The Beatles: The Touring Years: DVD Review

The Beatles: The Touring Years: DVD Review

Beatlemania lives on some 50 years after the Fab Four hung up their touring boots with the one week only release of this documentary from former Happy Days actor Ron Howard.

Covering the period between 1963 and 1966, Howard's affectionate documentary about the life on the road may not prove much of a surprise to those who already know their Beatles lore, but he gets great cinematic truck out of displaying the lads' Liverpudlian cheeky charm to full comic effect as well as concert footage and screaming masses to relive the Beatlemania and its resultant euphoria.

With the ethos that they embodied the idea of how it would be to hang out with your mates, The Beatles' rise to fame is fairly reasonably charted with commentary from the boys themselves, as well as a few choice people from their inner circle - though tales of life on the road from those who accompanied them are limited only to journalist Larry Kane who offers a peek at life in the inner sanctum.

The thing is the documentary itself doesn't really provide any new ground and some of its choices of talking heads are perhaps bizarre and tenuous at best.

While Sigourney Weaver's attendance at the Beatles' Hollywood Bowl and companion footage give her credence, and Whooopi Goldberg's love for the mop-tops and attendance of their Shea Stadium show how inter-racial their appeal was, Eddie Izzard and Red Dwarf composer Howard Goodall are included for scant reason.

Using archival interviews for Harrison and Lennon are inevitable, but even interviews with McCartney and Starr add little to proceedings to be honest, given there's already so much out there about the group. It's all here again though - the screaming kids, the Bigger than Jesus controversy; almost as if another rote greatest hits package has been rolled out for a newer generation.

However, where Howard's more successful in breaking out of the workmanlike trappings of the genre is in the subtler touches. Whether it's painting a racial and more global picture of life when the Beatles hit America to demonstrate why their fame was so surprising abroad to animating cigarette smoke on stills, there are moments that impress greatly, even if the racial edges slow the verve of the film considerably down.

But there's no denying the blistering joy of some of their songs - it's hard to defy tapping along to the likes of I Saw Her Standing There and Help!as the live footage kicks in. With a fully restored 4K version of their Shea Stadium concert being presented after the film as a companion piece, there's no question that the Beatles phenomenon continues to live on in great style - and the film ends on an artistic high with some glimpses into the making of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Ultimately, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years is a greatest hits of the band and a compilation of their finest moments. It may not speak more to fans who are already immersed in their world and is as such a fanboy piece rather than a probing documentary.- it's more a brief Hello, Goodbye rather than an in depth Day in the Life Of

Crash Bandicoot: N'Sane Trilogy - First look

Crash Bandicoot: N'Sane Trilogy - First look

Words can't begin to describe how exciting the return of Crash Bandicoot is to the PS4.

After that cheeky little appearance in Uncharted 4, Naughty Dog's now given us a full length trailer for the return of Crash Bandicoot, coming in 2017.

New Guardians of the Galaxy 2 trailer is here

New Guardians of the Galaxy 2 trailer is here

They're back - a brand new trailer for  Guardians of the Galaxy 2  is here

Louis Theroux: My Scientology Movie: DVD Review

Louis Theroux: My Scientology Movie: DVD Review

It's easy to see why Louis Theroux was pulled into the world of Scientology.

His career's been built on the quirky, with the MO of giving those enough rope with which to hang themselves. Theroux's entire back catalogue of interviews show him as non-confrontational, naive to the point of annoying and simply content to let the subjects do the talking with the occasional prodding.

His technique belies his intelligence, but often demonstrates his adroitness at shedding more light on things than a traditional interview would do.

But in the case of Scientology (a cult so marvellously indicted by Alex Gibney's wonderful Going Clear doco), Theroux finds himself thwarted from the start and given no access to anyone within the church, leading him to the quandary of how you build a doco with no subject matter?Despite throwing a genuine request online to see if any Scientologists would get in touch, Theroux is told to prepare for the loonies and to batten down the hatches. His goal is altruistic - to see the Church in a more positive light as opposed to the increasing lunatic fringe front that's portrayed in general media.

Recruiting former Scientologist Marty Rathbun to the cause, Theroux decides the way to illustrate the Church's edges is to get actors to play the roles of Tom Cruise and church leader David Miscavige and sets about auditioning them. It's a clever touch rather than simply relying on archive footage, and when it appears one of the actors must be in league with the church, Theroux begins to feel the tendrils of the Church tracking him (equally, with a humorous visit from actress Paz De La Huerta, whom Theroux labels a "honey trap").

