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Right at the start of Part 3, Peter Jackson gives his audience not one but two great feel-good-montages, Ringo coming in with the basics for "Octopussy's Garden" and George giving him feedback and helping him, and then Linda's little daughter Heather, who was one of the rare beams of sunshine in the original Let it Be movie already, charming the socks of both band and audience by dancing around in the recording studio, drumming with Ringo (while discovering they wear matching outfits), earnestly discussing why you don't eat kittens with John, making Paul throw her into the air, and after observing Yoko on the mike deciding to imitate her (causing John to delightedly say "Yoko!" and Yoko to smile).

In general, this is the most light hearted episode, aside from the inevitable reality subtext, i.e. many of these people are still dead, we know the band will collapse within the year, etc. Also, Peter Jackson, otherwise not exactly known for his subtlety, somehow restrains himself from adding sinister bass notes in the scene where John raves about Allen Klein and tells the rest of the gang how wonderful he is. ("He knows me as well as you do!" Which, btw, should be a compliment to official Beatles biographer Hunter Davies, because Klein's preparation for that crucial first meeting with John that led to his off screen first meeting with the Beatles had been to read Davies' biography, published in the year before.) But he does give us the full scene. Also the scene the day after, when the Beatles met Klein off screen, and John is still in "wow, is he awesome!" mode while recording engineer Glyn Johns, bless, tries to insert a liiiiiittle note of caution by pointing out Allen Klein has this irritating habit with non-Beatles people in interrupting them mid sentence and talking about something else as he's not interested in what they have to say. Alas, they don't listen, and George just says that Klein "comes across as a con man, but one who's on our side for a change" (as opposed to all the other con men who weren't).

(Sidenote: no, I don't think Allen Klein singlehandedly destroyed the Beatles, and he definitely didn't intend to. He'd wanted them since when Brian Epstein was still alive and had even then tried to make contact, and he sure as hell wanted to keep the world's most popular band to make money from. I also think that even if Klein had not existed, there's no way the other three would have gone for Paul's alternate suggestion, his soon to be in-laws, Eastman & Eastman, as new managers, not because Lee Eastman, who'd go on to make a great deal of money for Paul McCartney for the next few decades, wasn't competent - his law firm specialized in musical properties -, but because short of never seeing Linda again, there's no way Paul could have made the other three believe the Eastmans wouldn't favor him. All this being said: in terms of sheer business, there's a reason why John, George and Ringo all ended up sueing Allen Klein themselves in the 70s. And in terms of 1969 human dynamics, Allen Klein made the fatal mistake of believing winning John over, but not Paul,was enough, and to use bullying tactics to make Paul cave.And thereby he, Klein, contributed - not caused, but contributed - to ending the golden goose he'd been after for years.)

Thankfully, though, Allen Klein, like Magic Alex, does not actually show up other than in discussion and as a photograph, and we can focus on the music being made getting into better and better shape. One thing all three parts make clear is how collaborative between all four (plus the recording engineers) everything was, from the first to the final stages of a song; here, for example, you get George after a run through Let it Be saying that the lead guitar and the piano essentially do the same thing and there should be a somewhat different arrangement, or Paul confessing that his initial idea for The Long and Winding Road had been as a Ray Charles song, and he can't figure out a way to get it out the way he hears it in his head, with pro and contra strings voices being raised long before the shade of Phil Spector will darken the Beatles' doorstep. And then we get to the grand climax: the Rooftop Concert. Which is perhaps the sequence most resembling Lindsay-Hogg's take in the Let it Be movie, though Jackson adds more material featuring the first two, then three policemen coming to the scene, including their names, which strikes me as something very typical for this entire three parter - everyone, bit players and celebrities alike, is treated as a human being, not a cardboard illustration. We also get roadie Mal Evans negotiating with the coppers, being amazingly diplomatic and wily.

