So, should I let Amber and Alice see the Beatles' "Help" film?

That's a nice picture.

what about 'the amazing adventures of paul on the floor'??!!

it's the best fabs film i think. except 'let it be' maybe.

My favourite bit is where 'everyone laughed at Ringo's sudden [I forget, is it 'apprehension'?] and they all laugh falsely for a long time.

Also kidtastic is how they go into the four separate terraced house fronts and it is one big house yay! And John sleeps in a sunken bed! And George has a grassy lawn, indoors!

"will you explain everything when the opportunity presents itself?"

I'd told them that it wasn't like "Yellow Submarine" but it was the real people. Oh, and I pointed out Paul as being Stella's dad (we met her once, with her dog Red). Apart from that and a little explaining the plot after the first scene and during the titles' run.

Some Highlights:
Beatles enter their house(s): Alice: "Oh, I want that house...!"
After the shrinking paul and the restaurant scene and so on: Amber "So, when's it going to get funny?"

Then the snow/skiing bit, they now were much happier, and as alice said "The songs are the funny bits".

A lot of this is that the kids need to know how it works out, then they can relax a bit. At one point, Amber insisted on knowing if Ringo got his ring off eventually, and after 5 mins of this I said "YES! ALRIGHT!" she went "yeah!!!" and watched the rest.

Oh, and I popped out to do their dinner (Pasta with a tomato salsa sauce and grated cheddar). During the final scene where ringo was painted and staked out and they were getting the knives ready Alice shouted "OH NO! SACRIFICE HIM NOW? I'M EATING MY DINNER!!" which was the line of the night tstl.

Anyway, the film was marked as "Cool" and "Fab" and all those words I don't use. The 'indian' thing was not remarked upon in the end, as they bore no relation to any religions they have come into contact with.

Cheers.

I knew I should have just kidnapped a couple off the canal. But I think Suzy and Liz might have objected to the noise. ;-)

Well, here we are, six years later, and they decide they want to see it again...

So, an overcast day during the week, we did.

Some Highlights:
Beatles enter their house(s): Alice: "Oh, I want that house...!"

This time:
Alice: "Oh, I want John Lennon's bed! Oh, we've got that book! (Spaniard in the works) Hey! He's got four there!"

A bit more recognition of the "indians" not exactly being like the Indian families they know, but basically they still enjoyed the film.

Previously, I'd put the Mayles' DVD of "The beatles first visit" expecting a 'better quality' version of the VHS I've had for donkeys, but this is much longer! The kids enjoyed it but were getting a bit fidgety for me putting on "Help!" instead.

I think this is all because we'd made a visit to Liverpool and Matthew Street (I'd never been before), and Alice got some Beatles souvenirs...

(wasn't there some talk of an Eric's museum opening? has it?)

Well I did know that Erics was in the same street but I didn't see any reference to it.

The article in "Word" said there was no visible sign from the outside but the inside is being cleared out. That seems to still be the case. It seems not to be a museum but a potential live venue.

unless you mean the Liverpool Museum which is at the quayside, and has lots of music related stuff on one floor (and because it's free entry, was jampacked when we were there). That has lots of Erics stuff, the orig lyrics for HMHB songs, DeafSchool original dresses, actually the list is very long.

(ok, thanks. i went a few years ago explicitly to find 80s liverpool scene venues and failed utterly (aside from a sign with liverpudlian bands listed on it in HMV which had the bunnymen and teardrops right at the bottom). later found out that the cavern had moved about a bit, was over the other side of the road for while and that confused things. this was just before their Year Of Culture - liverpool museum was a twinkle in the architects' eye and liverpool one wasn't even open.)

50th anniv yesterday

shoot photos:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/beatles-help-50-rare-behind-scenes-photos

A local rep had a print--beautiful--shipped from England for a 50th anniversary screening tonight. I've been saying for years that I like this better than A Hard Day's Night. Think I have to revise that.

The musical cues are brilliant, especially "Ticket to Ride," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," and "I Need You." (Saw one person duck out just as "Ticket to Ride" was about to start, then return just as it was ending. She missed the greatest video ever.) I think my familiarity of them had overwhelmed whatever I remembered of the rest of the film.

Visually great--weird shots, Keaton and Chaplin references, lots going on.

The deadpan verbal stuff works about half the time. "Fiendish thingy"--my friend was really fond of that one. John and Ringo in the elevator was my favourite: "What was it that first attracted you to me?" The woman gets off a couple of good lines too.

But oh, the chase part of the film...96 minutes long, and it felt like three hours by the time they got to the Bahamas.

It's the Beatles in 1965, and they're high and having fun, so I'm glad I saw it again. I've definitely been overrating it, though. (Didn't know it was originally supposed to be directed by Philippe de Broca .)

over-familiar?

