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

semi- live

 

thats fair, but thats still no an excuse for colourization, i can't stomach any content that has been colourized ( unless its colour restored, thats a different argument ), it just looks so fake and until they ever find a way of making the process actually look real i think it should be avoided period.

 

yes overdubs on live footage, thats also inexcusable except in some cases where the original soundtrack is lost or not present.

 

i enjoyed the movie

 

I agree that the colorization was unnecessary. I've also seen better colorization. The colorized "All You Need Is Love" isn't perfect (the constant crossfading seems to have confused the computer) but it's not bad - and it predated Eight Days a Week by a couple of decades. I have to suspect (though I have no evidence to back this up) that someone saw a rough cut of the film and decided it had too much black and white. If the colorization was a rush job at a late stage of film preparation, that might explain why it looks a little crude. (One clip - the NME pollwinners show, maybe? - features a crowd shot where a disproportionately high number of audience members are wearing yellow.)

It's conceivable that the original soundtracks exist, but don't sound so great. I personally would have preferred the original soundtracks where they were usable. One annoyance is that the movie uses the Bowl version of "If I Fell," which was then omitted from the expanded reissue of the Bowl album.

 

No, that was accurate. The women's Australian Olympic team attended the NME pollwinner's concert in full YELLOW uniform. So that explains it:

 

actually i'll restrict my rant about colourization to film, with VT it fares better, thats probably because it often comes out looking just very NTSC which is variable colour anyway ( Never The Same Colour ) especially compared to Pal 625 and with the more primitive VT recording available in the 60's colourization is either hard to differentiate from the original or more likely - you can just get away with it more... ie you could easily get away with thinking the ANIYL colourization is just a colour recording using NTSC cameras of the period ( check out ATV's Sunday night at the London Palladium from 65/66 where Lew Grade recorded some shows using NTSC colour cameras for showing in the USA ).

Even some early PAL can be patchy due mainly to problems with some of the early cameras they had to draft in and again the recording equipment. Good NTSC can be sometimes be hard to tell from poor PAL.

 

I watched this 2 days ago, and have rwo questions that I bet the SH Beatles badasses can help with:

1. Content: has anyone catalogued all the audio substitutions and *fixes" in this doc in one place?

2. Is there a better ~2-hour overview of the Beatles career?

I ask because my (Hungarian) wife didn't move to the US until the 2000s, so while she grew up knowing the music, she doesn't have the context of the cultural impact the Beatles made in the US.

The Anthology DVDs are out, as I think that's 10+ hours, and plus I never got around to buying it!

I just re-bought imagine: John Lennon, because that at least covers the appropriate time period, though it's obviously John-centric. Any other documentary recommendations?

 

In answer to #2 : the Compleat Beatles.

 

The Beatles Anthology Revisited, an 18-episode, 28-hour long audio documentary podcast presenting the Beatles' story in the Beatles' own words. (yes, it's longer than 2hrs)...

See here for more info
Beatles Anthology Revisited – new 28 hour podcast *

And the 2016 upgraded edition mp3/flac download link can be found here (scroll down to the bottom of the page) (note: this link was provided in the above thread):
Beatles Songs Covered By Others And Songs The Beatles Covered

 

Sad thing is despite the audio substitutions and colorized footage I was half way getting into it until Whoopi showed up......

 

You guys never disappoint.

 

but she is essential to the Beatles history!

 

I rolled my eyes at this point as well.

 

...and meanwhile, Ronnie Spector is relegated the the bonus disc.

 

Priorities

 

That I found to be the most galling. It also reveals the filmmakers priorities. Ronnie would have had much to contribute. She’s a part of the story and a music giant.......but no they thought it was better for Whoopi to get that screen time.

 

yea, ridiculous...

 

If it's not Shea Stadium, and the sound is in stereo, assume it's from the Hollywood Bowl. I think they also grabbed a little piece of "Day Tripper" from one of the Budokan shows.

 

So they're still live performances, just substituted from other venues? I suppose I can live with that - I was worried they were digitally integrating studio elements. Thank you!

 

And thanks all for the recommendations. I will absolutely check out the expanded Anthology podcast, and the Compleat Beatles. Flying to Europe for the first time Sunday - will make for a Beatley flight!

 

Also - The Rutles - All You Need Is Cash - even though it's a parody - covers a lot of this material. In a silly way, yes, but still - the more you're into the Beatles, the more wickedly accurate this film is.

Also - you still may want to consider the Beatles Anthology. Ebay has listings of the 5 DVD set for $25.95. That's a cool way to get the story from the people who lived it. Just watch it in small batches over a few nights - kinda like the original broadcasts.

Cheers,
Paul

 

That's my mum, fourth from the right, second row. She never stops talking about that Pollwinners concert.

 

I watched it for the first time a few months ago. Amazing how good they recreated The Beatles story.

 

Neil Aspinall began compiling a Beatles retrospective film in the early 1970s (which, much later, evolved into Anthology). Apparently George Harrison showed a rough cut to his friend Eric Idle, which laid the groundwork for the Rutles film.