(This is again poignant for rl reasons. If you want to be depressed, google how Mal Evans will die a few years later.)

It's striking that most of the people in the street interviewed by the three camera teams positioned down there are able to recognize the music they're hearing are the Beatles. Bear in mind these are (nearly) all new songs, so it's not like they would have recognized the tunes the way many of a current day audience would - but they can recognize the voices and the sound. That's how present in in the public mind they were, through the ages. While you get the occasional grumbler, most of the people interviewed, whether 70 or teenagers, all are enthusiastic. The old man asked after he praised their music and the guys themselves whether he'd let his daughter marry one of them gets point for best reply: "'Sure I would. They got money!"

And on the accessible roofs in the surrounding buildings, you can see more and more people getting up there to listen, just like the people down in the street. January cold or not, it must have been a magic half an hour. Though the cold made me flinch for all the women wearing 1960s miniskirts. BTW, I always liked the detail that Maureen, Ringo's wife, was present, because she'd started out as a fan in the Cavern, all the way back in Liverpool. So I felt she represented the fans who'd been there from the start and now were there at what would turn out their last ever public performance. She's also unabashedly rocking along with enthusiasm the few times the camera shows her. (That's why you can hear Paul say "Thanks, Mo" - for her applause - on the Let It Be album. When she died, he wrote the song Little Willow with a dedication to her children in her memory.)

Speaking of the wives, the three episode capture several tender moments for each couple, hand holding, embraces, kisses, and perhaps it's the way Jackson intersperses it but it always feels natural, not staged. Apropos another comment, I recalled that both Yoko and Linda in January 1969 were pregnant - Linda with future Mary McCartney the photographer, and Yoko with the child she'd lose in March.

Another constant feature is how physically comfortable the guys are with each other, though this comes more to the fore in the Apple studio than in the spacey Twickenham area. But there's a lot of arms around each other's shoulders - Ringo/Everyone else being the most common variation - and in last episode even an improvised dance. I don't mean this negates that there are also tensions, but it's basically the body language of people who know each other inside out and have lived in tiny spaces with each other. It's this along with the constant banter and goofing around - which sometimes is friendly and sometimes passive-aggressively, but basically two thirds of the dialogue with each other - that the various fictional takes on the Beatles I've seen and read rarely if ever capture.

(Telling exception: the tv movie Two of Us directed by, wait for it, Michael Lindsay-Hogg. That one also has very artificial passages - as when Paul and John occasionally exposition to each other, like John telling Paul his childhood trauma (dead mother, absent Dad), which, you know, Paul actually was familiar with) - but mostly the dialogue has that rl chit chat feeling of two thirds jokes, with and without hidden digs, and one third emotional rawness.)

Since there was one more day after the rooftop concert in which they recorded takes on he songs they didn't play on the rooftop, but the rooftop concert is the unbeatable climax, Peter Jackson, by now experienced n the problem of epilogues, does something very clever - he uses footage of that last day to run on split screen with the credits, which means you do watch the credits (which take some time, seeing as they have to cover both the 1969 original film crew and the 2021 team) without any of the impatience of, say, a MCU movie. The very last song Jackson uses is, of course, Let it Be, with the take used on the album. (I should add here that throughout the last two episodes, subtitles tell you when you're watching a take that ends up on the album.)

In conclusion: I still can't imagine how this feels for non-fans, but watching it was a tremendous experience for me, and I'm really glad the Hobbitmeister from New Zealand got his hands on those 60 plus hours of joy and heartbreak.

Current Mood: mellow
Current Location: Munich

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.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: Munich

All I know about the US Thanksgiving (ours is at another date), I learned via American movies and tv shows, so basically I imagine a crossover between The Addams Family and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Enjoy, American friends!

