You’ve already seen much of this footage - “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the dashes to escape screaming fans, the famous descent from the plane to the tarmac, the witty comebacks at news conferences - but by using home-movie footage in hotel rooms and fly-on-the-wall tape from the studio control room, Howard’s film often succeeds in making you feel it all from the four lads’ astonished point of view.Īs John Lennon says in one of his funniest rejoinders, if the band knew why people were so crazy about them “we’d form another group and become managers.”Īlong with the talk - a lot of it from Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr - comes the concert footage, including a knockout “Twist & Shout” (Manchester, 1963) and a rendition of “Help” (Blackpool, 1965) that showcases the quartet’s ineffable coordination of a disarmingly honest lead lyric, euphonious answer harmonies, explosive guitar licks and locomotive drums.Īlong the way, Larry Kane, the Miami journalist who toured twice with the Beatles, weighs in, as do Whoopi Goldberg (“the idea that everyone was welcome - I got that idea specifically from them”), Sigourney Weaver (a teenager at the 1964 Hollywood Bowl show) and Elvis Costello, who confesses he at first disliked the album “Rubber Soul.” Screening in tandem with “Eight Days A Week” is a new print of the 1965 concert at Shea Stadium with a soundtrack so clear you can finally hear the lyrics over the hysterical girls, including Lennon’s hilarious gibberish intro to “Hard Day’s Night. where, from June 1962 and August 1966, the Fab Four played 90 cities in 15 countries. A typically Beatlesque film originally produced for television, this short film was intended to be an off-the-wall road movie with the Beatles and three dozen or so friends on a psychedelic bus. My feelings on finding myself almost alone in praising the Beatles television film Magical Mystery Tour are amazement, and the sad. Special features are plentiful, totaling over 50 minutes. The Blu-ray offers DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby Digital 5.1 options as well as PCM Stereo. ‘The Beatles: Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years,” directed by Ron Howard (“A Beautiful Mind,” “Apollo 13”), is a thoroughly delightful, crisply edited film that takes viewers to Europe, Australia, the Far East and the U.S. Sound is similarly optimal, with a crisp 5.1 surround mix prepared by Giles Martin (Sir George’s son and the co-producer behind the music of LOVE) the best way to experience the soundtrack here.
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