"Across the Universe": the movie

[B]

Looks a little - contrived. To those of us who lived those times, it wasn't nearly as action-packed
as it appears on the big screen. That's just my initial reaction.
I don't even know what the plot is.

www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/11/arts/beatles.php

'Across the Universe': Turning Beatles songs upside down
By Sylviane Gold Published: September 12, 2007

For most anybody who was over 12 and under 30 in 1964, the sound of the Beatles is immutably fixed in the brain. With the opening of Julie Taymor's new movie, "Across the Universe," expect many of those brain cells to be all shook up.

Call it a jukebox musical, or a rock opera, or a long-playing music video. All those labels fit - and don't. Taymor's essentially unclassifiable film, which opens on Friday in the United States and in parts of Europe and Asia through the fall and winter, puts Beatles' songs in the mouths, and sometimes in the heads, of newly invented characters just living their lives. A high school girl, Lucy, awaits her boyfriend's return from basic training and sings "It Won't Be Long." Her college student brother, Max, parties with Jude, a new buddy from Liverpool, to a rendition of "With a Little Help From My Friends." Then Jude meets Lucy: "I've Just Seen a Face."

As the '60s become The Sixties, the proms give way to protests and the bowling parties to jungle patrols. Forty years after the Summer of Love,Taymor deploys the Beatles' music to track the history, tell a love story and jettison the familiar contours of those hit tunes.

It's not that she doesn't like them the way they are. "The Beatles songs are perfect," she said in her Manhattan loft. That's why the movie versions, she said, need to be complete departures. So "Let It Be" becomes a gospel hymn, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" turns into a ballad, and "I Am the Walrus" is the name of a book by a proto-hippie.

Taymor, 54, has never been timid about putting her own stamp on the work of others. Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus," Mozart's "Magic Flute" and the paintings of Frida Kahlo are among the classics she has reimagined for the stage or the screen. In "The Lion King," she turned Disney's animated fable into a Broadway extravaganza. But messing with the Beatles?

"It is a gamble," Taymor acknowledged. "Everybody has their own interpretation." A similar effort to match Beatles music to a story, the movie "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," faltered in 1978.

Still, when she was approached by Revolution Studios (which is affiliated with Sony, co-owner of the Beatles catalogue), the idea proved irresistible. She enlisted two frequent collaborators, the composer Elliot Goldenthal (with whom she lives) and the choreographer Daniel Ezralow. And she got Bono, Salma Hayek (the star of Taymor's film "Frida"), Joe Cocker and Eddie Izzard to do cameos.

She came at "Across the Universe" from two directions, she said: "What are my favorite Beatles songs? And what are the ones you just have to do?"

She dug into the material with the screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. "We had 200 unbelievably diverse songs to choose from," she said, and she wanted them to fit the story "as if they were invented at that moment, for those characters."

She knew some, like "I Am the Walrus," would be trouble. "I haven't a clue," she said. "But you put it into the mouth of a California poet" - that would be Bono's part - "and you don't ask what it means." Ignoring it was not an option. "I didn't want people to say, 'They did lightweight Beatles.' "

She decided to echo the range of the songs with a range of characters: women, black men, Asian-Americans. The story that emerged revolves around Max and Lucy, played by Joe Anderson and Evan Rachel Wood. Along with Jude, acted by Jim Sturgess; Martin Luther McCoy's Jo-Jo, a guitarist from riot-ravaged Detroit; and T.V. Carpio's Prudence, an Asian lesbian fleeing white-bread Ohio, they land in the sprawling East Village pad of Dana Fuchs's rising soul singer, Sadie, and immerse themselves in the roiling '60s stew of sex, politics and rock 'n' roll.

"What we've shown on screen is coming out of an era of such trauma," Taymor said. "It's not different from now. But how we're dealing with it is very different. Where are the protest songs?"

She knew from the start that Max would be drafted, but she wasn't sure which tune to use. She was leaning toward "Hello Goodbye" when, listening to "I Want You," she realized that it echoed the famous Uncle Sam recruitment poster.

In recognition of the Beatles' debt to American rhythm and blues, she created Jo-Jo, the Jimi Hendrix-like guitarist ;D, and Sadie, the Janis Joplin-like singer.

Taymor began with the assumption that she would use 15 or 16 songs. But she kept finding more that fit her characters' emotional states, ending up with 31 sung tunes (and two more that appear only in the scoring). "Why bother talking when they can sing it?" she said.

