"A Hard Day's Night" catches the first flaring of Beatlemania in a manner at once subtle and intelligent. The plot is simple: a day in the life of the Beatles as they try to make it to a performance, burdened by Paul's trouble-making grandfather (Wilfred Brambell); inept reporters, police, and studio moguls; and, of course, hordes of screaming teenage girls. All the while, the Beatles remain as laid back as can be, responding with dry, very British one-liners and shifting easily into melodic musical interludes, such as "Can't Buy Me Love," "All My Lovin'," and "I Wanna Be Your Man." This is the pre-Sergeant Pepper Beatles, and their pleasant, playful enthusiasm mirrors the general innocence of the early sixties, before Vietnam and LSD opened the eyes of millions to political injustices and self-explorations. Nevertheless, A "Hard Day's Night" is more than a wonderful reflective surface. Lester also makes it into a commentary on the interactions of spectacle and perspective in an age when television and movie cameras were becoming the primary windows to the world.
Richard Lester had achieved previous critical success in 1959 with The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film, a grainy, experimental, 11-minute film starring Peter Sellers. As much as he wanted A "Hard Day's Night" to be a fun musical comedy, he also hoped to make a serious chronicle of a serious social and political movement the emerging power of youth in England and America. The Beatles and their fans represented a generational rebellion which grew throughout the '60s, a segment of dissatisfied, middle-class young people who outnumbered those adults maintaining the status quo of political and psychological oppression...
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...ey had in A "Hard Day's Night"; at times, it seems like the Beatles are the support, not the other way around.
It is still a fun movie, though. The film throws out so much comedic material during its 90 minutes that some of it had to stick, so "Help!" offers enough entertainment to remain worth watching. Moreover, it is always nice just to watch the Beatles play, even if they are lip-synching.
Bibliography
(1) All Media Guide. (2007). MLA style. Retrieved July 14, 2007 from http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=99442&mod=bio
(2) The Reel Beatles. (1999). MLA style. Retrieved July 14, 2007 from http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~ms538596/ahdn.html
Band Aid does fall into a 3rd act slump. The first hour of this 90-minutes Indie are so excellent and fully realized with humor, that once the big drama starts, the film comes to a halt and slow burn until the end. That doesn’t mean the 3rd act isn’t good, it most certainly is. However, when a film can be so entertaining and fresh for the majority of the movie, the tonal transition is quite jarring.
The movie is set within a short space of time (almost real time) in which we see Four of the Six active members of a jewelry heist gone wrong dealing with the repercussions of their crimes. Amongst them is Mr. Orange, or, Undercover Cop Freddy Newendyke, as he’s revealed to be toward the end of the movie. He is the Undercover Cop, The Rat that everyone is talking about. Orange single handedly destroys their operation and essentially Joe Cabot’s criminals-for-hire business seeing as he died by gunshot in the end. However the operation costed Orange his life, or presumably so. That’s something I’ll get to later.
Keathley, Christian. "Trapped in the Affection Image" The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s. Ed. Thomas Elsaesser, Alexander Horwath, Noel King. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004. 293-308. Print.
The album begins with the hard-rocker “Come Together”. The song is a perfect example of John Lennon’s rock influence in the Beatles. “Come Together” is a song that’s popularity has been revived due to its appearances in many commercials. Its trademark chorus, “Come together right now over me”, is known just about everywhere. Ringo’s heavy drums and John’s deep poetic lyrics drive the song, while Paul’s voice and George’s sharp guitar contribute to the body of this song. John Lennon was well known for his creative lyrics. His mind provided lyrics for such insightful songs such as “Across the Universe” and “A Day in the Life”.
The Beatles are known, respectively, as the fathers of modern pop music. After their first #1 hit “Please Please Me” was released in 1963 the Beatles were set in motion to become one of the most influential groups of musicians to ever rock our world. With over forty-nine records, 37 #1’s, and thirty- four number one albums (the highest amount of any band in history), there is no denying that they made a monumental ripple in the musical world. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr surprisingly all come from humble beginnings in a town that, until their superstardom, was barely noticed on the map. Liverpool, being kn...
Joe Cocker’s cover of a not as well known song by a mega popular band (popularity and well known status of the Beatles), combined with the timing of the world (counterculture, experimentation, not so rigid roles) and his own talent and personal twist on “With a Little Help from My Friends” (everything he changed about the song), helped Joe Cocker rise to success that he might otherwise not have found without the indirect help from the Beatles.
BIBLIOGRAPHY An Introduction to Film Studies Jill Nelmes (ed.) Routledge 1996 Anatomy of Film Bernard H. Dick St. Martins Press 1998 Key Concepts in Cinema Studies Susan Hayward Routledge 1996 Teach Yourself Film Studies Warren Buckland Hodder & Stoughton 1998 Interpreting the Moving Image Noel Carroll Cambridge University Press 1998 The Cinema Book Pam Cook (ed.) BFI 1985 FILMOGRAPHY All That Heaven Allows Dir. Douglas Sirk Universal 1955 Being There Dir. Hal Ashby 1979
Christie, Ian (1 August 2012). "The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time". Sight & Sound. British Film Institute. Retrieved 12 May 2014
An example in the film that highlights the demise of the studio system is when Joe pitches a script idea to a producer of Paramount. Joe is quick to say that the film only needs one main character, has many outdoor locations and can be made ‘for under a million dollars’ (Joe Gillis, Sunset Boulevard, 1950), which highlights the idea of saving money on a s...
The ‘New Hollywood Cinema’ era came about from around the 1960’s when cinema and film making began to change. Big film studios were going out of their comfort zone to produce different, creative and artistic movies. At the time, it was all the public wanted to see. People were astonished at the way these films were put together, the narration, the editing, the shots, and everything in between. No more were the films in similar arrangement and structure. The ‘New Hollywood era’ took the classic Hollywood period and turned it around so that rules were broken and people left stunned.
Ebert, Roger. Rev. of Almost Famous, dir. Cameron Crowe. Rogerebert.com. Chicago Sun-Times, 15 Sept. 2000. Web. 29 March 2011.
The Beatles wrote hundreds of songs throughout their long career and many of which had the same main ideas in them. Those two ideas seem to standout in most of their songs, and they are the ideas of peace and love. They were so passionate about these two ideas especially world peace, that they became avid participants and leaders in the anti-war movement, against the War in Vietnam. It seemed strange ...
In their initial incarnation as cheerful, wisecracking moptops, the Fab Four revolutionized the sound, style, and attitude of popular music and opened rock and roll’s doors to a tidal wave of British rock acts. Their initial impact would have been enough to establish the Beatles as one of their era’s most influential cultural forces, but they didn’t stop there. Although their initial style was a highly original, irresistibly catchy synthesis of early American rock and roll and R&B, the Beatles spent the rest of the 1960s expanding rock’s stylistic frontiers, consistently staking out new musical territory on each release...
Barsam, Richard. Looking at Movies An Introduction to Film, Second Edition (Set with DVD). New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.
The movie that I have chosen to review is called the League of their own, which was based on a true story took place in during World War 2. The main focus of this film is fore the view to see that although baseball was a sport that was designed for man, women would be able to be just as good at it, if not better than man. Although it was the women who were going to be playing a man's sport, they would still have to act and be a lady and fallow certain rules.