I’m on a 1960s rock & roll kick. Rewatched this a few months after Anthology, getting some nice HD screenshots of Eleanor Bron, including when I seen her in the arms of Paul saying “I can say no more.”
Tag: Beatles
The Beatles Anthology (1995)
Always lovely to spend another nine hours with my best friends The Beatles.
After Get Back and A Hard Day’s Night and the George Harrison doc and I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Beatles ’64 and now this, you’d think I’d had enough Beatles, but I believe I’ll go on a whole 1960s/70s rock-doc binge in 2026…
Beatles ’64 (2024, David Tedeschi)
The doc companion to I Wanna Hold Your Hand.
Murray the K, Ronnie Spector, Smokey Robinson (!), and Little Richard all appear.
Unfair sneak attack by music lover David Lynch made me very upset and gained this movie an extra star.
An Accidental Studio (2019, Leggatt/Jones/Timlett)
Katy picked this, an accidental sequel to my series of George Harrison docs. We got to see choice clips from The Long Good Friday and Mona Lisa, Time Bandits and Withnail and I, interviews with lead actors and Pythons and so on… a successful Saturday night.
George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011, Martin Scorsese)
Feels like an outtakes shuffle of pre- and early-Beatles stories with long lingers on old photos and scraps of George solo songs, then finds its footing as the Beatles start losing theirs, around the 1hr mark as drugs turn to meditation and Ravi Shankar and the gurus enter the picture. As he uses clips from the Get Back sessions and the Concert for Bangladesh, my Beatles movies are starting to eat each other. Conclusions: George was a beautiful man, and Yoko didn’t break up the Beatles – Eric Clapton did.
Rock Doc Trio: Silkworm, Cave, Harrison
Couldn’t You Wait (2013, Seth Pomeroy)
I finally got over my terror of watching this, thinking it would be too sad. Contains some of the stories I’ve long wanted to hear – Albini recording them at no cost, why/how they changed labels. Pomeroy does a great job editing the live and studio material together, and includes a feature-length “Live Worm” compilation of concert songs. I’m only halfway through the other extras – it’s a treasure trove. “If you cant get into Silkworm then God hates you and you’re an asshole.”
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The Concert for Bangladesh (1972, Saul Swimmer)
Continuing my post-Get Back solo Beatle explorations (albums played so far: Ringo x1, John x2, Paul x3 and All Things Must Pass). My 2003 AVI file often looks better than the HD Peter Jackson movie, hmmm. George introduces Ravi Shanker, pleading with the crowd to follow along (it’s “a little more serious than our music”), then tears through some “All Things” hits. Billy Preston and Ringo and Leon Russell get vocal turns. “While My Guitar” and “Here Comes the Sun,” a four-song Bob Dylan feature, then a couple closing numbers. Happy to discover it’s another one of the great concert films.
George, Bob, Leon:
Ravi and company:
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This Much I Know to Be True (2022, Andrew Dominik)
Dominik repeats his One More Time With Feeling feat of having each song be visually distinct, maybe more impressive here since he’s got a limited toolkit in a single location and keeps showing us the tools (lights, dolly tracks) yet somehow surprising us within the moment. Another difference is that I already loved “Skeleton Tree” before watching the previous movie, while this one revealed the beauty of “Ghosteen” and “Carnage.”
The Beatles: Get Back (2021, Peter Jackson)
Some notes I took along the way:
Day 2 opens with them looking thru Beatles fan magazines
Michael L-H is kinda an ass
Cutting between 1966+69 on “Rock & Roll Music” at end of day 4 is great
Mal is round-headed guy who plays anvil on Maxwell’s
We know that it’s magic to spend time with the Beatles, but episode two presses its luck, showing us different views of a flowerpot while John and Paul argue near a hidden mic
Peter Sellers shows up after The Magic Christian sets arrive
Reminiscing on their India trip, discussing the footage, which we get to see
Michael and Glyn are credited with the roof idea
Jackson has overbaked everything since Frighteners
Soon before the concert, John simply sings the setlist, wow
During the concert the movie thinks we want to hear everything the teenaged chinstrap-chewing pigs say, but we’d like to hear the music please
Problems with the crowd interviews on the street: British people are boring, and clearly Beatlemania is over
Beatlemania is back on in our house, though.