How and when they sing it is what will most surprise moviegoers. Max is in a veterans hospital, waiting for his next shot of morphine, for "Happiness Is a Warm Gun." The sexy nurses who administer the drug are all Hayek, multiplied five times. Jo-Jo picks out "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" during the long night after the murder of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Taymor lets Fuchs sing the raunchy "Why Don't We Do It in the Road."

Insistent as she was about keeping the narrative scenes as realistic as possible, Taymor also intended "to play with all the elements of film - all of the elements." So "Across the Universe" regularly veers from naturalism to the surreal. Songs travel from one character to another, across time and space. In typical musicals the story often stops when someone starts singing. In "Across the Universe" the music propels the plot along.

Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison have all seen the film, Taymor said. But the director was present only when it was screened for McCartney. "I have never been so nervous in my life," she recalled. But, "even if it all ends here, at least I got to make this movie and sit next to Paul."

[CoconutFudge]

I would like to be excited for this movie, but every time I am at the movies and see a previews, I can only think about how much I dislike the covers that are being played.

[B]

My reaction too.

movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=275407>1=7701

Wood Graduates to Beatles' 'Universe'
Sept. 12, 2007, 1:50 PM EST
The Associated Press

"TORONTO -- It was 20 years ago today, or close to it, that Evan Rachel Wood was born, and the actress does not remember a time when the Beatles were not part of her life.

Her parents lived through the 1960s when the Beatles redefined pop music. Wood grew up with the Beatles' "Rubber Soul," "Magical Mystery Tour" and "Yellow Submarine" albums.

She found a home movie of her first Christmas. The Beatles' "White Album" was playing in the background.

So Wood was well-steeped in the tunes when she won the lead in "Across the Universe," a musical romance set to Beatles songs that opens Friday, a week after Wood turned 20.

"Nobody can touch the Beatles, and there's never going to be another band like them," Wood said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, where "Across the Universe" — and three other films featuring Wood — were playing.

"They came along at just the right time, and they really did change the world. To this day, they just seem so untouched and pure, like kids are before they're taught all these rules. They're just kind of open and open-minded and full of love, and that's just what the Beatles seemed like."

On the same day "Across the Universe" opens, Wood stars in "King of California," playing the wise-beyond-her-years teen daughter of a crackpot musician (Michael Douglas) on a quest to find lost treasure buried in the 'burbs of the nation's biggest state......"

"...She sang 'If I Fell' in the audition..."

"Wood recalled that audition as one of the most nerve-racking moments of her life. With her early roots in musical theater, Wood had dreamed of doing a movie musical and had been following the progress of "Across the Universe" as the film was in development.

When auditions came up, she learned two Beatles' songs, "If I Fell" and "It Won't Be Long" and tried to stay calm as she sang them for Taymor and her casting crew.

"I never even sweat when I'm working out or anything, let alone when I'm nervous, but after that, my whole back was soaked, because I wanted it so bad and I knew I could do it if I could just keep my nerves under control," Wood said. "I left going, 'That either went really, really great or awful, and I don't know what's going to happen.' Two weeks later, I got the phone call and just cried."

Wood wound up singing both her audition songs in "Across the Universe," in which she plays Lucy, an American teen who falls for her brother's British buddy, Jude (Jim Sturgess), amid the social upheaval of the 1960s.

Most of the story is told through Beatles songs, with the film featuring only half an hour of spoken dialogue. The cast includes U2 singer Bono as Dr. Robert, a psychedelic guru who sings "I Am the Walrus," Joe Cocker doing "Come Together," and Salma Hayek, the star of Taymor's "Frida," in a wild production number set to "Happiness Is a Warm Gun."

Wood's father runs a theater in North Carolina and her mother is a stage actress, so going into show business seemed inevitable.

"I was at the theater more than my house. It's all I knew, so it was just normal for me being at the theater all the time. On stage, off stage, it was kind of all the same to me," Wood said. "I was always performing and singing. Never on demand, though. I would have to do it on my own. If somebody asked me to sing, I would run and hide."

Wood has found a musical partner in her private life in boyfriend Marilyn Manson. She clams up a bit when asked about him and his interest in the film.

"He's a big Julie Taymor fan, so he's just excited about the whole thing," Wood said. "He's been very supportive."

