Is it a good film? Sure. Is it great? Probably not. It is definitely an interesting excursion into artiness.

Over the past few years, the biopic has become overly cliched, with so many people's lives becoming more and more similar as they are played in broad strokes. For example, watch Ray and Walk the Line, two films about two vastly different artists, whose lives are suspiciously similar when seen on film. I am sure that had Todd Haynes elected to take a more straightforward approach we would have seen something more like those two movies.

Instead, he has taken a much more experimental approach, daring to do something different with the genre. I am sure it helps to have such an intriguing subject as Bob Dylan.

Audio/Video. The audio is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, and it sounds quite good. It has a fullness that does justice to the plentiful Dylan music that peppers the soundtrack. Video is anamorphic widescreen in a ratio of 2.35:1 and it looks quite good, presenting crisp black and white and nice color sequences. Nothing to complain about.

Extras. This two-disk collector's edition has a nice complement of bonus material.

Disk 1:

• Commentary. This track features by director/co-writer Todd Haynes. I sampled the track and it is an interesting one, although I found I could only listen to it a little bit at a time. There is something about the way he talks that kind of gets to me. He knows what he is talking about, but he has an air of self-importance that bugs me.
• On-Screen Song Lyrics. This is a nice feature. If you want to see the lyrics but don't want subtitles on all the time, you can turn this on to see those lyrics.
• Song Selections. This lets you jump to each of the songs; essentially it is a scene select function.
• An Introduction to the Film. This is broken down into four text sections and help give some insight into Haynes' film, although they also seem to hype it up as some absolute masterpiece as it looks inside the make up of what makes Bob Dylan tick. The sections are called: "Who's Not There: Six Faces of Dylan," "Tangled Up in Clues: By Ann Powers," "Decoding an Entertaining Enigma," and "Notes on I'm Not There: By Greil Marcus."

Disk 2:

• Deleted Scenes. Two scenes are included: "Silver Club Bathroom" featuring Cate Blanchett's Jude doing dope and "Mrs. Baker" features Gere's Billy the Kid. I like the Blanchett scene, but could not say whether it would have added or detracted from the film proper. (2 minutes)
• Alternate/Extended Scenes. Four scenes are included: "Tombstone Blues" "Hattie Carroll" "Goin' to Acapulco" and "Pressing On." The best thing about them is listening to the music. I'd be hard pressed to tell you quite what was different here without going back to the film. (19 minutes)
• Outtakes. Watching them cut up on set, flub lines, and some other oddities strung together is pretty entertaining. (4 minutes)
• Auditions. Marcus Carl Franklin and Ben Whishaw are the featured players here. It is always interesting to see these recordings, watching how they seem to nail the character right out of the gate. (4.5 minutes)
• A Tribute to Heath Ledger. This is one of Ledger's final roles. In honor of his work, this is a classy piece stringing together a number of Ledger's scenes. All of it is set to a Dylan tune that I do not recognize. (3 minutes)
• A Conversation with Todd Haynes. This is an in-depth interview about the genesis of the film. It was interesting, but I found I could not pay attention throughout the entire running time. (42 minutes)
• Making the Soundtrack. This is an interesting look into the music, considering just how important music is to this film. Interviews go into how they went about designing scenes around specific songs. (21 minutes)
• The Red Carpet Premiere. This is footage of the cast and crew arriving at the premiere, included are interview snips, all of them clearly recognizing just how different an approach this was. (2.5 minutes)
• Trailer Gallery. This includes the two theatrical trailers as well as a series of previously unreleased "Flash Card" trailers set to "Subterranean Homesick Blues." These unreleased trailers feature a long edit, a short edit, and then each of the Dylans separately. They can be viewed all in a row. (21 minutes)
• Stills Gallery. A ton of stills from the film, featuring all of the splintered Dylans.
• Dylanography. This contains a listing of all of Dylan's albums, films, books, as well as a listing of reference materials. We also get to see the original proposal from Haynes about the film. Finally, we get Haynes' notebook, although I am not sure what I should be looking for when looking at the storyboards.