From: edc@evolution.bchs.uh.edu (edward s. chen)
Newsgroups: rec.music.beatles
Subject: Re: Beatles video list
Date: 5 Jan 1993 21:54:52 GMT
Organization: Little to none, or maybe not......
NNTP-Posting-Host: evolution.bchs.uh.edu

In article <1993Jan5.193811.6834@news.columbia.edu> brennan@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Joseph Brennan) writes:
>In article <1i23qjINN4a9@menudo.uh.edu> edc@evolution.bchs.uh.edu
>(edward s. chen) writes:
>>                  A summary of the Beatles on video
>
>This was excellent!  Thanks for the hard work!

You are very welcome...

>>A Hard Day's Night
>My tape of this starts with the song "I'll cry instead" and a montage of
>photos.  I don't know what this is, since it doesn't appear to be a trailer.
>I wish it started out with the opening chord of "A hard day's night"!

That was put together by Richard Lester when he re-obtained the rights to the
two Beatles films.  It was one of the "extras" (along with the re-mixed 
soundtrack) added as incentive to get folks back into theatres to see the
re-release back in the early eighties.   One must remember that fairly
poor quality prints of "AHDN" and "Help!" had been shown repeatedly on
American television throughout the seventies.

>>Magical Mystery Tour
>>it (albeit, somewhat edited) from television. (The Disney Channel in the USA)
>
>What did the Disney people edit?  I have seen a broadcast TV version,
>some years ago, that was edited down to probably 45 minutes of film,
>but with all the songs in at least.

Once again, the Disney censor hit MMT, but fairly lightly.  The biggest
excision was the entire "stripper" scene, losing one of the better gags
in the film :-( [The stripper taking off her top, and the audience seeing
a black bar placed there by the Beatles!].   The television version you
mention was hacked mercilessly.  The video was blurry, and the audio was
illegible in several places (of course, that release was without the permission
of Apple)

>>Yellow Submarine
>>the only thing that would make this tape better is if a letterbox edition
>>were made available.
>
>It -was- wide screen, wasn't it?  I think Disney's features have always
>been the old ratio, which is like the TV ratio.  Think of all the extra
>drawing and painting for wide screen!

I'm not 100% certain.  I'll have to check some sources for the update -
which will probably come after the first tape in "Long and Winding Road"
makes its debut.

>I was annoyed at not getting the clips complete.  It's been a while
>since I viewed this, but I recall all the "videos" (film of course!)
>were cut short or talked over.  Maybe this is the difference between
>compleat and complete :-).  

The only one which is complete is the "Let It Be" promo.   Most of
the "Strawberry Fields" promo is present, but they keep interrupting
it for George Martin talking!

[Re: The Rutles]

>>on the unreleased in-house (Apple) Beatles documentary.
>
>I don't know about that, but parts of it are based on a British TV
>documentary series called "All you need is love", which covered the
>development of pop music generally but had a whole episode on the
>Beatles.  I think the reporter walking along, filmed from a moving
>truck (see Eric Idle near the beginning), is an example, but it's been
>a long time since I saw AYNIL.  The name of the Rutles film is really
>"All you need is cash", also a takeoff on the series.

Yes, and no.  The current story is that during the early stages of writing
"All You Need is Cash", George Harrison and Derek Taylor screened a copy
of the documentary for messrs. Innes and Idle.  Pieces were certainly
influenced by "All you Need is Love" (most notably Idle's reporter), but 
there is too much detail (Pathetique newsreel indeed!) for them *not* to have 
used the Apple production as a launching point.

>The Rutles film is increasingly funny, the more you know about the
>Beatles.  There's too much to catch in one viewing, it's so dense with
>parody detail.  I thank whoever it was (saki?) for pointing out that
>the reporter played by George Harrison is a lookalike for the Liverpool
>reporter who is also named George Harrison!

Yeah,  two of my favorite gags are things nobody ever notices.  In Dick
Jaws' office, gold records for "Red Rose Speedway", and "Ringo" are clearly
present.  Then of course, Roger McGough (former member of Scaffold, along
with Paul's baby brother Mike) appearing and holding one of his books (which
has John and Paul on the cover) is also priceless...

<ESC>
-- 
Something in the way she moves, attracts me like a pomegranate.
                                     -- George Harrison