Seems the Mouse will offer new Beatles content on its channel every late autumn/early winter? It‘s a good new tradition, and far better than remakes of cartoons, Disney. Anyway: Beatles 64, produced by Martin Scorsese, is a documentary heavily based on the contemporary 1964, documentary „What‘s Happening? The Beatles in the USA“ by Albert and David Maysles, with additional footage consisting mainly of a) interviews of the fans (female and male) who got interviewed back in the day and/or are famous now (David Lynch, for example), b) interviews with Ringo and Paul now, c) post Beatles interviews with John and George from the 70s and in George‘s case 80s and 90s, d) interviews with surviving black musicians the Beatles themselves were fannish about, and e) news reels (mainly American, but also some British). All of which are focused on the year in which Beatlemania went stateside, the impact the Beatles had on the US during their first tour there, and vice versa.

Now I did see the original documentary movie ages ago. Compared with, say, Let it Be (the movie) versus Get Back (the three part series by Peter Jackson), there‘s far less „new“ (i.e. new to casual or not-fans) footage, and no new interpretation as to why the Beatles in 1964 made it so big in the US (when previous attempts by Brian Epstein to get the Americans interested in later 1963 had been rebuffed) - it‘s the old „the US was shocked and depressed because of the Kennedy assassination (indeed this new movie opens with Kennedy footage), and then the Fab Four with their energy and songs brought much needed joy and cheer to the national consciousness“ theory, essentially. But I found the overall result still worth watching: from a fannish point, naturally, because the intervening decades didn‘t diminish the impact of the young Beatles in their charm, energy, occasional snark, and Giles Martin (as in, son of George Martin) mixed and cleaned up those concert excerpts amazingly, sound wise. But also because those interviews with the fans - both from the original documentary - and I don‘t recall that many, Scorsese must have inserted unused footage, when they‘re teens, and now, the women looking back and talking about why this was so important for them - are very poignant, as are the likes of Smokey Robin and Ronald Isley saying what it meant to them that the Beatles not just sang their songs but also their praises in interview after interview (at a time when white musicians praising black musicians and naming them as influences wasn‘t yet common). Or Jamie Bernstein (daughter of Leonard B and Felicia) describing how she and her siblings made their parents watch that first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, intercut with tv footage of 1960s Leonard Bernstein refuting the (then, at the start of it all) common tropes of Beatles (or any) pop music as dumb and unworthy declaring the lads and their songs to be innovative and amazing. Or 1960s Betty Friedan (!!!! Had not known this!) in black and white declaring that the Beatles were offering a new form of masculinity, versus the traditional macho tight lipped square jawed one.

(Sidenote: she‘s talking about their public personae, of course, not about their actual personalities, which she hardly could have been familiar with.)

Nitpicks: Cynthia Lennon was with her husband during that 1964 trip. Now it was a very deliberate decision to keep her out of the original documentary, as the fact that one of the four new teen idols was already married as deemed not conductive to fannish adoration and marketing, but as far as I know she‘s still alive, and you‘d think for a 2024 movie, she‘d be a great witness to interview, being simultanously an insider and an outsider. As it is, she‘s never as much as mentioned directly. You do hear at one point John talk to her, saying something like „Cyn, look!“ off camera, and late in the movie you see two or three photographs showing her and John sitting next to each other in the train, but otherwise she‘s still Invisible Woman. Now for all I know, it could be that she‘s not able, health wise, to be interviewed, but if that‘s not the case: missed opportunity, Scorsese!

(On the other hand, he did get Ronnie Spector, whom I did assume was dead already, talking about how she rescued the boys from being locked into their NY hotel rooms by fannish adoration, smuggling them out and into Harlem, where at that point no one knew or cared who they were when they went clubbing with Ronnie. This was great.)

In conclusion: if you are feeling somewhat in the doldrums and want to be cheered up and are not opposed to a glimpse in the 1960s, this documentary might just be the ticket. Those songs and their performers and writers work as well as ever. (But then I would say that.) (They do, too!)