At the time, Manson had not seen "Across the Universe," but Wood seemed unconcerned over how he would react to her musical chops.

It was a different story for Wood and her cast mates as they shot the film and contemplated that eventually, their performances would come under scrutiny of surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with Yoko Ono, John Lennon's wife, and the family of George Harrison.

Wood and co-star Sturgess finally sat through a screening in the company of Starr.

"That was our dream, watching it with a Beatle, because at the end of the day, that's who we cared about the most," Wood said. "Hardcore fans of the Beatles can say what they want, but if we had the Beatles' approval, we kind of felt safe. And Ringo loved it , and Yoko's seen it, and she supports it.

"But the final one was Paul. He was the one we were waiting on, and there was a kind of hesitancy about the whole thing. But he saw the movie with Julie. Julie asked him at the end if there was anything he didn't like, and he said, 'What's not to like?' The clouds parted and the angels sang. That's what we needed. That's what meant the most to us.""

My prediction: A bomb, but one of those "so bad you just have to see it" movies.
Beatle fans will hate it, but morbid curiousity will draw viewers.

sneak peak:
video.msn.com/v/us/v.htm?f=msnmovies/64&g=605d98e6-15cb-4293-a0d7-ea724d133f98&p=Entertainment_Movies&t=&rf=http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=275407>1=7701&mpc=2&fg=

Paul would be spinning in his grave, IF....

[B]

3 strikes; You're OUT!

www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20056210,00.html

(1.) Movie Review:
"Across the Universe" (2007)

C-
By Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is a film critic for EW (Entertainment Weekly)

The Beatles already survived one attempt by Hollywood to turn them into kitsch — 1978's infamous Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band — and so you have to wonder what they did to deserve Across the Universe, Julie Taymor's goofy, pompous, annoyingly boomer-myopic Fab Four musical. It's the sort of movie in which a young rebel reports for the draft, and Uncle Sam, glowering down from an ''I Want You'' poster, starts to sing — yes — Abbey Road's ''I Want You.'' Then, just as you're in mid-jaw-drop, the number cuts to a group of soldiers in Vietnam carrying the Statue of Liberty as they sing, ''She's so heav-ayyyyy...''

Watching Across the Universe, it's almost fun to pick out which use of the Beatles makes you gag the most. Taymor serves up the songs in sludgy marzipan renditions, cramming them into her god-awful shopping-mall rehash of the late '60s. There's ''With a Little Help From My Friends'' turned into a frat-house ditty (why not?); ''Helter Skelter'' slathered across counterculture riot footage in the style of a bad TV movie; and songs like ''If I Fell'' pasted onto romances that haven't been remotely dramatized. The story is all protests, rainbow crash pads, and solarized acid trips — a Hairy cliché fest, all reflected through the tale of a guy named Jude (Jim Sturgess) and a girl named Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). I did like the underwater kissing to ''Because,'' plus Bono doing ''I Am the Walrus.'' He has presence (more than you can say for anyone else). But the thing about the Beatles is, their songs already are movies. They hardly needed to be fixing the hole of this one. C-

Posted Sep 12, 2007
-----------------------------------------------

www.boston.com/movies/display?display=movie&id=8798

(2.) Across the Universe Movie Review
'Across the Universe' should have let the Beatles be

By Ty Burr
Boston Globe
Published: 09/14/2007

Oh, dear Lord, where to begin? Bono in a fright wig as Dr. Robert, singing "I Am the Walrus" on his way to meet the giant blue puppet people? "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" set to an image of US soldiers struggling to carry the Statue of Liberty to Vietnam? "I've Just Seen a Face" as an upbeat dance number set in a bowling alley?

How to describe the blinding combination of artistic ambition, excess, and plain old bad taste that is "Across the Universe"? Director/conceptualist Julie Taymor brought Disney's "The Lion King" to Broadway and Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus" to the multiplex, but with her latest extravaganza, she merely brings the Beatles to grief. Improperly approached, the movie's a howling camp masterpiece.

Remember the TV miniseries "The '60s" of a few years back? The one that strained all the social, political, and cultural changes of the decade through the life and times of one American family? "Across the Universe" is like that, only with characters who open their mouths and sing Beatles songs.

A Dayton, Ohio, high school girl (T.V. Carpio) turns "I Want to Hold Your Hand" into a downtempo torch song aimed at the blond cheerleader on whom she has a forbidden crush. A Liverpool lad (Jim Sturgess) bound for America croons "All My Loving" to the dollybird he's leaving behind. A girl (Evan Rachel Wood) awaits her soldier boyfriend's return with "It Won't Be Long." And so on.