Meanwhile, a streaming service I had never heard of, Pluto tv, has come to the rescue of German Star Trek: Discovery fans and made a deal with Paramount, so as of this night, yours truly will be able to watch legally again. I also reactived my Disney Plus account and paid the Mouse for a month, since yesterday was the debut of Peter Jackson's three part documentary Get Back based on those gazillion of hours of footage from which which Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the original director, had to assemble the film Let it Be after the Beatles' break-up. Last night I watched part 1. Now it has been decades, literally, since I watched the Let it Be film, on a bad video during a fannish convention of sorts in Cologne, but since then I've read various transcriptions made by those dedicated souls ready to listen to the hours and hours of audio footage which were available in various corners of the internet, plus of course the biographies quote a lot from this. Meaning the content isn't exactly new to me, but the way of assembling it is.

Scattered thoughts on part 1:

- well, kudos to Team Jackson on a technical level alone. The visual and audio quality is incredible, especially compared with those grainy images I remember from that long ago video!

- directorial choices by Peter Jackson: starting with a The Beatles in Five Minutes overview, which probably makes sense, given that unlike the original audience, the majority of today's viewers can't be relied upon to know their George Martin from their Magic Alex, perish the thought. On a similar thoughtful note, whenever someone shows up, we get subtitles about who this person is. This includes Mal Evans the roadie and various Indian friends of George's. Also, when the Beatles play Rock and Roll Music by Chuck Berry, Jackson doesn't just mention by subtitle that this was their opening number during the 1966 tour, the last tour they did, but intercuts the playing then concert footage with the playing at Twickenham Studios now, which is a clever way of bringing some variety into the location. Also, when we see Linda (Eastman, later McCartney) making photographs, we see those pictures she took as well. Incidentally, thanks to whichever long ago camera man decided to film Linda taking those pictures. She's intent and very focused, and you can see this was her calling, not a hobby.

- also a directorial choice: creating a narrative up to George's walkout that I don't remember being there this clearly in Let it Be the movie, which depicts George (and everyone else) as in the doldrums from day 1, whereas in Jackson's version through the more light hearted moments early on, the choice to show George presenting All Things Must Pass to little effect, and the intercutting between an increasingly upset George and the Lennon/McCartney interplay, it builds up to this.

- wow, everyone looks young. I used to think this only about the early Beatles, but then I was much, much younger when last watching the 1969 footage, whereas now I'm 52 years old, and looking as those guys who are, as Michael Lindsay-Hogg observes, "all 28", including him, wow, are they young. (Except Ringo. For some reason, Ringo looks middle-aged already. And today still looks that way.)

- So many of the people depicted are dead - not solely John and George, but also Linda, Maureen (Ringo's first wife), George Martin, Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall... there is an eerie poignancy seeing them all resurrected on screen. Especially Mal Evans the roadie, whom I knew only via biographies and a very few photos, and whom Peter Jackson presents as a character with much screen time. You don't just see him carrying stuff for the group, you see him interacting with Paul in particular, scribbling down lyrics, encouraging, smiling, cheering up, and you get a sense of what the relationship was like back then.

- the lengthy and intense-looking Yoko and Linda conversation from which we don't have the audio: the kind of thing that begs for RPF

- having read Michael Lindsay-Hogg's very entertaining memoirs: it's true, he looks quite a bit like the young Orson Welles, but the illusion is scattered as soon as he opens his mouth and has a very different voice. Orson W. is actually brought up as Michael, determined cheerleader or not, feels reminded of his behavior during the stage version of Chimes at Midnight by the the increasingly obvious dysfunction amidst the Fab Four, and no wonder

- this said, Jackson's version does a great job showing that it wasn't misery all the time even this late into the band history but that the joking mode was actually their default still; it's just that this isn't enough anymore for covering the increasing differences

- providing the surrounding footage of the snippy George & Paul conversation that made it into Let it Be makes a great deal of difference in that both George comes across as far less hostile and Paul as far more desperate and open (I was familiar with "I can hear myself annoying you", but not with "I'm scared" ), and the pressure of being stuck with being the guy who says "come on, let's work", because Brian Epstein is dead and none of the others is going to do it really comes across this way