Did you have opinions on Now and Then? Also, I have the impression that Get Back has significantly shifted the narrative on the band's history, so I'd love to know your thoughts on that. is what lurkinghistoric wants to know.

Now and Then: like with Free as a Bird in the 1990s, I have a twofold opinion. Musically speaking, I wish they hadn't, because while neither song is bad, they're both just okay, and one of the great things about The Beatles is that they ended on such high note with Abbey Road, that there never was a period of "just okay" or decline. Otoh, on a human level, I think it's both touching and understandable that they tried to do this, given there were some unfinished demo tapes of John's around. But look, I've never been tempted to seek out the song to hear it again and again, the way I would with songs of theirs that I really care about:

Get Back shifting the narrative: I think the process of the shifting narrative started years before that; Philip Norman is a useful weatherpole in this regard, going from repeating the same old clichés in his preface to the reedition of Shout! in 2001 to completely changing his tune re: Paul in 2008. (And now he's come around to George, God help us, and is surprised that Olivia and Dani wouldn't talk to him, just because he wrote an utterly mean-spirited obituary of George back in the day, how can they.) (Jann Wenner, otoh, can be relied upon to stick to the narrative he helped establish with Lennon Remembers, come hell or high water, no matter how many decades pass and additional or contradictory source material emerges.) But certainly what Get Back accomplished was spreading interest and excitement about the Beatles not just to "old" fans but winning new ones, and to do this in a way that goes with the narrative as starting to emerge from ca. the mid 1990s onwards. Also, while biographies and analytical books tend to be read by people who are already interested enough to know their Geoff Emerick from their Ken Scott, the three part series by Peter Jackson was also viewed by people who only know about the Beatles that they were a massively successful group, they split up, and maybe also that John got shot, but that's it, and they are surprised if you tell them George Harrison was a key supporter and financer of Monty Python or that Paul had a band named Wings.

Even for hardcore fans, though, I think Get Back did make a difference, not least because reading transcripts of the soundfiles (whether on tumblr, all hail to Amoralto, or paraphrased and published, like what Doug Supply did) to flesh out the Michael Lindsay-Hogg film just is not the same as what Peter Jackson pulled off when presenting it on screen. And what Jackson's version emphasizes is that even in this late stage, when everyone was heading towards the break up, there was still a lot of humor and warmth between the dysfunctionality, and the creative spark making the rounds was amazing. I don't think this was how fans saw it before. Not least because the Beatles themselves when talking about that last year in general and the Get Back/Let it Be sessions in particular emphasized a sense of misery, and the various memoirs writers agreed. And that is how it comes across in Lindsay-Hogg's film. So seeing Jackson's three parter and watching the band joking with each other not once or twice but a lot was quite the revelation. And then there's that amazing sequence, caught on camera, when we can watch Paul go develop Get Back, the song, from a riff to a full fledged melody. It's breathtaking to watch, composition in action, and I can't believe this wasn't in the original film because it would have been such a highlight.

What Get Back also accomplishes is bringing the various non-Beatles people around them to life, like their roadie Mal Evans, or producer George Martin. (It also made director Michael Lindsay-Hogg a target for fannish ire and/or jokes due to coming across like Sean Astin on the Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers audio commentary, but look, his was a very hard job, without which we wouldn't have had all that footage for Jackson to recut!) And it manages to make all four Beatles come across as sympathetic - not perfect! but sympathetic! - , which I think and hope helped somewhat with the polarization of fandom. My non scientic support for assuming this is that pre Get Back, I sometimes got comments to my fanfiction which included a mini or not so mini diatribe against the writer's object of ire, be they George or Brian Epstein or *insert name*, but post Get Back, this was no longer the case in the comments. Instead, there's more general warmth. And thankfully it's been many a year since the last time someone went off on an anti-Yoko outburst on me. In conclusion, Get Back did a lot of good things, imo, and also it managed to make the development of the same (not that many) bunch of songs, which includes endless replaying, which on paper must have sounded absolutely dreary, instead captivating to watch over three movie length installments, while making it clear how much works gets into the creation of an album. Hats off and eternal gratitude to our New Zealand Overlord!

