Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
OK, Here It Goes…
- Edward Norton nails Pete Seeger’s speaking voice.
- It looks a lot better than director James Mangold’s last movie.
- Umm… good job making everything look like early ’60s NYC, I guess.
Look, I am predisposed to hate A Complete Unknown—not because I’m some kind of Dylan nut but because, like all right-thinking people, I hate music biopics, which may just be the very worst kind of movie. (Yes, we all have our exceptions; mine is Mike Leigh’s Gilbert and Sullivan film Topsy-Turvy, if that counts, and let’s say Coal Miner’s Daughter if it doesn’t.) It’s a genre that can’t avoid cliché because it’s constructed entirely of cliché and that rewards impersonation rather than acting.
So what could go wrong here? Let’s start with Timothée Chalamet, who I like plenty. To quote Pamela Thurschwell on Twitter, "I like Timothee Chalamet as an actor. I’m concerned that he, and his whole generation, is not mean enough to play Bob Dylan." I cosign that despite thinking he was pretty convincing as a guy who started an interplanetary holy war. (Also credit to Chalamet for delighting students in Dylan's hometown of Hibbing while researching the role.)
The trailer makes it seem that the film, which is due out this December, centers on a love triangle between Bob, Suze Rotolo (who is called “Sylvie Russo” here, for legal reasons I guess), and Joan Baez. That sounds like a bad movie to me. I’m sure there will be more to it—a clash between Seeger and Dylan, and Bob battling the demons of stardom, and so forth. But even if it’s a “good movie,” I’m guessing that will be in the dullest sense of that phrase: well-made, tastefully acted, making a few unoriginal points clearly. But really, what would a good Dylan biopic even be? What story about him you want to see on the screen that wouldn’t be rendered immediately trite once it was enacted?
While Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There was often annoying and fundamentally flawed conceptually, the 2007 film has moments that feel deeply true to Dylan. We've already had a great film about the New York folk scene of that era, 2013's Inside Llewyn Davis from the Coen brothers. Hell, Walk Hard (which should have killed off music biopics for good in '07) gets closer to understanding Dylan’s art with this song than most movies do to the essence of the musicians whose life stories they tell.
I will say that I am very glad to learn that the movie is “based on” (very loosely, I imagine) Elijah Wald’s incredible Dylan Goes Electric, the Dylan book to read if you think you really don’t need to read another Dylan book. But honestly, I’d rather watch a dramatization of the part in the 1966 Playboy interview where he goes on a speedfreak jag and lies about his past.
Best Buy Introduces New Way to Sell You Old Crap
Move (virtually) over, will.i.am and Tupac, there’s a new hologram in town and his name is “Gram.” (“Hol” would be a little too 2001 for comfort.) He’s the new “spokeshologram” (which really should have a hyphen in there somewhere...) for Best Buy, Adweek reports, and he’ll be appearing in ads for the Richfield-based electronics dealer. This comes as part of a brand refresh meant to bring some of the “sparkle” back to buying consumer electronics, according to Jennie Weber, Best Buy's chief marketing officer. Consumers are no longer eagerly snatching up the shiniest new gadget, Weber told the Strib’s Nicole Norfleet, so they “may need help figuring out how a piece of tech could be utilized to best support their lives.” Quite an elegant way of saying Best Buy’s new goal is to convince you that you need shit that you don't actually want. This, somehow, better positions the company to capitalize on "the next era of AI-focused tech innovation," Adweek concludes. In addition to birthing Gram, Best Buy has also introduced a new slogan ("Imagine That”) and added a touch of magenta in its spiffied-up logo. 21st century, here comes Best Buy!
Burning Trash to Save the Earth
The thing with environmental regulations is, big polluters will do anything they can to tiptoe around them. For instance, last year Minnesota passed a law ordering utilities to use carbon free sources exclusively by 2040. The law defines “carbon free,” plainly enough, as “a technology that generates electricity without emitting carbon dioxide.” Burning wood, trash, or coal? That emits carbon dioxide. But after some input from utilities companies, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is suggesting that so long as the carbon is captured, it’s not really emitted, reports Madison McVan at the Minnesota Reformer. You have to wonder how many hours they spent devising that semantic strategy. Like my mom used to tell me, “If you’d put all the energy that you spent into complaining about having to clean your room into just cleaning your room, you’d be done already.” There’s a motherly lesson in there for utility companies.
Moriarty Ends Prosecution of Pregnant Drug Users
Effective immediately, Hennepin County will no longer prosecute pregnant drug users, Bring Me the News reports. "Instead of stopping people who struggle with addiction from using drugs, punitive policies make them afraid to seek the crucial prenatal care, health care, and drug treatment they need,” according to Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty. All pending cases will be dropped, and the county attorney’s office will make efforts to expunge past convictions. I don’t have anything clever to say about this. Addicts will receive medical care without being locked up for their addictions, and that’s good.