- you do get a good sense of the creative musical process, with the various melody snippets and riffs being all there is at the start and then, slowly, becoming songs, through various mistrials

- and one sequence of absolute magic, where I'm retrospectively amazed it wasn't in the original movie, which is Paul McCartney strumming his guitar and plucking some basic notes and nonsense words while George and Ringo listen at first looking indifferent, and then before our eyes and ears Get Back comes into being (while you can see the previously moody George's eyes light up, smile and his feet tapping along); all this in a matter of uninterrupted minutes, and watching, I feel like Dustin Hoffmann must have when observing Paul coming up with a melody on the spot during a dinner party, shouting "he's doing it, he's doing it!" at the rest of the guests

- in addition to material which will end up on Let it Be the album, there's also a lot of Paul's future material for Abbey Road, George's All Things Must Pass, as mentioned, and various Lennon and McCartney solo songs from their early solo albums: everyone might be in crisis, but creatively, they were on a high

- all this said, I will need those 24 hours of break before watching the next episode (all episodes have Jacksonian length, mind), because there's only so much riffing you can listen to per day if not a musician.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Munich

likeadeuce pointed me towards Mike Carey's The Unwritten; I've now read issues 1 - 16 and am certainly impressed, if occasionally nitpicking. (Not just in the issue where Mike Carey commits the arch fanfiction mistake of using bablefish for dialogue in another language, to wit, German. This is awfully distracting to a native speaker who has to puzzle out the meaning; in some cases, an English version comes later, which leads to sad sighs of "no, Mike, that's not what the German says, dear, how difficult would it ihave been to find someone who actually speaks the language to deliver those sentences anyway?") It's meta fiction, which not every write can pull off but Carey can, with creat commentary (and spoofs) of various great works of fiction. And how could I not love a story where the ultimate fiendish plan to be defeated is ( spoilery of course ) I hear you, Carey, I hear you. Never mind massacres, that's one of my nightmares.

There's also great black humour, as when, mid-arc, we find out what became of a minor villain: ( he's enduring a spoilery fate ). Now that is how you deal with the opposition. :) At the same time, the villains are responsible for some truly horrible acts, and Carey doesn't pull any punches, nor does he make those deaths harmless. As for the various uses of real life writers and works, praise and complaints ensue:

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (and, as the text often points out, Milton's Paradise Lost, with its connection to the same place of origin - the Villa Diodati at Lake Geneva): an unreserved yay. Central to the Unwritten's premise, with a resonance to two of the central character's origin, and I do love that when the Creature later shows up, it is indeed Mary Shelley's (very eloquent) Creature, not (impressive as it could be) the zombie-like version from various films. (BTW, Tom's "but you have a damaged brain! That's canon!" was hilarious.)

Rudyard Kipling: mostly yay. That chapter does some interesting things with various aspects of Kipling (poet of Empire, voice of Common Man, shock of son's fate with said fate literaly conjured up by him in now more than one way), and captures his diction very well, but early on when young Rudyard comes from India to England and is annoyed and jealous at the pre-eminence of Oscar Wilde there my suspension of disbelief suffered an unfortunate break because of the DATE. In 1905, Oscar Wilde was already five years dead, and the year where he went from adored playwright to prisoner was 1895, ten years earlier. And let's not go into more trivial details as his chatting with Whistler when the Wilde/Whistler friendship belonged in the 1880s and was long gone. Also, methinks our dastardly villains would be more likely gunning for writers actually advocating big social changes, like Wells or Shaw, instead of Wilde; he was evidently picked for the contrast with Kipling, but even so.

