Ron Howard Beatle film in 2.35:1

Yep. It's maddening and bad. My theory is that it happens when the studio is too cheap to do a new mix optimized for home video, and they instead just use the straight theatrical mix as-is.

 

I have to put the subtitles on and just keep the volume low for when the loud stuff occurs.

 

The 4:3 stuff might be cropped to make it "wide", but that's better than stretching it, so that circles are ovals and everybody is short and fat. I absolutely HATE that.

 

I spoke to one insider the other day, and what I can say is that the post schedule was very "rushed" and went over budget, and there was a lot of chaos and confusion because they had an ironclad release date that couldn't be changed. A lot of archival material came in late, and that's one reason why the film kind of bounced around in terms of the look. It's fair to say it was a very challenging project for everybody working on the technical end. I think they all wish they had had another 3 months to work on it.

Not all the B&W material is colorized, but some of it is. What bothers me is that the colorization is done very badly. Quite a bit of it is just blobs of color on faces and a little bit on the background, really shoddy given the intelligence and class of the filmmakers behind this.

 

Two of the most obvious colorizations are the initial interview footage at JFK(the blue looks HORRIBLE), and first concert in Washington DC. Don't get me started on some of the B/W footage subpar to what was previously released on DVD. Don't know where their sources were, but they're BAD.

 

Watched the film and some of the following concert last night. I give the film an A- for technical restoration of the video and sound and a C- for new insight. I enjoyed because it roused memories from my past but it did not high light in my opinion how thorough their influence was except for the issue of integrating their concerts in the South and that their influence was not just effecting young whites. In addition they were even more charismatic and funny than what was portrayed. For these reasons I felt the movie was too superficial and was just fluffy entertainment. I actually left the concert film about ten minutes in, I had had enough early Beatle songs and screaming young girls by then.