Aspirational Post-Beatles Media To-Do List
– The Magic Christian (1969)
– Ringo: Beaucoups of Blues (1970)
– George: All Things Must Pass (1970)
– John/Yoko: Plastic Ono Band (1970) + Imagine (1971)
– Paul: McCartney (1970) + Linda/Ram (1971) + Wings/Wild Life (1971)
– The Concert for Bangladesh (1972)
– Concert for George (2003)
– Beatles Anthology (1995)
– Beatles Love (2006)
– Rock and Roll Circus (1968)
– How I Won the War (1967)
– The Last Waltz (1978)
– Jimi Plays Monterey (1967)
– George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011)
I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978, Robert Zemeckis)
Anticipating a new wave of Beatlemania on twitter when Get Back dropped, I watched this in early Nov. I always catch a new Yo La Tengo reference when I watch a Beatles movie – last time was in Help!, dreaming ’bout Eleanor Bron, seeing her in the arms of Paul saying “I can say no more.” This one’s got a cameo by New York DJ Murray the K, who must be the inspiration for Ira’s DJ name.
Three girls and two boys experiencing different levels of Beatlemania in Maplewood NJ drive into the city to crash the Beatles’ Ed Sullivan Show appearance in NYC. No actual Beatle involvement, just stand-ins, glimped from below or behind with impersonator accents. Silly idea for a movie, pulled off wonderfully, an ensemble piece with an ever-growing ensemble, an awful lot of Beatles songs and a woozy happy ending.
L-R: Pam, Janice, Grace, Rosie
Rosie’s the emphatic one who wills the trip into action (Wendie Jo Sperber, Marty’s sister in Back to the Future), Pam is her bestie who plans to elope with her boy tomorrow (Nancy Allen’s followup to Carrie), then there’s Photographer Grace (Pesci’s wife in Raging Bull) and Protester Janice (Susan “daughter of Paul” Newman). Tony is basically a stowaway, out to cause trouble (Bobby Di Cicco of The Big Red One). Larry’s the Cameron-in-Ferris-Bueller of the gang (Marc McClure, aka Jimmy Olsen in Superman), borrowing his undertaker dad’s limo to get them all close to the hotel.
The theater has posters for Wild Strawberries and The Cranes are Flying:
In charge of security on the Beatles floor is Dick Miller – Pam gets by him inside a drink cart and spends quality time with the bands’ instruments while they’re out. Grace and Larry fail to raise cash by selling scraps of Beatle bedsheets, then she tries being a call girl but settles for extortionist instead. Janice and Tony befriend a mophead kid whose dad has tickets but will only give them up if the kid gets a haircut. And Rosie capers with a Beatlemaniac nerd called Ringo (Eddie Deezen of Grease the same year).
Miller grabs Grace:
A Hard Day’s Night (1964, Richard Lester)
Handheld b/w, a low-budget shoot but always terrific-looking in sharp focus. Not Lester’s first feature – why do you never hear about It’s Trad, Dad or Mouse on the Moon? DP Gilbert Taylor shot Dr. Strangelove the same year, Repulsion the following.
It has more of a story than most concert movies but much less of a story than most non-concert movies. The premise is that the guys catch a train to the city, have to rehearse and then film a TV appearance, but they keep wanting to run off and play and insult people.
As Paul’s clean grandfather, Wilfrid Brambell, known for playing comic character Albert Steptoe. As the two guys responsible for getting the boys through their day, Norman Rossington (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning) and TV writer/actor John Junkin. Uptight sweater-wearing TV director Victor Spinetti would return in Help! the following year.