THE BEATLES "Help!" movie to be released on DVD

Thanks, great stuff.

 

Great news!!! Thanks for that Steve!

 

If this isn't enough, there is a good chance that "Let It Be" will see the same type of release in December.

 

Seriously? Are there really some new rumors floating around about the LIB DVD? It's kind of weird for Apple to release two relatively "major" things so close to each other. But I'd love for that to be true, especially if they can give LIB the same deluxe treatment both in terms of content (plenty of outtakes) and the bonus trinket stuff (I'd love to have lobby card reproductions for LIB).

 

"White Cliffs of Dover????"

They better have the mono soundtrack as well or I'll send apple and emi a fiendish thingy.


By the way, what do you guys have against the "Hard Day's Night" DVD reissue?

Jake

 

The Miramax AHDN DVD had a fake 5.1 mix derived from a mono soundtrack element. My main beef was that they could have included the fake 5.1 mix and also included the orignal mono soundtrack (as well as perhaps the stereo soundtrack used on previous VHS/DVD releases).

The Miramax DVD also failed to include the "You Can't Do That" outtake that had been released in the past. Also, if I'm recalling correctly, it didn't include all of the various trailers either.

Also, the cropping issue on the AHDN DVD was a potential issue, although there obviously has been some debate/discussion as to whether the cropping actually presented the proper aspect ratio or not.

 

I have let it be from Laser disc, I hope dvd will look cleaner

 

My opinion is "not". I say it's a tad too tight vertically.

 

I don't wanna knock anyone's religion, but October 29th IS the worldwide release date. It's just the US release that's later.

 

Well, I would guess by definition that if there is more than one release date, then there isn't any single date that constitutes a "worldwide release date." I've never tended to be overly US-centric, but I think the US is part of the world.

 

Funny, when I first saw your screencaps before I saw what you wrote, I thought you were using the "We Buy Anything" screencap as an ironic comment on how the fans will "buy anything" when it comes to Beatles releases!

Your example certainly shows, as I alluded to before, that regardless of whether it is the proper aspect ratio, it does seem to lop off a lot of top and bottom information, and it sometimes seems to lop off information that is needed.

 

I did use a few of the more blatant examples, but there are plenty more scenes that suffer from too tight framing (during the closeups of John on the "live" performance at the end, for example). I just got too lazy to do any more screen caps.

 

Apple Press release

Well, the official press release actually has Oct. 30 as the main release date, with Oct. 29 ROW, which is probably the acronym for "Rest of the World". So you can see where Apple Corps Ltd. thinks it has it's market

 

My mock-up

 

If it were only to be true!

 

I can't think of a way that Apple could possibly screw up the LIB DVD to have it look worse than the old Laserdisc/VHS/Beta/CED releases. Those releases took a blown-up, cropped print and then panned-and-scanned it.

You can look at clips of LIB in the "Anthology" series to see how much better it can (and hopefully will) look.

I fear, though, that when/if they finally release LIB on DVD, they will crop it for 16x9, which will defeat half of the purpose of going back to the original 16mm film to restore/remaster it. The "original aspect ratio" argument gets a little more shaky for LIB, because it was originally shot with an eye towards a TV broadcast in something no doubt close to 4x3. It ended up being blown up and cropped for theatrical exhibition. So even if they crop the DVD for 16x9 from the original 16mm print, it will look better (not blown up) and will at least reveal more of the sides of the image than the crummy old LD/VHS, etc.

More than AHDN or any other Beatles film, LIB is something that seems to have clearly been shot and framed for 4x3, as is evidenced by the strange shots seen on the LD/VHS where the shot seems to be way too tight/close-up.

It has been awhile since I thought about the potential cropping of a future LIB DVD, but now that I think about it again, I'm actually unfortunately pretty convinced that they probably will crop it for 16x9. Uggh.

 

inside info?

 

The fact that these Beatles movies on home video have remained out-of-print for so long is nothing short of ridiculous.

It'll be great to have Help! available again just as long as it isn't the diaster A Hard Day's Night was.

Miramax sucks.

 

Learn from history. Don't assume this reissue will remain in print forever. If you want Help!, get it now, because it could be gone tomorrow.

 

This is true. I've been collecting The Beatles on video for as long as I've had a vcr (and I got one in 1981). Most records (albums and CDs) seem to continue to be pressed in new editions as the old ones sell out, and basically the same records are available in all territories, that's clearly NOT the case with films (videos, laserdiscs and DVD's). Once a film is on the market, it's wise to buy it before it's gone again. And one always has to import titles, because different titles are released in different countries. When my collection was mainly VHS-based, I always had to make sure that my various VCR's over the years had to be able to play both PAL and NTSC tapes. The same now applies to my DVD players.
Japan is the only country in the world who has an officially released "Beatles Live in Japan" title, for instance. And it was a laserdisc-only release.
USA was the only country which had an officially released Help! DVD (back in 1997). It has never been out on DVD elsewhere, here in Europe it was available as a video cassette, but that was the un-restored version. The colours of that version made it look as if you was watching the film through fog.

 

That's not what I said.

 

This will be great. I can retire my DVD dub I had made from an old Laserdisc.

 

I see Davy and Mickey in those pictures.

 

That's fantastic news, Steve!

Though perhaps it's too much to hope for, is there any word on whether the 35mm magstock dubbing stage alternate vocal for Help! itself (as used on the mono single) has been located?