The Other Days

It's been years since I read my last Beatles related book, but Get Back last November evidently meant that bookstores now place more recent publications where passers by like yours truly can spot them, and thus I ended up with Craig Brown's One, Two, Three, Four: The Beatles in Time, which I think is best described as an entertaining collection of vignettes dealing not just with the Beatles but various people flitting in and out of their lives, with fandom, with hatedom, and with (some) biography. How it would feel to someone new to Beatles lore, I couldn't say. Occasionally, when recognizing from which previous biography or even interview some quotes hail from, I thought, good lord, I know way too much about these people. Otoh, there were some stories I hadn't come across before, or had not connected to the Beatles, like "the Singing Nun", Sister Luc-Gabrielle, aka Jeannine Deckers, who had appeared on the same Ed Sullivan show the Beatles made their American debut on. (Not a story with a happy ending, that one. But remarkable.)

Nitpicks first: Craig Brown can tell a story, and most of the chapters I enjoyed reading, regardless as to whether there was new content or not. Unfortunately, the exceptions to this rule happen relatively early in the book, though not to a degree that they stopped me from reading further. But they did irritate me. As I said, this is also a book about fandom, and two chapters have Brown himself taking the tour in Liverpool that includes the childhood homes of John and Paul. The description of the somewhat self important (in his telling) guides with their insistence that the stuff they rattle off to 130 000 visitors a year is "confidential, private information" that must not be recorded comes across as somewhat snooty, but it's nowhere as irrating as the "Brown takes a tour in Hamburg" chapter where he decides to write the dialogue of every German he meets phonetically, in "accent". I hate it when writers do that - not just when it's supposed to be a German accent, it's just as annoying when it's supposed to be a French one, a Scottish one, for for that matter Scouse - because it makes comprehending what each word is supposed to mean really hard for me, no matter how fluent I am in English. Also, I just don't think it's funny, which evidently it's meant to be.

(I should add here that later chapters, where he's letting various female fans talk, come across very differently - with affection for the women, who do most of the talking and looking back, and when they make a bit fun of their younger selves, it's a case of "laughing with", not "laughing about". But the Mendips, Forthlin Road and Hamburg tour chapters really annoyed me.)

On to the praise: Craig Brown often hits on hilarious, eminently quotable tales, and not just when he's quoting the Beatles themselves in full snarky, goofy glory. As I said, he also devotes some chapters to dedicated haters of the Fab Four, and none was more so than Anthony Burgess (yes, A Clockwork Orange Burgess), who wasn't just seething throughout the 60s but was still ready to fire off Beatles-loathing sallies decades after the band was no more, which tells you a lot about Burgess. (And yes, the over the topness of his hatred does make it funny.) Stories like the one about Ms Deckers which end unhappily are written with a matter of fact compassion, while he comes across as pretty even handed in his depiction (and selection of quotes by and on) such vivid yet controversial characters as John's aunt Mimi. (Opinions on Mimi vary from "Stern yet loving" to "vicious control freak from hell", with the later two voiced memorably by both Julia Baird - John Lennon's younger sister - and Cynthia Lennon (John's first wife).) He's also pretty good in showing how inevitably skewered everyone's memories inevitably are - as with the "Beatles meet Elvis" encounter which everyone involved later described somewhat differently from each other, or the "John beat up Bob Wooler at Paul's birthday party" tale, where the description of the reason for the violence and the extension of the injuries greatly varies not just with the describer, but also with the times (i.e. John Lennon himself gave various different descriptions of this incident to different people over the years) , with the biographers, depending on their own agenda, often adding to it (so unsurprisingly the version where it's a miracle Wooler survived is the one in Albert Goldman's biography).