The idea is that the Beatles' music is so universally known and loved - so tattooed onto our cultural DNA - that it's the bedrock soundtrack of its era. There's some truth to that: If you were alive and had a radio in the '60s, there were the Beatles and there was everyone else. By coursing a half step ahead in musical exploration, the clothes they wore, the drugs and political stances they took, the Fab Four seemed to pull the entire decade along in their wake.

Curiously, "Across the Universe" envisions the Beatles' era without the Beatles actually present - an alternate universe where songs like "Girl" and "All You Need Is Love" are just hanging on the trees, ready to be plucked. It's an interesting notion, and it might work if the movie stuck to the chronology. Lennon and McCartney's tunes evolved in tandem with the cultural explosions they charted - the majestic exhaustion of "Let It Be" could only come after the uneasy fire of "Revolution," not the other way around.

Taymor and her writers mix up the songs, though, and they work in the most groaningly literal manner possible. The artistic Liverpudlian lad is named Jude; the sweetheart awaiting her soldier boy is Lucy. They're star-crossed (Starr-crossed?) lovers introduced by her raffish brother Maxwell (Joe Anderson), who's seen wielding a hammer at one point. (LOL! )

The girl with the crush on the cheerleader is named Prudence; in one scene she clambers through a New York apartment window over the bathtub, and I thought, "Right, she came in through the bathroom window - but no one's actually going to say that, are they?" Oh, yes, they are.

There's sexy Sadie (Dana Fuchs), a brassy belter in the Janis Joplin mode, and her guitarist boyfriend Jojo (Martin Luther), who morphs into a Hendrix type. The movie keeps piling it on, trying to address selling out, turning on, resisting the draft, fighting the man, running away from home, and every other development that merited a Life magazine cover between 1963 and 1970.

The dialogue, accordingly, is the stuff of soap operas and protest signs, and poor Wood gets the worst of it. "Paco says we have to radicalize," Lucy breathlessly informs Jude, shortly after he has designed a hip corporate logo shaped like a strawberry (a la Apple Corps) that somehow leads into "Strawberry Fields Forever." Later she says, "We're in the middle of a revolution, Jude, and you're doing doodles."

A doodle like this, chowderheaded from the get-go, has to be more than a little crazy if it's to work, and at its sometimes best "Across the Universe" dives off the deep end without fear. The results can be inspired: a surrealistic/militaristic dance number to the first part of "I Want You," or, later, a biting fantasia to "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" set among VA hospital beds, morphine drips, and a vision of multiple Salma Hayeks as mother superiors jumping the gun.

Other sequences are just a pox upon the brain and eye: Eddie Izzard in a hideous acid-freak-out version of "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite," for example. Anyway, why this song? Why so few from the enlightened pop craft of the Beatles' best albums, "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver"? Because they're less "important" than what came after? Because they don't lend themselves to Taymor's potted narrative?

In the end, "Across the Universe" is hobbled by its vaguely insulting comic-book version of the '60s and by a humorlessness that can only come from talented people convinced they're creating work for the ages. The obvious comparison is to Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge," and, like that movie, "Universe" may find favor among impressionable young audiences who weren't there. Luhrmann has a wicked sense of fun, though, while Taymor only has her love for the music and the era. Contrary to what you may have heard, love isn't all you need.

Ty Burr can be reached at [e-mail]. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/ movies/blog.

---------------------------------------------------------

www.reelviews.net/movies/a/across_universe.html

(3.) Across the Universe
A Film Review by James Berardinelli

2 out of 4

One could never argue that Across the Universe isn't ambitious. However, like many ambitious movies, this one fails spectacularly. Glenn Kenny of Premiere magazine called it "the perfect disaster" and, while I think that's a little harsh, I understand where he's coming from. Elements of Across the Universe are shockingly awful and the film lasts at least 30 minutes past the bearable stage. But if you like the Beatles and the idea of hearing about 20 covers of their work fills you with a perverse joy, this may be the movie for you.

The film has had a troubled production history. It was reportedly taken away from director Julie Taymor after advance preview screenings resulted in jeers and catcalls. The producers re-cut the movie and it was received with more warmth, but Taymor went public with her gripe and this stirred up controversy. Apparently, the 133-minute theatrical cut is Taymor's version. If it's not, I shudder to think how much worse a longer edition could be.

