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Post by Dr Winston on Sept 4, 2007 17:23:11 GMT 1
Beatles film, Help!, has been restored and is coming to a new two-disc DVD.
And for extra features?
•The Beatles in Help! – 30 minute documentary about the making of the film with Richard Lester, the cast and crew. Includes exclusive behind the scenes footage of The Beatles on set.
•A Missing Scene – Featuring Wendy Richard
•The Restoration of Help! – An in depth look at the restoration process
•Memories of Help! – The cast and crew reminisce
•Theatrical Trailers – 2 US trailers and 1 Spanish trailer
•1965 US Radio Spots - Hidden in disc menus. There will be 2 editions of the DVD - a standard digipack and a deluxe boxed set that will contain a reproduction of Richard Lester's original annotated script, 8 lobby cards and a poster, plus a 60-page book with rarely seen photographs and production notes from the movie. Both the deluxe book and the standard booklet feature an introduction by Richard Lester and an appreciation by Martin Scorsese.
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Post by restlesswind on Sept 4, 2007 20:34:32 GMT 1
Great news! Cant wait.......  |
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Post by New York City on Sept 6, 2007 22:46:29 GMT 1
Maybe Let It Be will eventually be released now.
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Post by girl on Sept 17, 2007 7:54:48 GMT 1
A bit expensive for me, but im saving my pennys. I must have this. I remember watching it on telly when i was 5, but i havent seen it since!
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Post by Dr Winston on Sept 17, 2007 18:11:04 GMT 1
A bit expensive for me, but im saving my pennys. I must have this. I remember watching it on telly when i was 5, but i havent seen it since! Usually the price comes down when it is released. If you order it now from Amazon, you will only pay the reduced price, which will be lower. |
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Post by New York City on Sept 17, 2007 20:40:42 GMT 1
I'm a softie for these things. I will buy the Deluxe, just for the booklet if nothing else. It will probably be a limited edition, so it will sell out fast. This film is a momentous moment in the Beatles career, and I hope the extra DVD is packed with goodies. Yes, I am excited about this release. Can you tell? My last post on the 'New Releases' thread: This film, more than any other, shows Beatlemania for what it really was. Madness. The Beatles are still alive with energy, the soundtrack is awesome, the acting is actually quiet good, and it's full of memories. I have been waiting for a long time for Help to be restored. Too long! A missing scene featuring Wendy Richard? Sounds fun.  |
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Post by Dr Winston on Sept 19, 2007 17:41:27 GMT 1
I think we get the message New York City. |
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Post by restlesswind on Sept 22, 2007 11:21:45 GMT 1
Help clip! |
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Post by restlesswind on Oct 24, 2007 16:39:32 GMT 1
I'm excited as it gets closer to 'Help' being re-released. I have it ordered already for Xmas, but i think it will be opened before then!  Im watching it all here.... lol |
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Post by New York City on Oct 25, 2007 10:32:00 GMT 1
Beyond Help
The director of two Beatles’ films, Richard Lester, reveals the laugh lines left by the Fab Four
The fifth Beatle – it’s a sobriquet bestowed on a series of individuals who, over the years, got close enough to the Fab Four to be irradiated by their celebrity. For three years in the mid-Sixties, Richard Lester, the director of A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, found himself close enough to the eye of the hurricane to earn auxiliary Beatle status.
On the eve of a DVD reissue of a dazzlingly restored print of Help!, Lester muses on the impact of Beatle-mania on those caught in its slip-stream. “I suppose for everyone who has been through it, however briefly, you’re never as innocent as you were before. I keep the drawbridge up even now, when my son is better known in the business than I am.”
It’s a typically self-effacing comment from a man whose diverse career includes the Goons’ television show, The Knack . . . And How To Get It, Petulia and Superman II and III. Fans in the industry range from Steven Soderbergh to Brad Bird, Hal Hartley to Martin Scorsese. His work with the Beatles was so inventive and so influential in carving out the vernacular of the modern music video that he was named “the father of MTV” by the channel. Famously, Lester immediately wrote back asking for a paternity test.
Lester witnessed first hand the voracious press attention that surrounded the Beatles in the mid-Sixties and how they coped with it. “They were very protective of each other. If somebody was feeling off, the others would kind of compensate and surround them. It was a very warm thing to see.” Who was most likely to get depressed? “I think that the one that seemed to be suffering at the time probably was Ringo. But they all dealt with it in different ways.”
Although associated with the British film industry, Lester was in fact born in Philadelphia. Something of a child prodigy, he started school at the age of 3 and went to university at 15, where he found himself surrounded by people “three years bigger, smarter and better dressed”. Disillusioned by his course in clinical psychology, Lester spent his time playing the piano and perfecting the ultimate martini.
A television director by the age of 19, Lester left America. “I felt that there was a huge world that I felt more in tune with. I went to Europe and lived by my wits for about a year.” He arrived in Britain by a happy accident six months before the launch of ITV, when TV directors were in demand.
A stint directing three series of the Goons’ television show was good grounding for Lester’s collaboration with the Beatles, who shared with him a taste for the surreal and the downright silly. “If the film holds up,” Lester says of Help!, “it’s probably because silliness doesn’t date.” It was a silliness that, certainly during the filming of Help! in the Bahamas, was assisted by the Beatles’ consumption of vast quantities of the local herb.
“I didn’t demand a standard of professionalism and get stroppy with them,” says Lester. “If they wanted to indulge in certain substances, well, that’s fine.” He’s quick to put things into perspective however. “They weren’t lying in some sort of stupor, it’s not heroin that we’re talking about. They were giggling.”