Interestingly, Brown entirely avoids the question most people writing books about the Beatles get asked - "who's your favourite Beatle?" - but instead answers one for himself which I haven't seen asked before in fandom, to wit, if you could be any Beatle at any point in their lives, which one and when would you want to be? (Craig Brown would like to be Paul during his years of living with the Asher family at Wimpole Street ("living with Jane, cossetted by her family, blessed by luck, happy with life, alive to culture, adored by the world, and with wonderfull songs flowing as if my magic from my brain and out through the piano: I want to hold your hand, I'm looking through you, The Things we said today, And I love her, We can work it out, Here, there and everwhere, Yesterday") (Put like that, I can see his point.) Generally speaking Brown keeps a good balance between the four in the stories he chooses to tell - there are far more George anecdotes, for example, than in anything penned by Philip Norman - except in the last section, ca. 1968-1970, which is very Lennon centric, but very much not in a Philip Norman way. Chapter 140, which tells the tale of John and Yoko's encounter with Gloria Emerson (transmitted by the BBC), utterly skewers the former two simply by using their own words. It does some across as perhaps the most cringe worthy John and Yoko event ever, as they proceed to lecture Emerson, who had been a foreign correspondent in Saigon, was by no means a pro establishment figure and would return to Saigon to cover such subjects as the false American body count, the use of hard drugs by G.I.s and the effect the war has on the Vietnamese civilian population, on Vietnam and the effectiveness of their peace protests, and listen not to a single thing Emerson had to say. And the conclusion of that chapter is absolutely lethal. The most Yoko hating rant by a 1960s fan does not compare with ths effective dagger-by-quote without any bashing at all:

Years later (Gloria Emerson) said that, by the end of her time there, she had lost count of the number of young American soldiers she had comforted in their final moments.
Nineteen years later, in the December 1988 issue of Q magazine, Yoko spoke to the journalist Tom Hibbert about the legacy of the bed-ins, in which she and John had stayed in bed 'for peace'.
HIBBERT: Are those bed-ins something you look back on with pride?
YOKO: Oh yes. Pride and great joy. Those things we did were blessings. At the time we were doing it peopole used to sort of laugh at us - we were hoping that they would laugh with us but it didn't work out that way. But in the end, you see, it did have an effect. Last year when Reagan and Gorbachev had their summit and shook hands, I sort of felt, well, John and I did have an effect.

End of chapter. He's made his point.

On the joyful side of things, he's also really good at getting across the excitement of the concerts, the reason why those early press interviews with the Beatles felt so refreshing, witty and new, and the marvel of the ever changing music. (And is not above making fun of himself; teen him way very unimpressed by the Abbey Road cover, considering it a let down compared to previous covers, and had no idea it would be the most recognizable, most imitated and parodied Beatles album cover of them all.) And he finds some unexpected angles that do manage to paint a portrait of an era and a place through a single chapter, as in the one that compares and contrasts the 1963 - 1969 Christmas messages from the Queen to the ones recorded by the Beatles for their fan club. The framing Brown chooses to open and finish his book with also is new - well, not the opening, but the ending to correspond with it. The first chapter describes record store owner Brian Epstein using his lunch break to visit, with his employee Alistair Taylor in tow, the Cavern, where he sees the Beatles for the first time. The last chapter starts with the aftermath of Brian Epstein's funeral in 1967, and then goes back in time through Brian's life, each section earlier than the previous one, ending on that moment of the opening chapter where he tries to verbalize for the first time the impact the Beatles have had on him to Taylor. Brian Epstein is of course present in many a chapter other than these two, but by placing him in this way Brown doesn't just underscore his importance to the saga but also in a way makes him the pov. Which, given that moment in one of the Beatles concert movies where Brian says that everything the fans felt for them, he's felt for them - and there you have the key difference between Brian Epstein and, say, Elvis' manager Colonel Parker, to say nothing of Allen Klein - , strikes me as an inspired choice.

oracne asked me about my recent month on Disney plus: likes and dislikes.

