Who would go see a movie by the name of, I dunno, The Film Where Adam Ant Deconstructs His Psyche unless you really loved Adam Ant? Well, maybe quite a few folks. That was a bad example on my part.

Let's say a film is released what is written by and starring a rock star who is renowned for stunning feats of self-obsession with regards his work. Who would go see that, unless they really loved that particular artiste?

Not very many folks, is what I'm guessing. I mean hell, maybe Justin Timberlake is just about the most fascinating motherfucker in Popular Culture what you ever did see, but if he goes off and makes a film about it, chances are I'm gonna stay at home, maybe watch something about GG Allin shitting on folks.

But the point is, some folks will go and see the Timberlake opus, and they'll come away yacking about how it was profound and witty and incredibly sharp with regards the tearing apart, or, indeed, the accentuating of a mythos.

Or some such motherfucking waffle.

And everyone else goes, "Yeah? Well I thought it was pretentious piss spraying from the cocks of demons." Or something equally insightful.

Which brings The Duke to this piece by the name of Masked And Anonymous, a film about Bob Dylan trying to figure out who in the hell Bob Dylan might really be. And also about America. And also about the failed ideals of the sixties.

All that jazz.

Some folks maybe expected that it might have something to talk about other than Bob Dylan, and sure, it does on occasion say some other stuff, like "The" or "Hello", other words not immediately connected with the Zimmerman cannon. But these few syllables did nothing for these folks, so what happened was that Roger Ebert complained about how it was the biggest motherfucking vanity project what he ever did see. I mean, really, seemed to be the point of Ebert's critique, Dylan might just as well have spunked all over the screen for two hours.

Harry Knowles, over at The Harry Knowles Digest, saw fit to fling it into his Worst Of 2003 list.

Chances are these fellas never sat in the dark listening to Every Grain Of Sand or Ballad In Plain D. Chances are they probably don't even care that Another Side Of Bob Dylan is among the wittiest records ever produced, in as far as a recording artist happily throwing bait to his fan base might go.

Hell, they probably thought Infidels sucked, too.

When those opening scenes graced the screen, stock-footage of riots and brutality culled from the archives of co-financers The BBC, and an Asian rock band start singing My Back Pages in their native tongue, these folks, these critics, they probably just thought it was some kind of hilarious punk cover like when Blink 183 or The Some 41's do the Married With Children theme song. They probably didn't care that it signified something, a theme, by God, something most soundtracks in the last few years have forgotten all about, something bypassed in favour of the latest unreleasable pish to be cast off Tupac's third record or something. Masked And Anonymous makes its soundtrack mean something.