Pop Culture Roundup Oct. 30, 2007

The Hollywood Reporter reviews the new DVD The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965.

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Alanis Morisette has joined the cast of "Radio Free Albemuth," an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick work.

The Canadian pop singer plays Sylvia, a woman who shows up in the vision of a record label executive named Nick (Jonathan Scarfe) as a glamorous singer.

In reality, she's an ordinary woman in unexpected remission from lymphoma who, after appearing in Nick's visions, gets a job as his secretary. She becomes his soul mate thanks to the pair's shared spirituality and visions.


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Director Guillermo del Toro is producing a TV mini-series based on Neil Gaimin's Death comic book character and wants Gaimin to direct.

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Shout! Factory is releasing DVDs of Johnny Cash's 1976 and 1977 Christmas TV specials.

Johnny and June Carter Cash went to their homes in Bon Aqua, and Hendersonville, Tennessee to tape Johnny Cash Christmas 1976. After opening the show, Johnny takes guest Tony Orlando for a ride around his property, teasing him about country versus city life, and promising that "June makes the best snake and potatoes around." In addition to several stellar performances, including "Christmas As I Knew It," the special includes a medley of songs from Stephen Foster, "a man from the North," Cash says, "who wrote such great things about the South." Johnny Cash Christmas 1976, which originally aired December 6, 1976, on CBS, also features special guests Roy Clark, Merle Travis, Barbara Mandrell, and Billy Graham.

Johnny Cash Christmas 1977 includes an all-star tribute to Elvis Presley, who had passed away two months prior. Taped at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry House, fellow Sun Records labelmates and rockabilly pioneers Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison join Cash on "This Train Is Bound For Glory" in memory of Presley, whose affinity for such sacred music was well known. In addition to a selection of Christmas songs, many hit singles are performed on this special, including Perkins's "Blue Suede Shoes," Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman," and Lewis's 1957 Sun smash "Whole Lot Of Shakin' Going On." Cash goes on to recall a life-changing holiday season he experienced while stationed in Germany in the early 1950s. "I was lonesome, homesick and had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life," he explains. "But one day I walked four miles through the snow to a little pawn shop where there was a guitar in the window with a five-dollar price tag."

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