The Mystic Masseur, the first film version of a novel by Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul, is set in Trinidad's Indian community during the 1940s. And thanks to the clever, caring touch of director Ismail Merchant, working from a script by Caryl Phillips, this steadily engrossing film captures the book's bracing humor and humanity. Merchant gets the details right as Ganesh (Aasif Mandvi in a vivid performance), a schoolteacher with his late father's power for healing, realizes his dream to write books that touch the spirit even if he can't summon the power to smash the brick wall of British colonialism.

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."