As you might have heard, the Beatles albums have been remastered, in a format called “CD.” (“Compact disc,” right? I owned some of those back when I had hair.) Not that you would know from this site—Popdose has done a lousy job covering this.
Actually, as you well know, Popdose has been on the leading edge of the new Beatlemania. I’m just bitter: When I misidentified Mae West’s version of “Twist and Shout” as a “Beatles cover” I was thrown under the bus as our magical mystery tour meandered through all the hoopla. But no Blue Meanie can stop me here.
This week we look at Beatles movies. No, not A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, or Yellow Submarine, which by Popdose law you have to watch at least once per year. Nor Let It Be, which I haven’t seen in its entirety. Has anyone since before those DCs, I mean CDs, were introduced? The boys won Oscars for their song score, beating out the fearsome competition of The Baby Maker, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Darling Lili, and Scrooge. Did recipient Quincy Jones hand-deliver the statuettes, or simply put them in the mail to the fractured four? Whatever—speaking words of wisdom, this is the time to free Let It Be.
I really wanted to include a clip from the 1976 curiosity All This and World War II, which sets Fox-owned footage of the conflict to Beatles covers in a desperate bid to win over the kids and the “nostalgia” audience that was hungry for the next That’s Entertainment! Only in the 70s, folks. But the movie is presumably such a seething mess of rights issues that not even the copyright banditos want to touch it. With a little help from my friends at YouTube, then, my focus is the non-Beatles movies JPGR worked on. (more…)