The lack of anything resembling a compelling narrative is part of the problem. It's the 1960s and Liverpool native Jude (Jim Sturgess) has traveled across the Atlantic in search of the dad he never knew. He is befriended by Princeton drop-out Max (Joe Anderson) and falls in love with his sister, Lucie (Evan Rachel Wood). Soon, these three are doing road trips, fighting against the War in Vietnam (or, in Max's case, fighting in Vietnam), and experiencing everything the era has to offer. They are joined on their odyssey by an Asian lesbian cheerleader (T.V. Carpio), a Janis Joplin clone (Dana Fuchs), and a Jimi Hendrix wannabe (Martin Luther).

Taymor has always been best known for the imaginative visual aspects of her films and stage productions (see Titus for her best screen work), and there's no shortage of tricks in her bag this time: animation, puppets, underwater sequences, psychedelic imagery, and more. Somehow, however, it all seems gratuitous - a way to distract the viewer from how pointless the story is. Like the shot of Wood's left breast (more nipple than one normally sees in a PG-13 production), it's all a bit of a tease. And none of these elements shows much in the way of technical achievement - they're the kinds of things any reasonably adept graphic designer can accomplish on a properly equipped home PC.

The songs are a bigger distraction than the visuals. With only a few exceptions, most of them are out-of-place. They are shoehorned in simply to increase the film's Beatles music content. The expected approach in a musical is for the songs to advance the story. In Across the Universe, the narrative pauses roughly every seven minutes so the characters can break into song, then resumes when they're done. This approach makes it impossible to identify with the characters or be interested in their circumstances. And, while the singing is of variable quality, most of the dance numbers are amateurish.

Jim Sturgess and Joe Anderson were obviously chosen more for their singing ability than their talent as actors. To their credit, they make a credible Lennon/McCartney pair. Evan Rachel Wood has a surprisingly strong set of pipes. The vocal stylings of the supporting performers is variable, and includes a torturous version of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" by T.V. Carpio which may destroy your ability to ever again hear that song cleanly. Eddie Izzard, Joe Cocker, and Bono have cameos. Oddly, Cocker does not contribute "With a Little Help From My Friends," even though his recorded cover is arguably more recognizable than the original (thanks in large part to the TV series The Wonder Years).

I have heard Across the Universe being referred to as this generation's Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and I can't refute the argument. There are also times when the film evokes memories of Xanadu. Neither of those stinkers is the kind of company any self-respecting musical wants to keep. It's hard to argue that the idea behind Across the Universe is a bad one - after all, Baz Luhrmann did something similar with Moulin Rouge and the Beatles music is incredibly versatile. The problem, therefore, must be in the execution, and it's a big problem. With a shorter running length, it might have been possible to appreciate Across the Universe as an entertaining failed spectacle. But, at 2:15, the word "entertaining" no longer applies in any context.

© 2007 James Berardinelli

[B]

[glow=red,2,300]Stop the presses! [/glow]

Across the Universe....YANKED?
Posted on Sep 19, 2007 2:47:42 PM

blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_movies_blog/2007/09/across-the-un-2.html

"What is up with Sony and Across the Universe? A long-announced Sept. 21 roll-out of this Beatles musical, previewed here and everywhere a week or two back, and then at 1 p.m. today we learn here at the paper that there are no ads for the movie opening in our movie clock.

Calls to Sony in Fla., they're as shocked as we are.

More calls to Sony HQ. Finally, at 3:30 on the WEDNESDAY before the movie is supposed to open here and in most of America outside of NY-Chi-Toronto-LA, they move it back to Sept. 28.

That is, of course, well past the last minute.
It's gotten mixed early notices. Maybe they're tossing in the towel on it.
We had to hold the presses on that one. That's no way to run a movie studio, I must say."

Comments:
Says I: Let it be.
Posted by: William Goss | September 19, 2007 at 03:41 PM

There will be an answer...Sept. 28.
Posted by: Roger | September 19, 2007 at 03:51 PM

[B]

Well I just had to laugh!

www.thestar.com/Movies/MovieReview/article/256480

OPENING TODAY: ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
'Across the Universe': Bad Beatles karaoke


Beatles songs drive the obvious and awkward script in Julie Taymor's musical

Sep 14, 2007 04:30 AM
Peter Howell
Movie Critic
Across the Universe
1 and 1/2 stars out of 4


"You'd have been better off sampling the brown acid at Woodstock than risking brain cells
on Across the Universe, the bizarrely ornate nail Julie Taymor hammers into the Beatles' coffin.
At the very least, you'd have been of your era.
Among the many things wrong with this long and winding load is its peculiarly dated sense of time and place.