Jud Süß the film (directed by Veit Harlan, who doesn't get mentioned here, comissioned and supervised by Goebbels) and Jud Süß the novel (by Lion Feuchtwanger, who doesn't get mentioned by name but is refered to as a "Jewish dissident writer"): more yay than nay, but lots of nitpicking. To start with the obvious: bad German is no one's friend. If you want to add German sentences for atmosphere, then consult a native speaker. Or stick with English dialogue and put asteriks around it to indicate when the characters are speaking in German. Secondly, I do love the basic idea of that chapter, and yes, Jud Süß is an excellent example of fiction used as propaganda, a story tortured into its opposite, but: the film isn't actually based on Feuchtwanger's novel. Not even in a twisted way. It couldn't be because Feuchtwanger's novel (along with Feuchtwanger's other works), which had been one of the big bestsellers of the 1920s, making its author internationally famous, was put on the index of forbidden books and burned in 1933 immediately. (Having written the first fictional satiric portrait of Hitler in 1930 in another novel, Erfolg, will do that.) Now of course Goebbels didn't use the same title for the film by accident (he could count on people vaguely remembering that there had been this bestseller more than a decade ago...), but Feuchtwanger hadn't invented it, either. There was a novella Jud Süß by Wilhelm Hauff in the 1870s, and before that various fictional treatises, dramas, pamphlets, about the fate of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer (who had existed, after all) using this title. What the Nazi film and Feuchtwanger's novel have in common is that they are based on the same historic person, but that's where it ends; none of the plot lines of the novel shows up in the film, not even in a distorted way. (Sidenote: which is not to say that Carey didn't do his research. The brief summary Goebbels gives of the novel in the comic is pretty accurate. Iin an interview at the end of the issue in question, Carey and illustrator Peter Gross declare that when actually watching the film they were struck by how well made in terms of craft it was, that they could see why it was so effective given that, and that if they had agreed with the ideology they'd have loved it which shocked them. Having seen Jud Süß as part of a seminar on propaganda movies, I know what they mean. It's a highly polished, well-paced melodram - Harlan was one of the best directors of the genre in his time - starring some of the best actors available in Germany, Werner Krauss, Heinrich George, Ferdinand Marian. As opposed to earlier propaganda efforts like Hitlerjunge Quex where the propaganda is served so openly and so ineffectively that it was an audience flop, here you get the vilest antisemitic clichés possible served with the plot mostly ripped off from Tosca and in appealing aesthetics, and people ate it up with a spoon. Michelangelo Antonioni - yes, the Antonioni - loved it and wrote an ode of praise when it was shown at the Venice Film Festival, which is something not mentioned in most summaries of Antonioni's life. ) One of the most chillling examples of a lot of people using a lot of artistic talent to create something in the service of a murderous ideology, which is why I understand why Carey picked it to begin with. As I understand why he picked Goebbels to appear as a character, as an example of someone telling a story to destroy, the murderous liar par excellence. Still couldn't help thinking "the art could actually look a bit more like him, it's not like Goebbels had one of the most unmistakable profiles ever, and also, uniform? In connection with Jud Süß? He usually was in normal civilian clothes when being the minister of propaganda and playing film mogul. Goering was the one with the uniform fetish." Lastly, the conclusion was a welcome surprise ( for spoilery reasons. )

Unwritten revisits some old stomping ground in that Lucifer, Carey's magnum opus, had the daddy issues written large when dad is actually the creator and you can't not be the creation unless you can leave said creation as a central premise. The leading man, Tom Taylor, who might nor might not be his father's fictional character Tommy Taylor (think Harry Potter as well as dozens of earlier boy heroes) grown up into reality feels accordingly generic, but then again, in a way, he's supposed to be. (In issue #1, the obvious comparison to Christopher Robin of the Winnie the Pooh fame gets made, but I'm surprised so far nobody brought up James Barrie and the really depressing real life fates of the children who inspired Peter Pan and the Darling siblings.) Lizzie who might or might not also be a fictional character come to life, by contrast, gets more and more profile, and ~~Ron~~ Savoy makes for an entertainingly snarky sidekick with a secret or two. There is no character I dislike when I'm not meant to, and I certainly will keep reading. Especially since more revelations about Lizzie and, hopefully, Sue are in the offering.

