Category Archives: Movies

Eight Days A Week – A Fan Review, plus News on the DVD and Blu-ray

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Well, we saw Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years at a screening in Sydney, Australia last night – and it truly does live up to expectations.

The tale of the Beatles touring years is well-told in a (mostly) chronological order with some strong thematic elements sprinkled throughout. Great existing concert footage (remastered and with the sound remixed) sits comfortably alongside newly uncovered footage from fans taken at the time. There are also new interviews with Paul and Ringo (interspersed with archival interviews with John and George), and many observers, key players and fans including Richard Lester, Neil Aspinall, Sigourney Weaver, Elvis Costello, Larry Kane, and Whoopi Goldberg to name just a few. The addition of 30 minutes of pure, infectious performance from the Shea Stadium concert (as an added cinema-only bonus experience) was simply cream on the top.

Enough from me though. Here are some immediate post-movie thoughts from a big Australian Beatle collector and fan, Bruce Hamlin. Bruce runs The Beatles Records Information Service:

In a word: Fab, FAB, fab, etc.

So lets get it straight – this is not a movie of their concerts. Ron Howard has broken the Beatles career into 2 parts that are often quoted in magazines. The Touring Years (that go up to Candlestick Park or just after) and the rest, which is obviously The Studio Years.The end result of the touring stopping was Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. So that’s actually where this movie finishes (basically).

And what do we get for our money? Some nice and recent interviews with Paul and Ringo. Some very nice sound bites from George and John. There are lots of clips of live songs. Most, unfortunately, have small voice-overs that do tend to detract from them but the audio for the live stuff is great so it tends to make you forget the voice-overs.

Lots of clips from concerts that I havn’t seen before. And believe me, I do have lots in my own collection. Lots of relevant American (especially) newsreel footage of fans, press conferences, interviews with the boys and fans and some other talking heads. Instead of the usual musicians talking about how seeing the boys on Ed Sullivan made them pick up guitars and form bands, this time we get more of a female perspective [especially] how the American girls were affected by The Beatles. So that was an interesting difference to the usual.

It does go back to Hamburg and Liverpool, so it does start at the beginning and yes, we do get “Some Other Guy” from the Cavern. For Australians there was a few seconds of Adelaide footage, and maybe a blink’s worth of a Melbourne street scene! Hong Kong, Canada, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Italy but no really good concert footage from any of them.

The story linked together pretty well. I did really enjoy the movie. And I will be going to it again, especially as it’s only running for one week here.

Shea Stadium was tacked on at the end as a separate entity. Great to see it on the big screen. Some tech wizardry on some of the close ups, being brought up REAL close to the point of the picture distorting a bit. While we didn’t get the voiceovers that were in the released version, we also didn’t get the support acts and as with the original, they have played pretty loosely with the audio. BUT it still sounds great in the theatre with the great sound system.

All in all, like I said FAB! I really enjoyed it as a Beatles fan. I tried not to dissect it too much, just sat back and really enjoyed the movie.

As it’s only around for a few more days – get off your bums and go and see it NOW.
It will probably be on DVD by Christmas, but the big screen experience is the best way to catch it. My only real complaint was that it didn’t run for 30 hours !!!! That way we would really have got ALL the concert footage from everywhere. Thank you to StudioCanal and Event Theatres.

Bruce was correct about the DVD and Blu-ray being out in time for Christmas.

StudioCanal has just announced a November 21 release date for the UK, and November 18 in the USA. There will be 2-disc special edition, and single-disc standard editions in both DVD and Blu-ray formats:

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Special Edition Content and Features:

* Blu-ray/DVD 1 – Feature presentation
* Blu-ray/DVD 2 – Bonus Material (approx. 100 minutes of extras, highlighted below)
* 64 page booklet with an introduction from director Ron Howard, essay by music journalist and author Jon Savage and rare photos from The Beatles’ private archive
* Words & Music (24 mins) – John, Paul, George & Ringo reflect on songwriting and the influence of music from their parents’ generation, Lennon/McCartney writing for other artists, The Beatles as individual musicians, and the band as innovators. Also featuring Howard Goodall, Peter Asher, Simon Schama and Elvis Costello. The interviews with Paul and Ringo are previously unseen.
* Early Clues To A New Direction (18 mins) – A special feature touching on The Beatles as a collective, the importance of humour, the impact of women on their early lives and songwriting, and the band as a musical movement. Featuring John, Paul, George & Ringo, along with Paul Greengrass, Stephen Stark, Peter Asher, Malcolm Gladwell, Sigourney Weaver, Whoopi Goldberg, Richard Curtis, Elvis Costello and Simon Schama. Again the interviews with Paul and Ringo are unseen.
* Liverpool (11 mins) – The early days in Liverpool of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s are brought vividly to life by those who worked closely with them at that time including fan club secretary Freda Kelly, Allan Williams an early manager, and Leslie Woodhead multi-award winning documentary film director.
* The Beatles in Concert (12 mins) – Five great but rarely seen full length performances of The Beatles live in concert – Twist and Shout, She Loves You, Can’t Buy Me Love, You Can’t Do That and Help!