The social upheavals of the flower-power 1960s seem terribly removed from the global dread of 2007.
And while valid parallels can be made between the Vietnam War protests of 40 years ago with today's Iraq War struggles, Taymor fails to connect the dots in any meaningful or stimulating manner.
Rather, she goes in for the most shop-worn method of putting Beatles music to film: by constructing literal images and characters out of the Fab Four's vivid songs. Each one of them is presented in music-video format by singers of madly varying ability.

Thus, we have a character named Jude (Jim Sturgess), who is trying to take a sad song and make it better, and who plaintively asks us at the outset, "Is there anybody going to listen to my story?"

A story that includes a girl with kaleidoscope eyes named Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), sexy singer Sadie (Dana Fuchs), happily hammered agitator Max (Joe Anderson) and soul man JoJo (Martin Luther), who would surely like to get back to where he once belonged.

You get the picture – but is it possible Taymor doesn't? Could she have been oblivious to how often the Beatles catalogue has been mined for its psychedelic images and love-me-do sentiments, usually to dire result? She seems to be aiming her movie at people too young to remember the Beatles in their heyday.

At the very least, Taymor might have learned from the example of the most egregious of Beatle misfires, the disco-era disaster Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which attempted and spectacularly failed to do pretty much the same as Across the Universe: to drive a narrative thread through a series of wildly disconnected pop tunes.

This is the cinematic and musical equivalent of trying to hammer square pegs into round holes, since the Beatles never intended their work to be all of a piece. Least of all as a soundtrack for a hippy-dippy mood musical about how war, like, really sucks.

Did Taymor or her screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais actually listen to the lyrics of "Revolution" or "Happiness is a Warm Gun?" The Beatles were a lot of things, but they were never naïve, even when they were dreaming of a better world.

Strangest of all is how Broadway veteran Taymor's celebrated visual sense has deserted her. Think of the most obvious manner possible to represent a Beatles tune, and chances are she's chosen it.

Images of dripping strawberries, strutting Blue Meanies and people coming together and through bathroom windows are launched to the screen as if Taymor just listened to "Sgt. Pepper," "Yellow Submarine" or the White Album on headphones for the first time.

She never misses a chance to illustrate a cliché. All you rioters out there: Why don't you just "Let It Be," eh?

Her decision to cast mostly non-singers in vocal roles can charitably be called a misguided attempt at Beatles karaoke.

But even accomplished crooners founder on the rocks of Taymor's hubris. U2 frontman Bono goo-goo-ga-joobs through "I am the Walrus" dressed as a Dr. Hook clone in cowboy hat and psycho shades, looking distinctly uncomfortable all the while. He'll have trouble living this down at the next G8 summit.

The only guy who rises above the mire is blues-rock belter Joe Cocker, whose rasping take on "Come Together" is a nice contribution to his canon of Beatles interpretations, providing one of the film's few satisfying moments.

Cocker looks as mad as a hatter most of the time, which makes him just right for a film as loopy as this one.

[CoconutFudge]

Hahaha, wow, so I am guessing that the movie sucks. Surprise surprise!

[Jude]

CoconutFudge, you should watch the movie before deciding that it sucks.
Help! was poorly received by many critics when it was first released, but now it's considered a classic. You just have to ask yourself: how bad could it be? You like the songs, and the people they got to perform them are pretty decent, so it can't be all that bad. It could have no plot whatsoever and I would still enjoy it because of the Beatles songs.

[LOVELYRITA]

Well, when it's mentioned with the bomb Sgt. Pepper movie...it doesn't help.

The previews I had seen reminds me of someone's idea of Beatle songs done in their own videos. Like a college film done on a bigger budget.

Just because you use some famous people of the time to sing Beatle tunes, doesn't work for me.

It's just weird seeing other people singing Beatle music, esp the songs that were PID clue music. With just anybody singing it, just seems really strange.

I think Hollywood has run out of ideas for films, rather than sequels and remakes...they take a group and make a film which seems like a stream of videos ...

