Rating: 
Summary: This Man is Your Land
Review: First of all - if you live outside of the U.S. and Canada, ignore Amazon[.com]'s claim that this is a Region 1 CD. It's Region 0 or Region Free if you will, and it plays beautifully anywhere in the world. Yes, it really does play beautifully. If you find any joy whatsoever in American folk or country music and you're interested in both the people as well as the music side of things, there probably isn't a DVD anywhere you'll appreciate owning more. There are white folk and country musicians galore in the U.S., but Ramblin' Jack Elliott is a step apart from all of them. Why? Well, he's the real thing. When we think of other names associated with white folk music - Pete Seeger, maybe, or over on the other much more commercial end of things, folks like the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary, they all were great talents who reproduced folk music, not people who sang the songs they lived. Please don't interpret this as a bad shot at these folks. One thinks of Studs Terkel's introduction at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival: "Whenever you see a young banjo player anywhere in the country, with a banjo waist high, head back, Adam's apple bobbing, you can say like Kilroy, Pete Seeger has been there." That's one legacy in American folk music, one of a great man who went forth, learned the songs of his land and brought them to us. Our debt to Pete Seeger is great. Ramblin' Jack Elliott is the other side of that coin. He went out and learned the land and then learned to sing its songs but as an expression of his own life. He made the land his own, thus, by their very nature, the songs too became his own, although he wrote nary a one of them. This wonderful story of America singing out through one of its really great bards, minstrels and troubadours is joyous indeed. There are of course some other points made to a lesser extent in the film and to a greater extent in the promotional material. It's true that Ramblin' Jack spent five years on the road with his mentor, Woody Guthrie, and that Bobby Zimmermann aka Bob Dylan spent a good bit of time with his mentor, Ramblin' Jack. People like to raise Dylan's name in connection with this film, although it's largely irrelevant. Ramblin' Jack handles the idea himself in a black-and-white interview from the 1960s, when Dylan still was new on the block: "Hell, I've been singin' like Bob Dylan for 20 years now." The film was made by Ramblin' Jack's daughter Aiyana, and much is made of daughter's search for her father, but that really isn't the focal point of the film. That is the big slice of America that Ramblin' Jack is and was. If think you know Woody Guthrie's song "This Land is Your Land," take a good look at this film. Afterward, you'll understand it much better. With Ramblin' Jack in mind, you might even switch the lyrics a bit: "This Man is Your Land ..."
Rating:
Summary: This Man is Your Land
Review: First of all - if you live outside of the U.S. and Canada, ignore Amazon[.com]'s claim that this is a Region 1 CD. It's Region 0 or Region Free if you will, and it plays beautifully anywhere in the world. Yes, it really does play beautifully. If you find any joy whatsoever in American folk or country music and you're interested in both the people as well as the music side of things, there probably isn't a DVD anywhere you'll appreciate owning more. There are white folk and country musicians galore in the U.S., but Ramblin' Jack Elliott is a step apart from all of them. Why? Well, he's the real thing. When we think of other names associated with white folk music - Pete Seeger, maybe, or over on the other much more commercial end of things, folks like the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary, they all were great talents who reproduced folk music, not people who sang the songs they lived. Please don't interpret this as a bad shot at these folks. One thinks of Studs Terkel's introduction at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival: "Whenever you see a young banjo player anywhere in the country, with a banjo waist high, head back, Adam's apple bobbing, you can say like Kilroy, Pete Seeger has been there." That's one legacy in American folk music, one of a great man who went forth, learned the songs of his land and brought them to us. Our debt to Pete Seeger is great. Ramblin' Jack Elliott is the other side of that coin. He went out and learned the land and then learned to sing its songs but as an expression of his own life. He made the land his own, thus, by their very nature, the songs too became his own, although he wrote nary a one of them. This wonderful story of America singing out through one of its really great bards, minstrels and troubadours is joyous indeed. There are of course some other points made to a lesser extent in the film and to a greater extent in the promotional material. It's true that Ramblin' Jack spent five years on the road with his mentor, Woody Guthrie, and that Bobby Zimmermann aka Bob Dylan spent a good bit of time with his mentor, Ramblin' Jack. People like to raise Dylan's name in connection with this film, although it's largely irrelevant. Ramblin' Jack handles the idea himself in a black-and-white interview from the 1960s, when Dylan still was new on the block: "Hell, I've been singin' like Bob Dylan for 20 years now." The film was made by Ramblin' Jack's daughter Aiyana, and much is made of daughter's search for her father, but that really isn't the focal point of the film. That is the big slice of America that Ramblin' Jack is and was. If think you know Woody Guthrie's song "This Land is Your Land," take a good look at this film. Afterward, you'll understand it much better. With Ramblin' Jack in mind, you might even switch the lyrics a bit: "This Man is Your Land ..."