I think Paul said it took days to do some scenes of just simple dialogue because of how colossally baked they all were.

(xpost) The musical sequences, yes--I play them for students every year, and sometimes I'll just look at them on YouTube for pleasure. And that stuff I never tire of. But the film itself I probably hadn't seen for 25 years.

Beautiful photo of Eleanor Bron ("Ahme").

http://lowres-picturecabinet.com.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/38/main/50/74281.jpg

I think she's one of the best reasons to see the film.

Also a good reason to see "Bedazzled"

...and "Two For The Road"

oops - sorry 9could someone delete that:

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a82/bobbysixer/beatleslaugh_zpsvhjotz2t.jpg

(this was the colossally baked Help era photo I was thinking of. I love how the statue in the back looks slightly disapproving, and there's almost a trompe l'oeil effect - with Paul's hand seeming to be coming out of the frame.)

This film has aged quite nicely. It parodies nearly every genre movie trope from 1910-1965, so i don't imagine kids would like much besides the songs and the primary colors.

It's nowhere as great a film as AHDN, but it's probably funnier.

The woman gets off a couple of good lines too

"The woman." Yo La Tengo gives her a shout in their greatest song, and she's "the woman."

there is at least one pot joke, where Ringo is chewing gum and Paul promises that it's not addicting "If you don't swallow it."

i saw this for the first time the other day! (a hard day's night too.) i loved the godardian color filters and superimposed text and the have your cake and eat it too aspect of making a completely off-the-rails musical comedy spy film. i didn't enjoy the nonspecific racism in its depiction of an "eastern" death cult (it's a parody of bond films but in this way i think it reinforced bond tropes instead of undermining them.) it also kinda suffers from having only one plot point. but boy is the cinematography gorgeous. also: the exciting adventure of paul on the floor is probably my favorite thing that happens in either film

“It’s a different religion from ours. I think.”

I’m really fond of the scene of them playing cards in Buckingham Palace and trying to convince Ringo to cut his finger off, and suggesting they could just hire this other drummer up in Manchester.

George's "Doesn't sound a bit like Cagney" never fails to make me laugh.

This film has so many fewer fans than AHDN that nobody ever gets my frequent uses of "With an X like that I could -- dare I say it? -- rule the world."

lmao

I like to imagine that the use of white English actors to play the "eastern" restaurant doorman is a bit of meta commentary on the casting

oh yeah that is def something that seems sorta self-aware

Oh, one I forgot back from the second time we watched it..

Yes, the meta commentary on the casting, yes. Even to the point of "oh, we've got a real one in there, havent we?"

When that guy sees the ring, he goes all nervy and has to lie on a bed of nails to calm down. At which point, Alice said "Oh, you did that once, didn't you Dad?" And I had to recall it and yes: There was a museum somewhere, a bloke doing a chat about the bed of nails and asked for volunteers, so Amber and Alice shoved me up there. Yes, I had indeed, but I didn't take my coat off and no damage was done.

I laid down on a bed of nails at a museum once when I was a kid younger, so much younger than today. There was a plexiglass platform with holes in it that you would lay down on, and then a motor would raise the nails up. I remember it as being very comfortable.

I just finished Get Back and Eight Days A Week, so I'd been wanting to watch Help! this week. It's not available on any of the streaming services I subscribe to, but fortunately, it's up on Dailymotion.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5rsp4o

The one thing that annoys me:

At the end, where the lads are singing along while the credits are playing, George notices his song credit is on screen and yells out "I Need You, George Harrison!".

I used to laff at that one. I don't now, as the credits have been re-done, and he yells out at a complete random point now.

I dunno. Remaster that one, I say!

I dug out the most recent Blu-ray and George's credit and reaction are in the right place.

He does say it a minute later as well, so maybe I had it wrong all this time!

i saw this for the first time the other day! (a hard day's night too.) i loved the godardian color filters and superimposed text and the have your cake and eat it too aspect of making a completely off-the-rails musical comedy spy film. i didn't enjoy the nonspecific racism in its depiction of an "eastern" death cult (it's a parody of bond films but in this way i think it reinforced bond tropes instead of undermining them.) it also kinda suffers from having only one plot point. but boy is the cinematography gorgeous. also: the exciting adventure of paul on the floor is probably my favorite thing that happens in either film

― flamenco blorf (BradNelson), Sunday, June 3, 2018 11:34 AM (three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I watched this last week and definitely agree with Brad on the racism and white casting of Asian characters. It's a shame because the Beatles themselves are very charming and hilarious throughout.

I've never watched A Hard Day's Night before, but I have to check that out while I'm on a roll.