What's next? Mama Mia the Film?

Barry Mannilow's "Mandy- the Movie"...?

[CoconutFudge]

jude said:

CoconutFudge, you should watch the movie before deciding that it sucks.
Help! was poorly received by many critics when it was first released, but now it's considered a classic. You just have to ask yourself: how bad could it be? You like the songs, and the people they got to perform them are pretty decent, so it can't be all that bad. It could have no plot whatsoever and I would still enjoy it because of the Beatles songs.

I am going to see it anyway, even though I am going in with low expectations, because I love the Beatles too much not to. That said, I have HATED the covers that have been in the commercials and previews. And the plot looks really... I have no word for it, but not something I'd like. Like I said, though, I'll see it anyway because it's Beatles-related, but I am not surprised (according to the brief parts I've seen... which admittedly isn't much) that so many people are saying that it is a poor movie.

[Jude]

I hope I'm not sounding rude CoconutFudge, but I just don't understand how you can be so judgmental as to say you're not surprised according to the parts you've seen. If trailers were always an accurate representation of how good a movie is, I'd never have watched Titanic when it was released into theaters (and that's one of my all-time favorite movies).

The plot centers around two people in love during the 60's. Vietnam happens, etc.
It's really the sort of thing John might have written were he asked to do a film starring Yoko and himself. But that's just judging from the trailers. I'm going to keep an open mind when watching this film, because so far there's nothing not to like. So far I'm really shocked at how much criticism is being launched at the movie by people who didn't grow up on the Beatles. I could understand how someone who has been listening to the Fab Four for 30 or 40 years could be upset by these covers (and, let's be honest, Bono and Joe Cocker are two of the best guys you could get to cover Beatles' songs, particulary Cocker), but I'm only 23 and in my mind there are far greater blasphemies than a Beatles' movie that falls below expectations (which are based on what? A Hard Day's Night? That was 43 years ago!).

[mindgames]

The kid singing Strawberry fields is simply dreadful, I saw him on Good Morning America or similar show and couldn't find my remote fast enough, I agree that if your going to sing a Beatles tune you have to do it well. Now, with Bono in it perhaps it will be chock full of clues to er... something??? on another note my butt just fell asleep TMI TMI.

[mystery tour]

Thank you, Jude.
I find it odd that out of all of the reviews posted here, there is no mention of the New York Times review, where the film earned a "Critics Choice " designation. ;D

Read again: New York Times Critics Choice. And Newsday too. ;D

I wonder what bothers some people about this movie. Is it that it is a solid anti-war movie? That it shows how young and old people once refused to lie down and have the government do whatever they wanted no matter how evil it's deeds?
I can understand some Beatle fans not liking some of the arrangements, but to compare this film in any way to that god-awful Sgt. Pepper movie is ludicrous and unfair.
It is clear that this is an artistic and political movie with a message or three, and the music is pretty damn good too.
The visuals are outstanding as well.
I predict several Oscar nominations.
This movie is clearly...not a phoney.... ;D
A large majority of critics hated Pink Floyd too. Which brings me to director Julie Taymor. She possesses what Floyd's Roger Waters admiringly referred to as the "Lennon Instinct". Art and music as magic. Art and music as a inspiration for change.

To judge her work so harshly, especially before having even seen it, is again, unfair.
I am proudly aligned with this movie and the messages and music it delivers. I wish I could feel that way about a certain series on youtube.

[CoconutFudge]

jude said:

I hope I'm not sounding rude CoconutFudge, but I just don't understand how you can be so judgmental as to say you're not surprised according to the parts you've seen. If trailers were always an accurate representation of how good a movie is, I'd never have watched Titanic when it was released into theaters (and that's one of my all-time favorite movies).

The plot centers around two people in love during the 60's. Vietnam happens, etc.
It's really the sort of thing John might have written were he asked to do a film starring Yoko and himself. But that's just judging from the trailers. I'm going to keep an open mind when watching this film, because so far there's nothing not to like. So far I'm really shocked at how much criticism is being launched at the movie by people who didn't grow up on the Beatles. I could understand how someone who has been listening to the Fab Four for 30 or 40 years could be upset by these covers (and, let's be honest, Bono and Joe Cocker are two of the best guys you could get to cover Beatles' songs, particulary Cocker), but I'm only 23 and in my mind there are far greater blasphemies than a Beatles' movie that falls below expectations (which are based on what? A Hard Day's Night? That was 43 years ago!).

