Updated Update: Dylan and Clooney

The Washington Post features great online discussions every weekday on a variety of subjects. One of them last week featured the producers of No Direction Home, the great PBS documentary on Bob Dylan directed by Martin Scorsese. The discussion answers the question of why the doc focused so much only on the early years of Dylan’s long career— there’s a ton of footage from then and very little from the 70s and 80s. However, the producers also offer the tantalizing info that they wish to do a follow-up doc (or two) on Dylan’s later work. Count me salivating.

Meawhile, George Clooney, who definitely knows how to work the circuit, has a new interview about his forthcoming film Good Night, and Good Luck. You can also see WP's short video (4:34) of Clooney and Strathairn discussing the film here.

Over at Slate, Jack Shafer takes Clooney to task for historical inaccuracies and suspect artistic choices such as making Murrow a saint and overstating Murrow's importance in bringing down McCarthy. I always appreciate background on historical films. The documentaries I’ve seen on McCarthy (and my father’s account) have always pointed to the Army hearings as the crucial event that effectively killed McCarthy’s crusade - in large part by letting Americans see what McCarthy was really like. This jives with Shafer’s account (which does get a bit cranky, but is quite valuable nonetheless for those of us too young to remember these events). His colleague, film reviewer David Edelstein, acknowledges Shafer’s criticisms, but says that for all that, it’s still a good film.

Finally, Clooney is planning a live broadcast remake of the seminal 70s film Network.