This was the third month in as many years, because I already subscribe to two streaming services and am just not willing to subscribe to Disney full time. Otoh if I do it once a year or so, enough stuff I really want to see has accumulated, and I can add some things which weren't must watchs but which I was curious about. Which was true this time around as well.

My main reason for paying the Mouse near the end of November as the Peter Jackson edited three part documentary on the Beatles project that started out as Get Back and ended up as Let it Be, and for that alone, it would have been worth it, see my reviews for part 1, part 2 and part 3. The Fab Four epic in three installments remained my overall favourite. While I was there, I also marathoned two Marvel shows I wasn't curious enough about to return to Disney before this point, i.e. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki, and watched Hawkeye in real time. (The last episode was dropped a day before my month ended.)

All three were enjoyable, though not as original an attempt to experiment with the format as WandaVision had been. Otoh, WandaVision didn't stick quite stick the landing, and also, the changing sitcom through the tv ages gimmick was not something repeatable. Mind you, the ending was something both Loki and Falcon & Winter Soldier had problems with as well. Hawkeye may have been less ambitious in what it wanted to achieve, but it told exactly the story it wanted to tell from start to finish and was the perfect pre Christmas fluff to consume while also selling the serious emotional undertones (and the new characters, like Kate and May/Echo). So in terms of new-to-me Disney Marvel since the last time I joined, Hawkeye wins.

Lastlyl, I discovered Disney plus also offered The Last Duel, and while I can see why this wasn't something people wanted to see in their spare time, and mocked Ridley Scott for being upset it flopped, I thought it was actually pretty good. For those who've never heard of it, it's based on the last officially recognized judicial duel fought in France, in which one Jean de Carrouges, Knight, challenged Jacques Le Gris to a duel to the death after Carrouges' wife Marguerite had accused Le Gris of having raped her. The story is told from three povs, Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) and Marguerite (Jodie Comer), with an obvious nod to Rashomon, but that only goes so far. The stories in "Rashomon" widely diverge when it comes to the bandit and the Merchant's wife. In The Last Duel, there's no question for the aiudience as to whether or not a rape has taken place (even in Le Gris' pov, though it's also pretty obvious why he is kidding himself on that count); where the pov diverge most blatantly is actually on the three takes on Carrouges - in his own pov, he's the stern-but-fair type, an honorable knight who's tender to his wife; in Le Gris' pov, he's a blustering, ridiculous buffoon; for Marguerite, he's a cold selfish tyrant who cares only about his own glory and constantly has to placated. It's also telling that Marguerite notices the world around her, the servants, the other women, while Jean is only focused on the slights against him (the trial by combat is only the last of a whole series of law suits he engineers), and Jaques the medieval frat boy only cares for his pleasures, which more often than not happen in the vincinty of his boss (and Jean's arch nemesis), Pierre d'Alencon (Ben Affleck enjoying himself enormously as a perpetually bitchy character prone to have threesomes with Jacques). Because neither guy remains sympathetic while their delusions about themselves get narratively skewered, the tension doesn't come from wanting either of them to win but from Marguerite's life being at stake if her husband gets defeated. There titular duel not withstanding, it's a medieval court room drama, and I found it captivating to watch.

In conclusion, I didn't have any dislikes last month. But I'm still not subscribing to Disney full time.