Not rude at all, don't worry! I might be eating my words after I go and see it, I might not. I guess I'll just have to wait and see! ;D I am seeing it with my dad (aww, how adorable...? maybe sorta kinda!) because he is actually really really reeeeally excited about it.

[B]

Not to be nosey, but why is your dad excited about it?

[CoconutFudge]

letterb1 said:

Not to be nosey, but why is your dad excited about it?

He thinks it'll be really cool. He's interested in hearing the covers (whatever floats your boat!) and seeing how they work the songs into the story blah blah blah. He is also the most avid Beatles collector I've ever encountered. He gets excited about absolutely anything remotely Beatles-related, even if it is something that he normally would not otherwise enjoy. He's been like that forever and ever.

[JoJo]

I'll go watch it before making any comments. I mean, I wasn't too thrilled with the covers I've heard from the movie, but then again I agree with Paul when he said in the 1966 press conference when asked which versions of the Beatles songs he liked best, he said "ours". Having said that, there are some good Beatles covers..eh, gotta see the movie first.

[Jude]

Guys, the thing to remember is that they are covers. They're supposed to sound different.
Unless the person has not a shred of singing talent whatsoever, what is there to be upset over?
It's the same tune, same melody, just interpreted differently! And Sir McCartney and (should be Sir) Ringo Starr liked it, so why judge what little they actually play of the song during those trailers?
Personally I think the "I've Just Seen a Face" cover is pretty good, but I guess I'll know better when I watch the film, eh?

And mystery tour, huge props for recognizing that this film is anti-war which means it fits in perfectly with the Beatles' message, and....huge....anti-props for taking potshots at Rotten Apple.

[Jude]

coconutfudge said:

I am seeing it with my dad (aww, how adorable...? maybe sorta kinda!) because he is actually really really reeeeally excited about it.

CoconutFudge, that's so adorable it's not even adorable.....it's adowwwwable. ;D

[mystery tour]

jude said:

Guys, the thing to remember is that they are covers. They're supposed to sound different.
Unless the person has not a shred of singing talent whatsoever, what is there to be upset over?
It's the same tune, same melody, just interpreted differently! And Sir McCartney and (should be Sir) Ringo Starr liked it, so why judge what little they actually play of the song during those trailers?
Personally I think the "I've Just Seen a Face" cover is pretty good, but I guess I'll know better when I watch the film, eh?

And mystery tour, huge props for recognizing that this film is anti-war which means it fits in perfectly with the Beatles' message, and....huge....anti-props for taking potshots at Rotten Apple.

Hey Jude. Thanks. I apologize for my potshot at RA. It's nothing personal, and I have stated on several posts my admiration for the person's talents as a Video Editor and Video Artist, as well as his/her enthusiasm for whatever it is he /she is doing. So, I am sorry to IAAP and those of you who follow the series. My sarcasm was not directed to you as a group, but rather at one or two rather rude posters.

I deleted my original post here in which I gave a link to the preview and offered a positive opinion about the director and her work.

[CoconutFudge]

jude said:

CoconutFudge, that's so adorable it's not even adorable.....it's adowwwwable. ;D

Hahaha, thank you! I miss him like it's my job, so I'm super excited to see him and do something he actually will enjoy instead of making him come with me to help me build things or fix things or grocery shop... ;D I like how I just tried to picture how you would say that. I totally have people's voices on here plotted out in my head. Weeeeird.

mystery said:

My sarcasm was not directed to you as a group, but rather at one or two rather rude posters.

I didn't even see anyone being rude here, just expressing their opinions. I'm like the anti-rude!!

[B]

"I totally have people's voices on here plotted out in my head. Weeeeird."

Who do I sound like?

[Jude]

mystery said:

I deleted my original post here in which I gave a link to the preview and offered a positive opinion about the director and her work.

.....why?

[CoconutFudge]

letterb1 said:

"I totally have people's voices on here plotted out in my head. Weeeeird."

Who do I sound like?

I wish I had my microphone here so I could demonstrate! I might be able to use my Bluetooth headset later and upload. I can't describe your voice (according to moi!) in words!

[B]

Free movie "highlight"! LOL!

"Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite"

youtube.com/watch?v=P35WWj0DSKY

Oh have annuther! ;D

"I want you"
youtube.com/watch?v=9qPnQ7jB04Q