Rating:
Summary: The last of the Ramblin' Jewish Cowboys from New York City
Review: I was fortunate enough to see this film at the 2000 Sundance Festival with a couple of musician friends. Leaving the theatre, we all agreed that it was the best single character documentary we had ever seen. Aiyana utelizes the help and stories from family and some very popular names in music to tell a wonderful life's story of her father, Jack Elliot, who may be the last true ramblin' man. He learned a great majority of his musical craft from spending time with Woody Guthrie. This was long after he had left his mother and father back in NYC. I can not possibly do the film justice by simply trying to summarize. There are only three things you need to know to make your decision by way of this armchair review. 1.) You will get to know the real Jack Elliot by way of many celebrities' stories as well as learning of Jack's own gentle and sometimes brutal honesty because that is what he was and is. 2.) Unless you have no hope of being anything but repulsed by hearing and learning about original and real "one man and his guitar" country / folk music, even though it is the foundation of where rock music comes from, you will like the music even more. And 3.) This film may violently burst the balloon of Bob Dylan fans that believe Dylan is a true original.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Misguided
Review: I went to a cowboy poetry reading in a small Wisconsin town about 5 years ago & my cousin used the above description for a poet friend of his. Ramblin' Jack is part of the "Wonderfully Misguided". I only recently heard about Ramblin' Jack after Arlo Guthrie mentioned him on NPR last month. Arlo sang an anti-war song that Jack had written & it intrigued me to find out more. The film was excellent. I would highly recommend it! Good luck Jack.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Misguided
Review: I went to a cowboy poetry reading in a small Wisconsin town about 5 years ago & my cousin used the above description for a poet friend of his. Ramblin' Jack is part of the "Wonderfully Misguided". I only recently heard about Ramblin' Jack after Arlo Guthrie mentioned him on NPR last month. Arlo sang an anti-war song that Jack had written & it intrigued me to find out more. The film was excellent. I would highly recommend it! Good luck Jack.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Misguided
Review: I went to a cowboy poetry reading in a small Wisconsin town about 5 years ago & my cousin used the above description for a poet friend of his. Ramblin' Jack is part of the "Wonderfully Misguided". I only recently heard about Ramblin' Jack after Arlo Guthrie mentioned him on NPR last month. Arlo sang an anti-war song that Jack had written & it intrigued me to find out more. The film was excellent. I would highly recommend it! Good luck Jack.
Rating: 
Summary: A delicate subject cooked overlong
Review: It's sad that this film is written like a term paper on "my dad" because Aiyana Elliott's dad is so interesting and the rest of the characters (especially her obviously talented mother) are a TRIP to watch. If only she didn't spend so much of the film panning the country roads as her deadpan voiceover (sounding as though she were standing in front of the classroom reading a book report) dominated. Just give us Ramblin Jack, his crazy womenfolk and his great guitar-strummin and that would have been enough! On another note, I did realize why he wasn't a bigger star -- on the footage shown of him and Johnny Cash playing together, Cash's rhythm was so much more clear and his playing just spot-on in comparison to the tonal and rhythmic laziness of Ramblin Jack Elliott. That's something that causes people to switch off the music after a while, even if they don't understand why.
Rating:
Summary: A delicate subject cooked overlong
Review: It's sad that this film is written like a term paper on "my dad" because Aiyana Elliott's dad is so interesting and the rest of the characters (especially her obviously talented mother) are a TRIP to watch. If only she didn't spend so much of the film panning the country roads as her deadpan voiceover (sounding as though she were standing in front of the classroom reading a book report) dominated. Just give us Ramblin Jack, his crazy womenfolk and his great guitar-strummin and that would have been enough! On another note, I did realize why he wasn't a bigger star -- on the footage shown of him and Johnny Cash playing together, Cash's rhythm was so much more clear and his playing just spot-on in comparison to the tonal and rhythmic laziness of Ramblin Jack Elliott. That's something that causes people to switch off the music after a while, even if they don't understand why.
Rating:
Summary: Now I Know Why He's Called RAMBLIN' Jack
Review: It's to stay one jump ahead of women like these. Jack nails it in the beercan episode commentary. Jack left home and never looked back because he is precisely the hen-peckable type. Falls into every female trap and has no other recourse than to run. Solid content, apart from appalling camera work -- especially in the "performance" segments. The scenes of whining women are close to intolerable. I really could have done without the daughter's input. . . and that ubiquitous ex-wife. . . whew! Ramble, Jack. For God's sake man, RAMBLE. Get out now!
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating, touching look at an overlooked figure
Review: This film is a fascinating character study and a touching look at the personal price people can pay for going their own way. Seeing the filmmaker, Elliott's daughter, trying to connect with her father while profiling him, is both sad and inspiring. The essence of the film seems to be summed up by Dave Van Ronk who tells Aiyana that he and countless others are grateful that Elliott roamed around, making music and being a folk treasure, but recognizes that his daughter never really had a father as a result. Her loss was our gain.
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