***

Something else I did today during many hours in the train was to listen to a CD that came with the latest Mojo issue - Let it Be Revisited. (The articles in the magazine that go with it contain nothing not found in a dozen biographies about the depressing last year of the Beatles and the recording of the last but one to be made but last to be released record. Other than claiming it's underestimated by fans claiming that Abbey Road should be regarded as the true swan song. Huh? Abbey Road WAS the swan song - the belated release of Let it Be didn't change the order of production.) Let It Be Revisited boasts of a good variety of cover artists, though, and is well worth listening to.

Two of Us: sung by John Grant, slowly and warmly. A version that brings out the tenderness of the song. My inner fan still insists this particular song needs to be sung as a duet, but John Grant harmonizes with himself, so there's that, and it's great to listen to.

Dig a Pony: sung by Dennis Locorriere. Good with the longing of the song.

Across the Universe: sung by Phosphorescent. The Beatles didn't actually play this during the Get Back/Let it Be sessions. They intended to, but John couldn't remember the lyrics anymore, neither could Paul who usually came through with these things, and when they finally were brought by a flunky, they had moved on to other things. So Spector later took the recording made for the single and remixed it for the record. The Phosphorescent version is excellent.

I Me Mine/ Dig It: sung by Beth Orton who sounds as angry as George must have felt. I actually like this better by a female singer, I think.

Let it Be: sung by the Amorphous Androgynous, who apparantly wanted to do Hey Jude one better and made this last for ten minutes, courtesy of bringing in Across the Universe at the end and going for the Great Goddess approach we go from Mary interpreted as the Madonna to Artemis and Athena and a lot of other goddesses of various pantheons evoked verbally at the end. ( Back in the day, the lines And in my hour of darkness, Mother Mary comes to me, whispers words of wisdom, let it be were interpreted as meaning everything from the virgin Mary to marijuana, and amazingly nobody seemed to have thought of the glaringly obvious, i.e. that Paul McCartney's dead mother was called Mary and that he was in a rather depressed state of mind when composing this.) It's a bit doo much for me; despite its hymn-like quality, I maintain Let it Be works best when played simply, one voice and the piano (or another instrument, but just one) ideally.

Maggie Mae: sung by C.W. Stoneking. This wasn't a song by the Beatles but an old Liverpool tune which was part of the back-to-the-roots attempt they were first going for, and Stoneking sings it in a 1920s vein which is very charming.

I've got a Feeling: sung by the Besnard Lakes. Liked it, but had a pang of missing the original voices here which I hadn't in the other cases except for Two of Us.

One After 909: sung by James Apollo. This one really surprised me. The One After 909 is a very early Lennon/McCartney composition (and when I say early, I mean they were teenagers trying impress each other in the first year after their meeting with sounding like the Americans they idolized; unearthing this one for the Get Back sessions was yet another McCartney attempt to lure John back), and instead of the fast Chuck-Berry-like pace of the original James Apollo sings it as a slow Blues song. Pretty amazing.

The Long and Winding Road: sung by Judy Collins, blessedly free of the Spector-ization that famously became one of the reasons named in Paul's lawsuit. Excellent vocal performance.

For You Blue: sung by Pete Molinari, more country than George's original, likeably so.

Get Back: sung by the Jim Jones Revue as a really hardcore rock song. That was a bit of a shocker at first, though in a good way - I mean, obviously it's a rocker in the original version as well, but this one sounds as the band might have at the end of a long Hamburg night. Definitely memorable.

Bonus track: One After 909 sung by Wilko Johnson, the pace more like the fast original but still very individualistic. Who'd have thought that teenage enterprise can be milked in so different ways?

Current Mood: impressed
Current Location: Hermanskeil