Additional Standard Bonus Features (on both Special and Standard editions):

* Three Beatles’ Fans
* Ronnie Spector and The Beatles
* Shooting A Hard Day’s Night
* The Beatles in Australia
* Recollections of Shea Stadium
* The Beatles in Japan
* An alternative opening for the film

Here’s the pack shot for the Deluxe Blu-ray version:edaw-deluxe-packshot

Sadly, there’s no Shea Stadium concert included. That would have been a nice bonus, but it looks like to could have possibly become part of a rights battle. That concert film footage is owned by a different company. Perhaps Shea will be released separately at some stage down the track. We can only hope.

Eight Days A Week – Excitement Builds

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On the day of the official launch of the new Beatle documentary film Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years, excitement is building.

This is the front page of the regular weekend lift-out in my local paper, The Sydney Morning Herald, today:img_2035img_2036

And this two-page article appeared in the paper’s Sunday edition two weeks ago:img_1928

Even The Big Issue, a great magazine that’s sold on the street in Australia to assist homeless, marginalised and disadvantaged people, has been getting Beatle-happy:img_1925img_1926

We’re off to the Sydney premiere this evening and really looking forward to seeing what director Ron Howard has done. Reports so far suggest his film hits just the right note as far as satisfying die-hard Beatle fans as well as those new to the band.

Eight Days A Week – The Hulu Extracts

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Hulu, which has the rights to show the new Ron Howard-directed Beatle film Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years, has begun uploading some extracts ahead of it being available to stream live from September 17.

There are five of these so far. First up is “How The Beatles Fought Segregation”:

Also, “When Paul Met John”:

A Whoopi Goldberg memory of seeing the Beatles at Shea Stadium:

The Beatles describe their writing process:

And a very fast fan summary of who they like best, and why:

Meanwhile, over at the official Eight Days A Week website there’s now a downloadable podcast featuring Giles Martin, the producer who supervised the audio for both the film and the new compact disc:

Of course, the best way to see Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years will be on the big screen in the cinema where, as a bonus, the film will be accompanied by screenings of a newly restored version of The Beatles At Shea Stadium – 30 minutes of rare footage from the historic 1965 concert:

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(Image copyright: Subafilms Ltd.)

 

Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years premieres in cinemas in the U.S. on September 16, in the U.K., France, Germany and Australia on September 15, and in Japan on September 22.

The Last Gig – Candlestick Park, 1966

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Now on the official Beatles YouTube site:

“It was to be the last ticketed concert for the band, ever. This short film was recorded at the last major event at Candlestick Park in August 2014, Paul McCartney’s ’Farewell to Candlestick: The Final Concert’.

See the exclusive presentation of The Beatles 30 min performance Shea Stadium, only in theatres along with Ron Howard’s Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years. From September 15.”

A Couple of Beatle DVD Finds

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We went “op shopping” recently and discovered a little bit of Beatle treasure.

First up a copy of Paul McCartney’s 2005 concert film In Red Square:

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It comes in an outer slip-case. Here’s the rear cover:McCartney Red 2

There’s also an inner booklet included with a range of images from the historic concert:McCartney Red 3

McCartney Red 4

The other DVD we found is a 2008 documentary called Magical Mystery Tour Memories:MMTM1

This is a documentary, a behind-the-scenes/memories of making the actual1967 Beatle film Magical Mystery Tour. Narrated by actor and Beatle friend Victor Spinetti (who not only appeared in MMT but also the films Help! and A Hard Day’s Night), there are lots of stories about what happened during the filming. They range from those who were officially there as part of the cast and crew, through to the many innocent bystanders who just happened to bump into the Beatle entourage as they travelled by bus around England making their largely improvised film. There are appearances and reminiscences from the likes of Paul’s brother Mike McCartney; Beatle Fan Club secretary Freda Kelly; former Beatle insider Tony Bramwell; their press officer Tony Barrow; and Neil Innes from the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band (and later The Rutles).     MMTM2MMTM3

It has to be said this is a fairly low-budget affair that received only mixed reviews when it was first released, but it’s an interesting documentary to have in the collection and contains some very nice stories and memories of what it was like making Magical Mystery Tour.

