:00 Am. The masters of ceremony and guest speaker will be announced.

Up next, Rourke can be seen in the visually-stunning 3D epic adventure Immortals, starring Henry Cavill, Luke Evans, Kellan Lutz, Isabel Lucas, Freida Pinto, Stephen Dorff, and John Hurt. Directed by Tarsem Singh, written by Charles Parlapanides and Vlas Parlapanides and produced by Gianni Nunnari, Mark Canton and Relativity’s CEO RyanKavanaugh, Immortals tells the story of the ruthless King Hyperion (Rourke), who leads his bloodthirsty army on a murderous rampage across Greece to find a deadly weapon that will destroy humanity.

As a followup to Uncas Blythe's most excellent introduction to Val Kilmer's musings on David Mamet's Spartan (2004), let's have a look at what the critics are saying about the film that, in some universe somewhere, goes on to win 17 Academy Awards.

"With the quasi-comic horror trifle Twixt," begins Joseph Jon Lanthier at the House Next Door, "Francis Ford Coppola joins the long list of narrative-conjurers to (mis)appropriate Edgar Allan Poe as a sober maestro of spook. A pallid, somber fictionalization of the author, played by Ben Chaplin, becomes Virgil to the Dante of Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer, looking likeably portly), a bargain-basement witch novelist who gets fittingly embroiled in a small-town murder mystery…. Twixt is Coppola in grindhouse mode, from Bruce Dern's cud-chewy performance as a possibly corrupt sheriff to the teen goth vampires, and proudly (anti-)sex symbols, that 'threaten' the town from across a...

Francis Ford Coppola's Twixt is kind of stupid and kind of amazing, a horror movie-fairytale hybrid with an inscrutable plot, some gorgeous images and two brief sections shot in 3-D. This isn't the great film Coppola's devotees have been waiting for him to make. But it's infused with more of Coppola's spirit, as we know it, than Youth Without Youth and Tetro, both of which were sluggish and self-serious. Twixt is a bit of a mess, but it's also joyful and wicked, with a great, roly-poly sense of humor about itself. In its imaginative Wtf-ness, it reminds me of Bob Dylan's gloriously whacked-out Masked and Anonymous, just the sort of thing you'd expect a crackpot genius left to his own devices to make.

The legendary Bob Dylan turned 70 years old on May 24th. This article takes a close look at his association with the movies…

Bob Dylan had his first acting gig aged 21 on British TV with a play called Madhouse on Castle Street. His eponymously-titled first album had been released but few people in Britain would have known him; this was a few months before Freewheelin’ hit the shelves and Dylan-fever (which is like Beatlemania, only less wild and more pretentious) swept the Western world. He was intended to play the lead but quickly proved that he wasn’t interested in learning lines and was perhaps more interested in his recent discovery of cannabis, so David Warner was hired as the lead and Dylan provided a Greek chorus to the action.

In its wisdom, the BBC has long since destroyed the footage so it’s not easy to gauge how people would...

Updated through 5/25.

"In his nonmusical writing, the teasing, puzzling, half-nonsensical 'novel' Tarantula pales in strangeness next to the matter-of-factly autobiographical Chronicles," Ao Scott wrote last week in the New York Times. "And, similarly, while cinematically inclined Dylanophiles might want to sample the eccentricities of Renaldo and Clara or Masked and Anonymous — or the brilliantly elusive kaleidoscope of Todd Haynes's I'm Not There — the full mystery of Bob Dylan is better grasped in documentary form." That piece ran as Film Forum's double Dylan doc feature opened and, as Dylan turns 70 today, there's one night, tonight, left to catch it: Da Pennebaker's Don't Look Now (1967) — at Alt Screen, Brynn White gathers critical takes and a clip — and Murray Lerner's The Other Side of the Mirror, a "compendium of Newport Folk Festival concert footage from the early 1960s."

Don't Look Back also screens tonight at the Glasgow Film Theatre as part...