Lester recalls a seven-hour transAtlantic flight during which the Beatles were higher than the aeroplane for most of the journey. “The boys were giggling, and my son was three at the time. And there’s nothing a three-year-old likes better than to see people laughing, so he laughed for seven hours as well. At that time, it was very popular for Paul to be given teddy bears by his fans. So suddenly, a little tractor pulling two wagon loads of teddy bears turned up in front of the plane. My son just disappeared for the rest of the journey under this mound of teddies.”
Lester has been retired from film-making for about 15 years, a decision he says that was prompted partly by the advent of digital technology. “I don’t understand computers and I’m a terrible neo-Luddite. I snarl when I go past my wife’s computer. I don’t own a mobile phone.”
Watching Help! again for the first time in 35 years – the restored print was screened at the San Sebastian Film Festival – was a bittersweet experience for Lester. “I deliberately don’t see the films. It’s painful. I’m constantly trying to correct them. I said once, long ago, that looking at one’s films is like a series of tombstones held together by editing tape.”
Lester is a consummate story-teller, and he clearly enjoys revisiting the memories that the film arouses. Scenes purporting to be at Buckingham Palace, he recalls, were shot at the home of Lord Astor, who was then bed-bound, convalescing from a heart attack.
The crew of Help! decided to organise a relay race around the boxwood maze in the gardens, causing much derision from the Beatles. Lord Astor was sufficiently interested to offer a prize to the winning team – a bottle of vintage champagne from his cellar.
“Come lunchtime, everybody has changed into their trainers. Suddenly the Beatles have turned up, the gun goes off and they wipe the floor with the lot of them. Then we all trooped up to collect the prize which John immediately rejected, ‘Forget that, can I have a try on your oxygen?’ So they all sat around on his bed, chatting, and finished his bottle of oxygen.”
Help! is released on DVD on Nov 5 by Apple Corps Ltd/EMI Music
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Post by girl on Oct 29, 2007 20:53:21 GMT 1
Watch BBC 2 program about help last week....
i wish i was there...
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Post by New York City on Nov 6, 2007 19:02:54 GMT 1
The Beatles' 'Help' gets assistance
IN the family of Beatles cinematic offspring, "Help!" has long been the easy-to-overlook middle child.
It lacked the explosive energy of the first-born "A Hard Day's Night," the train-wreck experimentation of "Magical Mystery Tour," the sheer innovation of "Yellow Submarine" and the eye-opening cinéma vérité documentation of the world's most popular band in the midst of disintegrating of "Let It Be."
A newly restored two-DVD edition of "Help!" (due Tuesday) doesn't dramatically alter its status in the Fab Four's filmic canon, but it's a charming reminder of just how engaging these individuals were on the big screen.
Director Richard Lester, who also handled "A Hard Day's Night," says in an interview that's part of the extras disc, "We didn't want to repeat 'A Hard Day's Night.' The next logical step would have been to show them in their real lives. But by that point their real lives were X-rated, or what would have been considered X-rated at that time. So the only thing left was to have them become the passive recipients of an outside threat."
Far-fetched as the story was -- a religious sect's plot to kill Ringo Starr because he's wearing a sacred sacrificial ring -- "Help!" surrounded Starr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison with fabulous character actors, including Leo McKern, Eleanor Bron, Victor Spinetti and Roy Kinnear. And it's still head and shoulders above the kind of films exploiting pop stars that were commonplace at the time (think any of Elvis' '60s films).
The most noteworthy aspect of the new edition is the gorgeously remixed and remastered 5.1 surround-sound mix on the movie's seven original songs. With dynamic compression that was standard in the 1960s lifted for the digital age, the full range of the group's musicality comes through -- it's like several coats of dust have been cleaned off an old master's painting.
Beatles fans should revel in the sonic improvement, as Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr recently downplayed any thoughts of similarly upgrading the sound on the remainder of the catalog, even if it is being prepped for digital downloading soon.
The texture of Lennon's acoustic guitar strums in "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," the punch of Ringo's drums in "You're Gonna Lose That Girl," the electric sting of Harrison's Rickenbacker in "Ticket to Ride" and the bounce of McCartney's bass in "Another Girl" are a joy to experience anew through a high-end, home-theater sound system.
The visuals have also been spruced up, and there's a section in the bonus disc recounting the lengths to which the tech folks went to restore them, most evident in the stunning cinematography shot in the Austrian Alps and the Bahamas for no other reason than putting the Beatles in exotic locations.
The extras disc also includes a bittersweet interview with actress Wendy Richard (subsequently a star of the long-running BBC working-class soap "EastEnders") about her scene in "Help!" that wound up on the cutting-room floor. And the former head of the Beatles' Apple Corps company, Neil Aspinall, talks openly about the effect that marijuana and other substances the band members and their entourage were experimenting with in 1965 had on the filming of "Help!"
Get high with a little help from their friends, indeed.
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Post by restlesswind on Nov 7, 2007 13:15:49 GMT 1
Got it today! amazing! i love the 2 disc, loads of goodies. |
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Post by Dr Winston on Nov 12, 2007 17:38:45 GMT 1
Just noticed the title of this thread - October 30th. A bit early!
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Post by restlesswind on Nov 29, 2007 17:38:53 GMT 1
I just keep watching it. I love the new film, but i was hoping for more extra scenes and takeouts! why didnt paul or ringo talk about it??
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