I agree except I feel the Monkees show was artistic too. Very distinctive and unique for a comedy. Head is especially amazing. I was disappointed in it when I saw it originally. Now I love it and consider it one of the best rock movies made. It was ahead of the curve.
I was JUST commenting on that part of the episode to my wife over the weekend......it runs on a network here in the USA, miraculously, called MeTv, which runs a lot of other cool 60s stuff......was her cleavage THAT offensive? I prefer Billy Roy Hodstetter and Locksley Mendoza, myself, in the Talent Show itself........
Us Monkees fans are really lucky to have so much audio and video available. Few bands are this well represented with archive releases. I think the show is a great time-capsule of the era it was made in - whether it was fashion, music or humour. Head in particular is a great document. What about the 33 1/3 Rev? It's painfully dated in a perfect way. It's completely 'of it's time' but it's a time I think is pivotal in the history of pop culture and welcome any document of. Above everything else though we get tons of perfect quality 'promo videos' for tons of great songs. The amount of (mimed) performances used throughout the series makes it something invaluable to fans. Imagine if The Monkees TV show was a Beatles TV show - fab fans would love having all this footage circulating so as a fan of The Monkees I think it's an essential series to own as well as a joy to watch. It's self aware enough, particularly in the later episodes, to be enjoyable for an adult I feel and the series is very tongue-in-cheek for the most part. Whether it's worth $200 depends on your own level of interest in the band but personally, even though I own the DVDs, I'd love to own this set and am this close to pre-ordering.
Exactly, especially for it's time. There was nothing else like the Monkees on TV then, and I still think it holds up better than a lot of what has passed for popular sitcoms since. Both the show and Head were way ahead of their time. To say it wasn't artistic is just ludacris to me. In hindsight it may not seem so, because a lot of the style has been duplicated and taken for granted since, but it was absolutely cutting edge at the time.
Yes, but just think aboout it ... for just under $200 you now can have a 7" vinyl record (and it might be pressed a little off-center) with 2 songs that'll never find their way on to a cd (at least until about another 10 years from now). My DVD's work fine, too, yet, somehow, it looks like I'm gonna shell out the money for this, as well. You see, I suffer from Pavlov's Dog syndrome.
I don't think the price is too high. Andrew stated on facebook yesterday that rhino is spending over 250,000 on getting these prints done right. add in the fact that you are also getting 33 1/3, head, and countless extras. you have to remember they still have to pay all the songwriters for use of their songs. I pre-ordered mine yesterday as soon as I heard the news. I haven't watched much of the show in a good while but come January, I will most certainly. I also don't see the price coming down, unless they get stuck with a lot of them left. you can only get them on monkees.com so they won't be showing up in huge numbers anywhere else, if at all. they will probably do like batman, and release season sets later, but I'm not waiting. chad
The DVD sets came out around 13 years ago so whatever the reason I don't think it was a nefarious plot. Why is there so much complaining? After years of fans asking for cleaned up restored versions, we are getting just that. I'm thankful we are still getting new releases.
Rhino made their BONES on The Monkees. I bought all the vinyl reissues in '86 which nobody ever thought we'd see again. They will hold out as long as they can at that price. Worth it for original negs alone. I have the Criterion HEAD but could always use another, OUTTAKES????
I ordered right away. And even though I initially thought it was pricey... Price seems about right. How would people feel about it had they split it into Vol I & Vol II and charged 100.00 per volume? Still 200.00 but you could purchase them separately and spread out your payments.
I'm happy with my DVD box sets of the TV Series, apart from the picture upgrade it sounds like most of the special features are the same. I don't suppose they've managed to upgrade 33 1/3 much either considering it was shot on tape and has never looked that great. However, Head is one of my favourite movies ever. The fact The Monkees are in it is a bonus. I wish they'd sell a bonus features laden Bluray of this one outside of a box set
Head is by far my favorite of the trippy late 60s / early 70s films I have seen. Beyond that, it is actually quite good. I have sat through too many of those other turkeys to count due to cool cameos or soundtrack nuggets. Runners up are Magic Christian and 200 Motels. So all the good ones have either Ringo or Zappa in them. And, in one instance, Ringo as Larry the Dwarf dressed up like Frank Zappa.
Thats Great ,I just have been buying videos Laser Discs DVDs and Blue Rays for years and know that studios will want to milk every cent out of us as possible, now we have BR and 4k back when laser discs came out ,studios would often release product that was step away from the masters,only to re release the same title with better picture ,and so on and so on
Also, the first one is a tight close up, the second is a wide shot. There is also the "Captain Crocodile" episode where the story either takes place in "the land of Kirshner" or "the land of Schneider."
They may not know what they will all be yet. Didn't someone comment that the mastering is yet to be done? We do know about the HEAD outtakes and the "new" NBC series promo they posted. I am assuming the HEAD outtakes are showing up here (and not on the BBS set) because Rafelson's nixing applied to that release, which was specifically about the BBS films (as a set, not Monkees-centric), and which was handled by Sony, which had to license anything Monkees related for anything other than theatrical or TV showings. In this case, Rhino owns the whole thing lock, stock and barrel (full of Monkees) so it's a simpler matter. We know (or at least it sure seems) that the Rhino people read the stuff that's discussed here, at least Andrew pops in from time to time. (They know who their target audience is and the press release says this collection is being done specifically for Monkees fans -- the past DVD sets were created for more of a general audience.) I certainly want to know about any "surprises" but if they spilled the beans on everything right now, it wouldn't be a surprise and there would just be more to wait for. Also, like I said above, I bet all the extras aren't even determined for sure yet. As long as Andrew is involved, we know someone from "our team" is there and will certainly make the best possible effort to get the stuff in there that we want. Interesting comment on Rhino not owning the 1997 special. I believe that was copyrighted to "THE MONKEES SPECIAL INC." which consisted of Nesmith, Dolenz and Tork (according to an online listing of legal corporations I once stumbled across). Nez did say on Facebook some time back that he had been working on doing something with the special. Maybe remastering it for HD? Hopefully they will be able to work a deal out to include it here.
As I recall, Rhino wasn't able to get absolutely everything they wanted from Sony back in the day. They seem to have a better set-up these days. I wonder if that stems from having had to work together on the BBS box set. That seems to be when they found stuff like the "other" screen tests. I had assumed those to have been lost to the ages.
My point is that more that it says it's shipping in January, and that's only 4 months away. As they've set a shipping date and have a number of discs, they must know (or have an idea) of what's going to be included. The series & 33 1/3 would easily fit on 6 blu-rays. Add another for Head. So, that's 3 blu-rays worth of material unaccounted for. I'm just curious what that might be (as we all are!)
They may just put in on more discs to make it seem like a better deal for the price. They would not be the first manufacturers to put products in larger packages than necessary to make it look like a better deal.