The other days

Part I having ended on the cliffhanger (ahem) of George walking out, part II goes from the aftermath of that up to the decision to the idea to do the live concert on the rooftop of the Apple building. Again, scattered thoughts:

- the general mood shift in tone as soon as they move from the Twickenham Studios to the Apple studio in Savile Row is really discernable; no one says so on camera, but I remember reading in the books that among many other things, that gigantic film studio was freezingly cold (unsurprising, in January), and that wasn't a problem anymore in Savile Row, which you can also tell because no one wears their warmest sweaters and jackets anymore, but I think it's also because tiny recording studios are sort of home territory, even though they hadn't used this one before, newly installed as it was by Magic Alex

- and promptly unusable, as most of Alex' inventions. (Seriously, that guy gets my vote for most parasitic hanger-on in the Beatles circle every time and I'm glad he's not in this documentary (so far) except by photo, though I admit my dislike is mostly fueled by the stunt he pulled in the John/Cynthia divorce

- one big sign a freshly returned George does care about the group: he checks out the Alex-installed studio before anyone else goes there, realizes it's trash, sends an SOS to George Martin and GM plus various EMI folk come to the rescue by installing an actually working studio over the weekend in record time

- but going back to Twickenham when George is still gone: we get the Yoko conversation quoted in a great many newer biographies and on various transcripts of the audios, which is why it wasn't new to me, but I can see why a lot of non-Beatles-versed reviewers were amazed, since it goes against various clichés. It's worth adding the caveat here that everyone knows they're being filmed and recorded. They don't always - later in part II we get an audio only conversation between John and Paul which they weren't aware was being recorded, due to Michael Lindsay-Hogg having planted micros in a flower pot standing in the Twickenham canteen - , but generally speaking, as emotioally raw as this entire documentary feels, it's worth remembering now and then, and not just when John is deliberately mugging and cutting grimaces for the camera, that everyone is aware of the observers. All this being said, it is worth pointing out that after an opening where Linda mentions that John didn't talk to George directly during the ill fated and unrecorded weekend attempt to talk George into returning, he let Yoko speak for him, and Michael asks Paul whether he and John worked closer together before Yoko came on the scene, we get various statements from Mr. McCartney which do not sound like the seething jealous rage of fanon, to wit,

a) He tells Michael that he and John used to work closer together when they were on tour together, because that essentially meant living together 24/7, and with the constant physical proximity comes not just working opportunity but emotional closeness; once they didn't do that anymore, a bit of the emotional closeness also was gone, nothing to do with Yoko

b) "They (John and Yoko) just want to be together, and it's not an obstacle unless we try to surmount it", and also, "It's just John being John" and John always goes over the top with new passions

c) It would be a huge mistake to make John choose between Yoko and the Beatles, because it's going to be Yoko every time.

- a word about Yoko in general, and the way Peter Jackson uses the footage showing her vs how it was used in Lindsay-Hogg's movie Let it Be: in either case, Yoko only rarely speaks - a very few times in the background and you usually can't understand what she's saying, as in the conversation with Linda in part 1, but mostly she's reading, knitting or later doing calligraphy to occupy herself, she's not intruding in the production process and by no means the only non Beatles, non-technical person there (other people dropping in and out: some Indian friends of George's, Linda, Maureen, and near the end of part II for the first time Pattie Harrison, Peter Sellers, and also near the end of part II Robert Fraser, joyfully greeted by Paul in song while playing Let it Be); the two times Jackson shows Yoko doing her freak-out screaming on the mike, his film presents it as coming in a period where no body is working anyway, and he also shows Paul, John and Ringo backing her up musically and appearing to enjoy that the way they enjoy fooling around with the instruments between working in general (this said, I do think it sounds awful, but then I'm not a fan of John Cage, either); in short, she's there, but with everyone else, not as this unexplained alien presence she is in the earlier movie (that sense hails from the fact Lindsay-Hogg did not show anyone other than the group and Yoko, plus occasionally Linda and later Heather, whereas Jackson shows the camera crew, Linday-Hogg himself, all the other visitors etc. in addition to Yoko.