HULU Wins Streaming Rights to New Beatle Film

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The Beatles official site has just posted a press release about the new Ron Howard directed feature-length documentary film, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week.hulu 2

Hulu Launches Hulu Documentary Films with Highly-Anticipated Documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week from Director Ron Howard.                                                                        

Hulu has secured the exclusive US streaming video on-demand rights to Academy Award Winner Ron Howard’s feature documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week (working title). The film is produced with the full cooperation of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon and Olivia Harrison.

Debuting in theaters and on Hulu this fall, The Beatles: Eight Days A Week is based on the first part of The Beatles’ career (1962-1966) – the period in which they toured and captured the world’s acclaim. Ron Howard’s film will explore how John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr came together to become this extraordinary phenomenon, “The Beatles.” It will explore their inner workings – how they made decisions, created their music and built their collective career together – all the while, exploring The Beatles’ extraordinary and unique musical gifts and their remarkable, complementary personalities. The film will focus on the time period from the early Beatles’ journey in the days of The Cavern Club in Liverpool to their last concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1966. The Beatles: Eight Days A Week also includes rare and exclusive footage.

The Beatles: Eight Days A Week marks the first documentary feature to premiere exclusively on Hulu following its theatrical run. The film comes to Hulu in the company’s first-ever licensing deal with Apple Corps Ltd. The film will be the first to launch under the new Hulu Documentary Films arm, which will serve as a new home for premium original and exclusive documentary film titles coming to Hulu.

Teaser for The Beatles “1” DVD?

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The official Beatles website has emailed subscribers overnight teasing what could be the long-promised Beatles “1” DVD/BluRay – which has been rumoured to be in preparation for over a year now and will contain official versions of all the band’s promo videos and film-clips. _theBeatles1

There’s precious little other information apart from the Twitter hashtag #THEBEATLES1…..and a 16 second video on the Beatles official YouTube channel:

The Beatles website has been given over to a holding page with the countdown clip as well.

It’s all very cryptic, but must surely be leading up to the announcement of a video equivalent of the top-selling “1” CD and vinyl.

A Hard Day’s Night – On the Big Screen Across Australia

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An image of The Beatles forms the centrepiece for all this year’s advertising for the 2014 British Film Festival. The festival will be held in Australia between November 5 – 26.

That’s because the film A Hard Day’s Night is to be shown at big screen cinemas right across the country as part of the festival activities:

The long rich history of British cinema is represented in the festival’s ‘Six From The 60s’ retrospective, with six standout films from the era including a digitally restored, 50th anniversary print of Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night – a day in the life of The Beatles at the height of Beatlemania.

Check out the location and time listings for when AHDN is coming to a big screen near you.

Australian A Hard Day’s Night – BluRay and DVD

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Finally got hold of an Australian, two-disc, BluRay/DVD edition of the 50th anniversary release of A Hard Day’s Night.

Not much to show really. We here in “Region B” get a low-cost, very basic set in a standard BluRay blue plastic box….not even a booklet or insert inside:

AHDN frontAHDN rearAHDN BluRay1AHDN DVD1The BluRay special features are The Beatles: The Road to A Hard Day’s Night – An Interview with author Mark Lewisohn; In their Own Voices – The Beatles on A Hard Day’s Night; Anotomy of a Style – a piece on Richard Lester’s methods; Picturwise – A featurette on Richard Lester; Audio Commentary – by the cast and crew; and a new trailer for the film.

The DVD adds: You Can’t Do That! – the making of AHDN; The Running Jumping Standing Still Film – Richard Lester’s 1960 short film; Things They Said Today – a 2002 documentary; Audio Commentary – by the cast and crew; and the new trailer for the film.

In Australia the film is distributed by Umbrella Entertainment.

Help! – Coming on BluRay in June

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Help!, will be the next Beatle film to be released on Blu-ray. It will join last year’s releases of digitally restored copies of the Yellow Submarine and Magical Mystery Tour feature films on Blu-ray, DVD and on iTunes. Presumably, as this is a Blu-ray only release, the 2007 DVD release of Help! remains current.

The group’s second feature film makes its June 24 Blu-ray debut as a single-disc package, pairing the digitally restored film and 5.1 soundtrack with an hour of extra features including an introduction by the film’s director, Richard Lester, and an appreciation written by Martin Scorsese to be included in the booklet.

The Beatles official site has the full press release with details.

Pre-order details will be published shortly.