Some musicians have a distinct advantage when it comes to launching an acting career, bringing celebrity and a fan base to the bargaining table that can add crucial appeal to their early prospects. However, musicians (and we use the term loosely), rappers and singers must also struggle with the preconceived notion that comes with them, to the ruin of many who cannot break free of their tabloid typecasting. But this can also be their greatest asset -- there is nothing audiences love more than watching someone defy expectation, other than perhaps a star, defying expectation. Many have tried, most have failed. Everyone from Michael Jackson to Mos Def, Method Man to Mick Jagger, have dabbled in acting with varying degrees of success. Most recently, Justin Timberlake has come out strong in "The Social Network," but we decided to focus on the early role, the first real performance of some of...

Larry Charles' directorial career got off to an unfortunate start with Masked and Anonymous back in 2003, a movie that, at the time, many called the worst of the year. He did manage to rebound from that, however, by helming Sacha Baron Cohen's films Borat and Bruno, as well as Bill Maher's documentary Religulous. Over the years he has also worked on such shows as Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage, and he generally seems to be doing some pretty interesting and edgy stuff in the world of comedy. So imagine my surprise when I read this week that his next project will be a movie called Pierre Pierre starring... Jim Carrey. This is either good news for Carrey or bad news for Larry, but I'm not yet sure which. According to Deadline New York [1], the movie will find Jim Carrey taking on the role of an obnoxious...

This could be interesting. Director Larry Charlies (Bruno, Religulous, Borat, the Bob Dylan collaboration Masked And Anonymous) has signed on to direct Jim Carrey in the comedy Pierre Pierre, according to Deadline's Mike Fleming. We last talked about this project back in 2008 when Jason Reitman was attached to take the directing reins. The film was described then as being about "a self-indulgent French nihilist who transports a stolen painting from Paris to London." The...

Y'all know Roger Ebert, right? Noted film critic from Chicago. Used to be on TV. Well Mr. Ebert's been around quite a bit, working the scene, schmoozing with celebrities, hitting the festival circuit and so on. Yesterday, he apparently took a dive into his archives and dug out this little gem of an image for today's Daily TwitPic.

Hit the rewind button to the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. It wasn't exactly a magical year for movies, with hits like "X2: X-Men United" and "Finding Nemo" balanced by the latter two "Matrix" movies, "Terminator 3" and the third "Lord of the Rings" movie (let's face it-- that one kind of drags on a bit). There was also "Masked and Anonymous," a little independent film written by and starring Bob Dylan and an ensemble cast that included, among others, Penelope Cruz. It wasn't very good. Ebert himself gave it only half a star. But...

Watch the world premiere of the latest Bob Dylan music video, "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'," exclusively at IFC.com.

    "Qui êtes-vous, Monsieur Bob Dylan?"

       --Jean-Pierre Léaud, in "Masculin, féminine"

Who are you, Mr. Bob Dylan? Less than two years ago, Dylanologists had a field day with "I'm Not There," Todd Haynes' smarty-pants hallucination evoking the freewheelin' singer-songwriter's iconic persona, unknowable as he perpetually reinvents himself. But rock 'n' roll's poet laureate already had a history with film, both appearing onscreen and being portrayed by other actors. In honor of Dylan's tough-bird, rollicking new record "Together Through Life," I'm bringing it all back home with a re-evaluation of who fares better on film: Dylan himself, or his imposters?

Dylan as himself, "Dont Look Back" (1967) vs. Cate Blanchett as Jude, "I'm Not There" (2007)

Nobody could resist this most obvious of aesthetic match-ups, a battle between the two most sophisticated, evocative,...

Mickey Rourke has revealed that he befriended Bob Dylan over a series of late-night phone calls. Rourke, whose new film The Wrestler is released this week, appeared alongside the musician in 2003 movie Masked And Anonymous. "I had a little part in some arty farty movie we did," he recalled. "He called me in the middle of the night and I'd say: 'Who's this?' And he'd say: 'Bob.' And I'd say: 'Bob who?' And he said: 'You know... (more)...