- Part II in general is the Lennon/McCartney episode of the documentary (so far), starting with the tail end of the Twickenham era when Mal, who has tried to reach an absent in the studio John a few times in vain, finally comes to tell Paul "John wants to talk to you", Paul wanders off camera to the phone and returns a few minutes later to say John is coming in after all; one big difference in the way the Let it Be and Get Back films are presenting their footage in general is that Let it Be, put together shortly after the event, gives the impression of John entirely disconnected from the rest of the group and off in his own space with Yoko, while Get Back makes a point of literally showing him in the same space with everyone else, which is especially noticeable once everyone is at the Savile Row studio, because John and Paul are usually sitting directly opposite each other and looking at each other while playing (no matter whether playing seriously or just riffing), and we also see John interacting with Ringo (and George, once he's back) and various of the EMI people; but whether it's the cutting or previously unused footage or both, I don't remember this much constant eye contact and sparking from ye older versions

- Jackson solves the problem of no visual footage of the pretty important secretly recorded lunch canteen conversation by showing various shots of a dining room, which allows you to focus on the voices; this is a conversation featuring John Lennon being emotionally insightful, which given that his pop culture image went from Saint John (after his murder) to Eternally Raging Jerk John (think the movie where a way too old Christopher Eccleston plays him) is a useful reminder he could be, as he analyzes the problem of George's resentment at the kid brother treatment having built up for years correctly (and btw, says "we", not "you", i.e. blames himself as well as Paul for it); I was familiar with the George relevant quotes from this lunch conversation but not of a bit from later on when John moves on to discuss his own problem with Paul's current position, and Paul replies "You've always been boss" - (John objects "Not always", Paul says "Yes, you were, and I was secondary boss, I guess")

- in addition to the crammed-but-cozy feeling in the Apple studio vs the big freeze of Twickenham, another immediately noticeable moodshift towards the positive comes when Billy Preston (whom the band knew since their Hamburg days) arrives to visit and stays to work with them at the album, and the way all four perk up some more and behave as if they'd gotten an adrenaline shot by his presence (both musical and personal), which includes playing a lot of the songs they used to in Hamburg really does feel like a fresh breeze (coming after the nth discussion as to whether or not to do a concert at the end of filming)

- I think it's a pity Michael L-H didn't interview either Yoko or Billy Preston back in the day, and am in two minds as to whether Peter Jackson should have used interviews from either from later years; on the one hand, it would have offered insight, otoh, it would have broken the way this documentary uses only the original footage and occasionally footage from previous years, but not later (so far), contributing to the sense of being in the room with the Beatles back then

- Ringo really does deserve some kind of "eternally chill human glue" award with the way he's there for the rest of the group

- Paul's "and then there were two" (about himself and Ringo, when neither George or John are there) has an additional poignancy these days, but even within the film comes out wistful and melancholic at the same time

- "Oh, Darling!" as an answer to "Don't Let Me Down": canon! (I'd forgotten whether or not we knew that already)

- speaking of things we knew: this review by Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland makes him sound like a bona fide shipper: What you see on screen between John and Paul, especially when they play, is a chemistry that crackles as fiercely as any sexual or romantic attraction. The connection between the two is so intimate, the shared glances full of such understanding, that when they play Two of Us, you realise that the love that song celebrates is theirs – even if they didn’t know it.

I'll put another 24 hours between this and the final part, though that one will contain the Rooftop concert. (BTW, I'm with Paul: this film - either version - really needs a final concert as an emotional release/pay-off, and the way his face goes from depressed (when the Primrose Hill concert idea falls through for good) to hopeful (when Michael Lindsay-Hogg and Glyn Johns spring the idea of doing it on the roof instead on him) is something to behold.

Since this is streaming in my part of the world now, I could watch it. It's a charming bit of fluff, written by Richard Curtis, directed by Danny Boyle, starring Himesh Patel as the kind Curtis written RomCom hero who would have been played by Hugh Grant thirty years earlier, Lily James as the heroine, Eillie, Kate McKinnon having fun as an incredibly over the top evil American agent/manager) (is there any other kind in British movies?) (given the subject matter, I'm tempted to think of her as genderswapped Allen Klein and Ellie as genderswapped Brian Epstein), and most of all the Beatles' song catalogue as the sparkling star of the movie.

