To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Concert for George event at London’s Royal Albert Hall on November 29 2002, the Harrison Estate, film distribution company Abramorama, and Craft Recordings have announced a global theatrical screening of the film of the same name.
The Concert for George is to be shown – for one night only – in select theatres around the world on November 29, 2022:
First released in 2003, the GRAMMY®-winning concert film captures the concert event which celebrated in spectacular style the life and music of George Harrison. It features performances by Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Tom Petty, Ravi Shankar, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston and many others.
You now have the opportunity to experience the concert on the big screen in immersive Dolby Atmos sound for the first time – newly remastered by GRAMMY-winning engineer Paul Hicks. The anniversary screenings will also feature a brand-new introduction by Olivia and Dhani Harrison.
Paul Hicks has also produced a new Dolby Atmos mix for the film’s accompanying Concert for George soundtrack album – available now on digital platforms. Listen here.
Certified 8 x Platinum by the RIAA, the acclaimed 27-track album is also still available in a variety of existing physical formats including a 180-gram 4-LP box set; 2-CD/2-DVD and 2-CD/2-Blu-Ray box set; and a 2-CD package. Order here.
This is a really special film of what was an amazing, star-studded tribute to George filled with top performances of his songs. It would be well worth seeing again on the big screen, and with great sound.
To celebrate the release this week of the Disney+/Peter Jackson marathon re-cut of the original Let It Be footage, here are some of the movie theatre lobby cards (and a poster) from the 1970 movie-length version, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg:
In the vacuum of the year-long delay surrounding Peter Jackson’s film The Beatles: Get Back, the director has given us something of a holiday treat by releasing this terrific sneak peek teaser:
The sound, colour and clarity are fantastic, as is the mood of joy depicted.
Now, Jackson is at pains to say that this is neither a trailer nor a completed sequence from the film, but rather something to give us a flavour of what to expect.
It’ll therefore be interesting to see how the finished product comes up, because anyone with enough footage (and Jackson has more than 56 hours of it!) can edit together just the fun moments and make it look like everything with the band was hunky dory. We know this was not the case and that they were getting on each other’s nerves for quite a lot of the time as well.
However, this teaser is such fun to watch. It’s great to see The Beatles clowning around and enjoying themselves. We just hope there’s not too much history being revised.
From the web: “Acclaimed filmmaker Peter Jackson has released an exclusive sneak peek of his upcoming documentary The Beatles: Get Back for fans everywhere to enjoy. The 5-minute special look is available to fans worldwide on TheBeatles.com and streaming on Disney+.
Jackson said, “We wanted to give the fans of The Beatles all over the world a holiday treat, so we put together this five-minute sneak peek at our upcoming theatrical film The Beatles: Get Back. We hope it will bring a smile to everyone’s faces and some much-needed joy at this difficult time.”
The feature-length film is set to open in theatres on August 27, 2021.
Imagine you woke up one day and there were no Beatles.
No one you speak to has ever heard of them, and there are no references to the band or their songs online, in music stores, libraries, or anywhere. But….you can remember them clearly, and you know how to play their songs.
That’s the premise of an interesting new comedy movie coming out later this year called Yesterday. It comes from Danny Boyle (who directed Slum Dog Millionaire and Trainspotting), and Richard Curtis (the writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually).
Jack (played by Himesh Patel) is a struggling singer-songwriter who dreams of making it big, but his career is going nowhere. His biggest supporter is his best friend, Ellie (Lily James). Then, something mysterious happens. During some sort of global electrical blackout, Jack gets hit by a bus and wakes up to discover that The Beatles have never existed. Only thing is, he remembers them clearly, starts to perform their songs, and from there things really start to get interesting….
Yesterday looks like it will be real fun for Beatle fans. It is due in movie theatres on June 28.
Speculation and rumours that there would be a number of additional elements accompanying the forthcoming Imagine John Yoko book (due on October 9) has had an on again/off again nature over the last few days.
The story so far…..
Officially, all we know is that the book is happening, as is a cinema release of the John Lennon and Yoko Ono film Imagine, announced this week: This is the 1972 film with each of the songs from Imagine portrayed (plus four songs from the Ono LP FLY, recorded at the same time) in between glimpses into the lives of John and Yoko, plus some fun sequences featuring the pair and a host of celebrity mates. It looks like it’s the original 70 minute cut of the film, plus an additional 15 minutes or so of bonus material.
If you’d like to go along and see the movie on the big screen there’s a special site set up find out where it is on near you and you can book tickets. Screenings start from September 17.
