Magical Mystery Tour + Let It Be DVD Releases - Thanksgiving 2K12

All these tidbits missing from the soundtrack are not deal-breakers for me, and I will buy it soon as I'm a big fan of this film. But it's very disappointing to not have the original audio so many of us have known and loved for years. Call it artistic decisions, I call it unnecessary tampering. With the disc space available on DVD and blu-ray, they could've given us the choice.

Meh.

 

Yes, these missing tidbits are relatively minor---BUT I wonder why they happened in the first place. Was it really an artistic choice? Were there different versions of the film in the Apple vault? Were these items somehow overlooked by accident? It would be helpful if someone was interviewed who could relate why these things happened. Arnie

 

You make a good point.
I was going on the assumption that they have masters or copies of old releases to compare with and check, but that doesn't have to be the case.

I'll join you in hoping that more detailed information about this surfaces.

 

Something must have gone wrong, Chief. I ripped the audio and it was fine.

 

Wow, you're right. I had to listen on headphones to catch it.

Now this has definitely been removed. Weird, and unnecessary.

Random observation: That has got to be the soggiest spaghetti I've ever seen.

 

Certainly not al dente! As Aunt Jessie herself pointed out, "It's all mud!"

 

Something i have always wondered, in the stripper scene the men went with Jolly Jimmy and the women went with Wendy. So where did Ringo and Paul go ?

 

LOL

 

More random observations:

I love Buster Bloodvessel's accent: "It's intake, Jessie, not outpoot."

Monty Python before Monty Python existed: the scene where John gives the balloon to the child. "Do you want to blow it?" "No." *cut to crowd cheering*

 

And the Napkins in it that John Scoops up from the Trough is also a little unsettling,too! Wonder if the Trough was a sly reference to Aunt Jesse's weight then? Or,was that only John's imagination gone Gonzo? Hmm..

 

John's sly humour is all over this film! Lots of Monkees-Styled Humour too!

 

Oh well, looks like I'll have to hold on to my MPI and "outlaw"(upgrade) versions!

 

I just stumbled up on this. Etcetera, do you have any more insight into this?

 

The missing tidbits were there in the initial VHS release, in the 1988 VHS and LD release, and in the 1997 MPI DVD.

There is NO excuse at all why they chose to remove certain parts of the film.

Actually, the more I watch the new DVD, the less I like it. The background music is too quiet (the Marathon, Jessie's Dream), or is altered beyond recognition (Jessie's Dream) and the songs themselves are too loud.

 

I really enjoyed the Blu-Ray, but I don't have another version to compare it to. I really enjoy the 3rd 5.1 version of I Am The Walrus we get with this. It's another 5.1 mix that differs from Anthology and Love. I can hear the guitar throughout the song better in this current surround mix of the song. It would have been nice if they restored the outtake footage as well. The alternate Fool On The Hill footage looks like they didn't touch it.

 

I have to say I like the fact that I can understand certain dialogue that was PREVIOUSLY UNINTELLIGIBLE in all previous versions. The mixes sound great and I thought Jessie's Dream sounded much better...I guess I have to watch my old VHS to see the difference.

 

Jessie's Dream is horrible now, the music is completely form-less and too low in the mix, as with most other incidental music. If you have the 1988 VHS version, that's how the music in Jessie's Dream should sound. Now, it sounds like someone listening to it for the first time in his life randomly pushing faders up and down, trying to decide what sounds good. The old spooky-scary dream feeling is completely gone now.

This is no minor rant for me----I LOVE MMT and Jessie's Dream, as George Harrison stated, is the best part of the film (along with I Am The Walrus) and to see how this long, long-awaited restoration and re-release is botched like this is frustrating.

 

I think the Nat's Dream outtake is more entertaining than most of the non-musical scenes that made the film. Chaplinesque.

 

Got the box today. Very nice. There is an annoying white circular mark in the book on the title page of the diary section on my copy, though.

 

It never hurts having some attractive women in bikinis either.

 

After watching the movie and all the deleted scenes, it became clear to my why the they were deleted. They focused all the attention on non-Beatles. With a show for television, it would have to be under 1 hour to fit in the time slot. Were they really going to cut a Beatles scene for one of these? OK, I suppose they could have cut Jessie and Buster's love scene on the beach, but at least Jessie was a principal character in the movie and I really do like that instrumental version of All My Lovin'.

But why would they keep Nat's dream? Or Buster singing solo (very nicely) in a field, or Traffic doing a video completely unrelated to the movie or the fabs? With the Bonzo's at least George and John were in the audience enjoying the performance (well, Jan's performance anyway.) I think they made the correct choices here. Mildly interesting to view as deleted scenes, but I doubt I'll watch them very often. Come to think of it, I probably won't watch the movie itself for a long time.

On the other hand, I think the deleted stuff from Let it Be might be very interesting. I do listen to the outtake songs a lot, and watch that section of the anthology DVD every now and then.

 

I finally received my MMT deluxe box on Saturday and had a chance to peruse the material on Sunday. I am really torn on the quality of the image on this version. In HD on Blu-ray, there are the occasional details that really stand out, but overall, it looks like the whole film was run through a digital processor by an amateur. Now, I grant that a homogenous look of some kind had to be achieved from a bunch of dispirate elements, in various states of repair, but the result doesn't even show the roots of the original footage in FILM. Even the optical and dupe sections have been scrubbed of their grain, resulting in a very mushy, soft look. I would think it should be possible to have a decent looking opening title animation that wasn't this blurry.

Also, I'm not sure if anyone has returned to this point, but there was a bit of confusion as to why the Blu-ray was being presented in 1080i. I can't say for absolute sure, but I'm thinking this film was produced entirely at 25 fps as a television production, and it must be less obtrusive to translate from 25 fps to 30 fps with some pattern of field duplications than it is to go to 24 fps and alter the speed (and pitch, though this could be corrected).

The box itself for the deluxe set is not bad. For the materials included, I would have preferred a retail closer to $80, rather than $100 (I ended up paying $75 via Deep Discount). There's nothing as impressive as the full shooting script included in the HELP! box. The cover image of the Beatles in costume was not as sharp and defined as I had expected, it feels like a blow up of old artwork. Perhaps the original materials are lost? Maybe the actual untouched photograph is gone too, even though a similar one is printed in the booklet? Comparing an actual EP from the blue EP box to the new version really shows the softness in the cover art reproduction.

I wish they had made arrangements to include the actual broadcast version of the BBC "Arena" special. The segments I saw online were put together with more finesse than the "making of" feature on the DVD/Blu-ray.

Yes, I realize I'm quite hard to please. Anyway, as Paul might say, it's the bloody Beatles, so perhaps I should shut up.

 

That is my guess as well on the matter of the 1080i presentation. They probably did not want to mess with the pitch of the music if the video had been converted. It can be fixed digitally but that would introduce questions by the Beatles' fanbase.

 

Agreed. It looks worse than any Beatles bootleg I've ever seen.

 

Yes, converting from 1080p/25 to 1080p/30 or 1080i/30 makes sense for the US market because TVs over there don't support 25/50 fps and the other option, converting to 1080p/24, would involve slowing down the songs.

However, the main gripe is the fact that this converted version is also being released everywhere else, including regions like the UK where 25/50 fps is standard anyway!!

The BBC HD recording (native 1080p/25) will be my master copy of this film.