If, like me, you didn't watch this in the cinema a few years ago: the basic premise recognizable from the trailer and thus unspoilery is this: our hero, Jack Malik, is a former teacher with a passion for music and song writing who's spent the last years trying to make it in the musical scene while taking on humiliating warehouse jobs to make a living. Ellie is his childhood best friend (and still a teacher)/devoted agent who has been working her backside of getting Jack gigs in her non existent free time, but the breakthrough won't happen. (We get to hear two of Jack's songs early in this movie, and they're nice but not spectacular.) Cue miracle event (thankfully unexplained - any explanation would have felt idiotic, the the movie just breezes through without it, which imo was 100% the right decision) that leaves the Beatles (and two or three other things I won't spoil) wiped out from human history (as a cultural event, that is) and Jack as seemingly the only person who can remember them and their songs. Naturally, he gives into temptation and decides to become the Fab One.

( It gets more than the trailer spoilery from this point onwards )

Wouldn't you know it, it's been rainy all the way, so no Saturn and Jupiter for me this night. Though today's google GIF is cute. Also startrekholidays will be online soon, which I'm very much looking forward to.

In the meantime, have some links. Peter Jackson, taking a break of WWI material in his post Tolkien life, is curently having a go at the many hours of footage Michael Lindsay-Hogg shot of the Beatles during that other miserable winter, of 1969, which was intended as a project to get their creative juices flowing and the band spirit reviving again and ended up documenting why they were falling apart instead, resulting in the film and album Let It Be. Audios of all the unused footage have been making the rounds for decades (proving, among other things, it wasn't misery all the way and containing such gems like "Did you dream of me last night?"), but Jackson is the first one since Lindsay-Hogg to have access to all the film material, and the new documentary - called The Beatles: Get Back - supposed to result from this should have hit the big screen this year. Like so many things, it got delayed by Covid, but today, he's given us a promising glimpse. Which is also poignant in a way it wouldn't have been back then - so many people we see are dead now, John and George of couse, but also Linda and George Martin (who still looks like the James Bond of poduces in that footage). When I was a wee fan, I saw someone's video tape copy of Let it Be the movie, but never saw it since, only the song excerpts on YouTube. I must say, this outtake makes me look forward to the Peter Jackson version.

I can't just limit it down to one song, for starters. I'll try to narrow it down by era.

Early Beatles: She Loves You. Has that humming along optimistic quality that endeared them to the world, John's and Paul's voices harmonize beautifully, and also, the fact that the song advise to a friend to apologize to his beloved - as opposed to the standard of first person narration about lost love, won love, longing love etc - was fresh then and still isn't worn out now. (More on She Loves here.

Middle era: honestly, Eleanor Rigby. I mean, sometimes I'm not in the mood, but even then, it slays me, because it's so beautiful and stark, the use of strings is just right (go, George Martin!), and the lyrics manage to be surreal and poignant at the same time.

On the other end of the emotional scale: Paperback Writer. Beause it's hilarious. And, err, very recognizable, still.

Late Beatles: varies, but currently it's Don't Let Me Down. It has one of my favourite John Lennon vocals, it's raw, and the recorded live performance by itself justifies the existence of the Let it Be movie, miserable as it was to make for everyone involved, proving that even in a super tense atmosphere, the guys playing together was still magical and could trigger joy in each other.

(Also Let It Be, the song, itself, but that almost goes without saying.


Album: I'm totally unoriginal here, but: Abbey Road. Because Abbey Road. If there ever was a swan song to end all swan songs, it was this. And in the end....

The Other Days

In which I finally get my hoped-for Beatles call-out. Good for you, Timothy.

( Read more... )

A PS to the Better Call Saul review: two interviews with Gennifer Hutchinson, who wrote the episode, one here and another one here.

Also, I never met the man, but I did read his memoirs, as he was the chief recording engineer at several of the Beatles' most important albums, so it was definitely with a sense of sadness I learned today that Geoff Emerick has died.