Val Kilmer is in negotiations to join Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx in the Michael Mann-directed Collateral. The DreamWorks Pictures/Paramount Pictures co-production is due to begin lensing in October. The Stuart Beattie-penned project stars Foxx as a Los Angeles cab driver forced to serve as a chauffeur to a contract killer on a string of hits. Kilmer will star as a detective on the trail of Cruise's character. Julie Richardson is producing the dramatic thriller, with Frank Darabont, Chuck Russell and Robert Fried serving as executive producers. After experiencing a bit of a lull with his career near the end of the '90s, Kilmer has been on a roll lately. He has seven projects in the can awaiting release: Wonderland, Blind Horizon, Stateside, Mindhunters, The Missing, Delgo and Spartan. He also stars onscreen in the Bob Dylan indie Masked and Anonymous. Kilmer is repped by WMA.

Angela Bassett has signed on to star opposite Bernie Mac in the Walt Disney Co. baseball comedy Mr. 3000. Being directed by Drumline helmer Charles Stone, Mr. 3000 centers on a retired Detroit Tigers player (Mac) who comes out of retirement when three of his base hits are disallowed, dropping him below the prized 3,000-hit plateau. Bassett will play a sports reporter who is Mac's love interest in the film. Roger Birnbaum, Gary Barber and Maggie Wilde are producing the project, which was penned by Eric Champnella and Keith Mitchell. Frank Marshall, Johnathan Glickman and Steven Greener are executive producing. Disney production exec Jason Reed is overseeing for the studio. Bassett, who has starred in such films as The Score, How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Waiting to Exhale, also appears in the upcoming Sony Pictures Classics drama Masked & Anonymous. Bassett is repped by CAA.

A Sony Pictures Classics film starring Billy Bob Thornton as an ex-convict on his way to redemption after serving a 19-year murder sentence will set the stage for the 2003 Sundance Film Festival as the opening-night film in Salt Lake City on Jan. 16. The Ed Solomon-directed Levity also features a name cast of Morgan Freeman, Holly Hunter and Kirsten Dunst. The Park City roster then kicks into gear the next night with the Premiere Category selection The Singing Detective, from Mel Gibson and Bruce Davey's Icon Prods. Gibson also stars in the Keith Gordon-helmed feature, which is about a writer (Robert Downey Jr.) who hallucinates musical numbers and paranoid plots. Robin Wright Penn, Adrien Brody and Katie Holmes round out the cast. Both star-heavy projects are indicative of the other selections in Sundance's Premiere Category, most of which star top-level Hollywood talent. Included in the set is the Larry Charles-helmed Masked and Anonymous, from Intermedia Film and Spitfire Pictures, which stars Bob Dylan as a musician who encounters a cast of characters played by Jessica Lange, Penelope Cruz, Val Kilmer, Jeff Bridges, Luke Wilson, Ed Harris, Angela Bassett and others on his way to a benefit concert after his release from jail. Al Pacino, Tea Leoni, Kim Basinger and Ryan O'Neal turn out in Miramax Films' People I Know from director Daniel Algrant. The drama, set for release next year after a postponement because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, finds Pacino as a New York publicist who gets drawn into the world of politics and celebrity when his famous actor-client becomes involved in a scandal. The star contingent continues with Lions Gate Films' Confidence, directed by James Foley. Dustin Hoffman, Edward Burns and Andy Garcia topline the story of a con man's latest scam that puts him in debt with the Mafia. Paul Giamatti, Donal Logue, Rachel Weisz and Morris Chestnut round out the cast. Fox Searchlight Pictures has two films in the Premiere Category with Jim Sheridan's In America, starring Samantha Morton and Paddy Considine, and Alex Proyas' Garage Days featuring Kick Gurry, Maya Stange and Pia Miranda.

Penelope Cruz missed Tom Cruise's 40th birthday celebrations yesterday - because she was filming with Bob Dylan. Cruz, who's shooting Masked & Anonymous, won't be able to join her hunky boyfriend until the weekend. Meanwhile, Cruise will be celebrating his 40th year with his parents and children Isabella and Connor in Florida.