We also now know that there will be definitely be a DVD and Blu-ray release of the 1972 Imagine film, coupled on the one disc with Gimme Some Truth – The Making of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ Album which dates from 2000 and is directed by Andrew Solt:Gimme Some Truth is a surprisingly good examination of the recording process, a fly-on-the-wall window on Lennon in the studio creating the Imagine album that stands the test of time. The DVD and Blu-ray will be available from October 5, and Amazon is taking pre-orders now. There will be bonus material included, but it has not yet been revealed just what this will be. These two films will be great to have in remixed sound, 5.1 mixes (if that is your thing), and fully restored visual content.
And that leads us to what hasn’tbeen announced yet regarding the last piece in the puzzle: the audio from the Imagine sessions.
There’s been lots of talk about a super deluxe box set; a single CD; a double CD; and a double LP (with a limited edition in clear vinyl for collectors too). Depending on who you believe this is about to be officially announced (like in the next few days, with an October 9 release date), or this part of the Imagine re-issue project has been delayed and we won’t see it until at least February, 2019. (This courtesy of Lennon producer, Jack Douglas, who apparently stated at the Chicago Fest for Beatles last weekend that the project had been shelved to February next year).
Until something official comes out it all remains speculation, but the big box set (which will be audio only) will likely contain four CDs, plus two Blu-rays of material. On these will be some 140 tracks – which is HUGE!
In the box we’ll get the remixed stereo Imagine album, plus singles and extras; outtakes from the album, singles and extras; the Quadraphonic album remastered; raw studio mixes; plus a host of other audio content. For example, someone well-connected to the project has posted this as the content on CD2:
CD 2 – ELEMENTS & OUTTAKES Elements Mixes and Album & Single Outtakes ELEMENTS MIXES Imagine (Strings only) Jealous Guy (Piano, bass & drums) Oh My Love (Vocals only) How? (Strings only) ALBUM OUTTAKES Imagine (Original demo recorded at Ascot) Imagine (Take 1) Crippled Inside (Take 3) Crippled Inside (Take 6 alternate guitar solo) Jealous Guy (Take 9) It’s So Hard (Take 6) I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier (Take 25) Gimme Some Truth (Take 4) Oh My Love (Take 6) How Do You Sleep? (Takes 1 & 2) How? (Take 31)
That’s just for one CD. Those two Blu-rays alone will contain a massive amount of additional audio and this release (if it comes about) will set a precedent for the Apple/Universal box set re-issue approach so far. There will be raw studio mixes; “elements” mixes with instruments and voices separated out; documentary content about the evolution of the songs; plus interview material from the time of Imagine with John and Yoko included. To date the breadth of material planned for release is unprecedented.
The promotional music site Ultimate Classic Rock jumped the gun today and published an article called “John Lennon’s Imagine Album Explored in a Six-Disc Box Set“. As you can see if you click through, they’ve subsequently taken that story down, possibly with a big rap across the knuckles form Apple/Universal….
We reckon this big release program WILL happen. It’s just a matter of when.
UPDATE: The official Lennon site has now uploaded a teaser Imagine the Music page and a video (a beautiful short extract of just the isolated vocals from ‘Oh My Love’). Looks like we’ll know exactly what is on offer on August 23, when The Ultimate Deep Listening Experience will be officially announced.
“When I was going through it, I was just struck by the elegance of the composition and how much they fit the era that I grew up in music, and again made me think how much I wouldn’t have even had the life I had if George Martin hadn’t done what he did,” Leon said. “He bridged the gap between an interpretive producer and a creative producer, which was the thing that I wanted to do.”
The recording will be out on November 10 on CD and digital download on the Atlas Realisations label. Then, in January 2018 to celebrate George Martin’s birthday, a 2LP vinyl edition will also be released.
The track listing:
1-5 The Pepperland Suite (Original music written for the film Yellow Submarine)
6-9 Live and Let Die Suite (Original music written for the film Live And Let Die)
10-12 Three American Sketches for Violin & Chamber Orchestra
13 Judy’s Theme
14-16 Under Milk Wood Overture (Incidental music to Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas)
17 Belle Etoile (* First recording)
18 Waltz in D Minor for Flute & Chamber Orchestra
19 Prelude for Strings
20-29 The Mission Chorales (* First recording of the original sketches written for the film The Mission)
And here’s a short background video featuring Craig Leon talking about how the project evolved:
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 music is performed by 
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