Even a nice chianti wouldn't help you wash down this lump of tear-jerking twaddle. Thank the gods that Anthony Hopkins is around to play Burt Munro, a New Zealander in his seventies who dreams of racing his 1920 Indian Scout motorcycle ontah's Bonneville Salt Flats. Naturally, his dream comes true, or there wouldn't be a movie. But did the movie, which features an exciting climactic race in which Burt sets a world record, have to include so many numbing and heartwarming encounters between Burt (he died in 1978) and a transvestite hotel clerk (Chris Williams), Burt and a randy widow (Diane Ladd), Burt and- oh, I can't go on. Writer-director Roger Donaldson (The Bounty) can't seem to resist the obvious. Luckily, Hopkins can. He finds the humor and grit in this deaf geezer who overcomes his bad ticker and swollen prostate to beat the odds.

“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."