Ron Howard's Beatles Documentary Feature Film About The Band's Touring Years, "Eight Days a Week"*

I finally got around to watching it on the weekend. Was there any unseen footage/pictures or any new audio on this? I thought it was enjoyable but it felt like I'd seen it all before and I'm just a casual Beatles fan.

 

Same here. I finally got my hands on the correct disc (I assume). It was enjoyable, but it was enjoyable to see this type of stuff the previous several times I have seen it.

 

Same here. Watched it last night. I think my expectations had been set somewhat lower based on the comments here so I wasn't disappointed. Kind of like "Anthology lite", or "Son of Anthology" etc.

 

Son of Anthlogy ? Yeah, I agree.

So they should have put a sticker on it.

"If you've already got Anthology, don't waste your money on this."

 

I did get around to watching the bonus disc, and as others mentioned I too liked that more than the actual movie. It's still not good compared to what it should/could have been, but kept the set from being a complete waste of time and money.

 

I was disappointed by the bonus disc. As people on this thread have shown you can see more or less complete concerts from Budokan, Australia, Washington etc. on youtube with all the great between-song chat, but on the bonus DVD all we got were five songs most of which we'd seen before.

Now OK a lot of you say the film was mainly for millenials. I can live with that (though I think they too would have been pretty bored by some of the talking heads) but surely the bonus disc was for real fans who really wanted something more?

 

I went into it knowing there wasn't much live concert video on the bonus disc. I was entertained by the other video and talking heads sections that weren't in the main film. As I said, it still wasn't good, but it was better than only having the pathetic movie by itself.

Apple doesn't cater anything to the real fans, except maybe the mono box fell into that category. Otherwise it remains the real fans making their own superior releases for the rest of us who still want it, official or not. Seemingly after all these years Apple will never learn what the majority of people who buy their products actually want and expect from them.

 

I just got the set and watched some of the bonus disc last night and today. Is the audio from She Loves You and Twist and Shout from another concert?

 

Reports indicate it is from Hollywood Bowl

 

Just finished watching this.
Two words...
Loved it!
In fact, three words.
Hmmn, probably can't use that one so...
Absolutely Loved it!!

 

Well, I suspected Twist and Shout was Hollywood Bowl. But She Loves you didn't really sound like Hollywood Bowl, but I heard Ringo hitting crashes when I didn't see him doing that.

 

Finally watched it last night and enjoyed the bonus Blu-ray. Sad to see how Allan Williams looked and sounded. They even had automatic subtitles for his part......RIP Allan

 

I still feel if this was for millennials, then why didn't Howard try to interview some under 30's in entertainment and get their opinion. People that millennials can relate to on their age level. This is where the whole "appeal to millennials" falls flat.......

Good movie that could have been great. Good extra's that could have been great.

 

Maybe because being born at least five years after they broke up would render that person's opinion less relevant.

I'm not sure it targeted a certain age range as much as it targeted the majority population who really don't know much about the history.

 

I've seen the movie a few times now.
First at the theater with my two twenty-something daughters.
Then when it came out on BluRay.
And finally last week I pulled it out and watched it again.

Unlike Help!, A Hard Day's Night, Let it Be, or Anthology or even my VHS of Compleat Beatles, this film doesn't hold up well to repeated viewings. For a movie about their live concerts, there is really little joy or excitement for me in watching this film. Perhaps I am just constantly being reminded of what a great opportunity this was and how badly the film was executed and put together. And then even having the opportunity of somewhat redeeming the film with good bonus material was also muffed.

 

The most interesting part for me was the bonus feature about the 3 fans who were there at the beginning of the US hysteria. I liked hearing their stories. I haven't watched the main feature since I saw it in the theater, even now that I have the Blu-Ray. I can't imagine The Beatles being proud of this years later, like I'm sure they are mostly proud of their big yearly releases. This one's going to get swept under the rug, isn't it? What a shame.

Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years would have worked perfectly as a prime time TV special to promote the Beatles' new live album rather than the "big, important" theatrical release we got, that for some reason took years to make. We would have said, "oh, cool. A nice little documentary to hype up the re-release of Hollywood Bowl." We might have even wanted a Blu-Ray release, because we're like that. Instead they promoted the documentary as something very special (which it should/could have been, but wasn't really), with the album as the less important companion release. Putting Ron Howard's big name on it just makes it that much more embarrassing. Poor execution.

 

Hate that studio audio is mixed in with the live stuff, especially in DC.

 

I'll pick this up when it's on clearance.

 

I see that you left out the Magical Mystery Tour film. ...

 

Intentionally.
In this case, a film (MMT) produced and directed by The Beatles and Bernard Knowles and with photography by Richard Starkey MBE was as bad as a film (8DAW) produced and directed by Ron Howard. At least MMT's soundtrack wasn't phony, like Howard's was.

 

Even though it's daft in plenty of places, I definitely prefer Magical Mystery Tour over Ron Howard's schwing-and-a-miss mess.


Amateurish, totally unnecessary colorization. Bastardized audio. Substandard quality on some video/film elements. Loopy narrative arc. Et cetera and ad infinitum.


Opie-Ron's slipshod treatment of the legacy of The Beatles has zero replay value. I'll never purchase the DVD. Saw it once in the theater. Done.


Conversely, I did procure the MMT DVD a couple of years ago: love it, have screened it often in the past and intend on viewing it again, whenever the mood strikes me for connecting with the perfect time capsule of the band's 1967 era.

 

The two songs are in stereo, which strongly points to Hollywood Bowl as the source. How many other multi-tracked concert recordings exist? (I've heard some reports that Shea was multi-tracked, but they didn't perform "She Loves You" at Shea so that couldn't be the source.)

It kind of makes sense that "Hollywood Bowl" has been repackaged as a film tie-in, because those tapes ended up being synched up with a lot of non-Bowl footage in the movie; it's the de facto soundtrack. (The rationale being, I'm sure, that the Bowl tapes are the best-sounding concert recordings by the band.)

 

The audio from the concert at ABC Manchester was just fine. Just not stereo. Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt with the reasoning that it was the actual lead off of the theatrical film and so they wanted the impact of stereo, they could have at least used the real audio on the BluRay extras disc. And they even played an outro instrumental to From Me to You.

 

And they played all of "Twist and Shout." On the bonus disc, they hacked off half the song to match the truncated Bowl performance.

 

Well it was released to HULU same day of the theatrical. I'm guessing Prime Time didn't want it as the kids are running the networks now.