Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan, how apt!
There is an encyclopaedia of information about Dylan out there. A click of the mouse will tell you he sang 1,923 songs in 119 concerts at 62 venues in 26 Canadian cities last year. And that his grandfather Zigman was born in Odessa, Russia, in 1875. Books, documentaries, Web sites devoted to analysing his allegory and metaphors -- you name it, and it's up somewhere.
Martin Scorsese still makes documentaries on the man, and artistes like Jack White of The White Stripes, PJ Harvey and REM's Michael Stipe still want to re-interpret his work.
Nothing new, because reinterpretation is a phenomenon that began early in Dylan's career, with people as different as Peter Paul & Mary and Jimi Hendrix paying tribute in their own way.
But the young man from Hibbing, Minnesota, who idolised James Dean, made up stories about himself and tried to portray himself as a rustic visionary despite thumbed copies of French poets Rimbaud and Baudelaire in his living room, is now an old man who -- as a Guardian commentator wrote last year -- still matters, despite his own reluctance to do so.
He matters because words still affect us. He matters because every time an adolescent gets addicted to the most famous contemptuous nasal drawl in recorded history, he opens a new door of perception. A new way of looking at the world, and at oneself.
Happy Birthday, Mr Tambourine Man, and let me wish you what you wished your son: May you stay forever young.