It's in these moments that Louis Theroux: My Scientology Movie starts to come to life; with a defter lighter touch to proceedings and the trademark Theroux wit adding a great deal. Because at the end of the day, Louis Theroux: My Scientology Movie is a very unfulfilling piece, due simply to the fact he has no real access to those in the upper echelons of the Church - and the film very much suffers because of a lack of them.

More interesting though is the relationship that Theroux and Rathbun cultivate; it's one of unease and in this way, Theroux has gained his greatest insight into the church's machinations and workings.

But there's never a real sense of a killer blow against the Church or its methodology.

This is a doco that feels like it wants to poke and provoke the fires of outrage and runs away when anything greater than a spark grows. It's a frivolous frippery of a film that wants to rattle the Church's leader but ends up feeling more like a Miscavage of Justice rather than a damnation of what goes on behind the walls. 
10th Nov

A Perfect Day: DVD Review

A Perfect Day: DVD Review

Staying in a world that's been hit by problems, A Perfect Day's aiming for black humour in the Bosnian conflict.

A Perfect Day

The Spanish film features Benicio del Toro and Tim Robbins as part of a group of aid workers trying to move a corpse from a well in a conflict zone. It's an easy task in theory - take out the thing that's corrupting the surrounding well-being of the people (an allegory not lost on the viewers) but the amount of red-tape and problems it poses for del Toro's Mambru and Robbins' B would be funny if they weren't so ludicrous.

Fortunately, director Fernando Leon de Aranoa mines the gallows humour to reasonably exasperating effect throughout; and while the idea that Olga Kurylenko's top ranking aid official would head out among them stretches credibility somewhat, the flashes of the horrors of war that are interspersed throughout ground the film in a horrific reality that never quite goes away.

The one day to go storyline for del Toro's Mambru may have been done before with the likes of M*A*S*H but not once does A Perfect Day's sedentary pace through conflict lose any of its resonance as it seeks not to lecture but to present a sobering reality that aid workers have to face.

Oasis: Supersonic: DVD Review

Oasis: Supersonic: DVD Review

For some, the Oasis boys were the be all and end all of 90s music culture.

The boorish Gallagher brothers, along with their bandmates, defined a lot of the 90s music scene and set the style for their raucous behaviour and top tunes.

But it was always Liam and Noel whose attitudes set the scene, and their clashes caused plenty of tabloid headlines and were the stuff of copy-writers' dreams. They were the yin and yang to each other, or as Noel puts it in the doco, he's a cat, Liam's a dog and never the twain shall meet. In fact, one early piece of footage talks of them as Cain and Abel, a comparison that speaks to their arrogance and belief in more ways than one.

So, this doco with its rather succinct use of voiceovers looks to explore the mythos and the inevitable car crash that Oasis were after they burned so bright and ultimately, imploded under the weight of their own legends.

Assembling pictures, footage and soundbites (that tend to favour Noel Gallagher, perhaps one of the perks of being an executive producer), Whitecross does a perfectly good job of capturing their rise from the council estates of Manchester to the echelons of performing at Knebworth. Injecting the whole proceedings with the lads' laconic humour proves to be a big boon here and gives the piece a pace that's matched only by the band's blistering performances which are scattered throughout.

From unsigned act to where they jumped on with Creation Records and their charts takeover, the doco's strengths lie in the music that's so iconic of the time and so evocative of the Manchester scene that will be so familiar to so many.

Following family spats is par for the course with the Gallaghers, though outside of the Liam / Noel fracas, there's little here that Oasis afficionados won't already know - there's no Amy style smoking gun. Though, perhaps interestingly, the revelations that Noel refused to let the Gallaghers' abusive father define either their music or their perception speaks volumes to where their swagger came from and why their defiant attitude was so successful.

As Liam so succinctly puts it at one point, Oasis were "Like a Ferrari, great to look at, great to drive and would spin outta fucking control", and this doco captures some of the anarchy of the group and the resultant ripples their music caused.

At its heart, Supersonic is about nostalgia for the band - any true fan will already know most of their history - and Whitecross and team assemble the pieces in a perfectly perfunctory and viewable manner. With the music speaking volumes and the doco making you feel like one of the lads as the hedonism and heated rows hit, it's a doco that speaks more to fans as well as anyone with a passing ear for their tunes. 

NewsTalk ZB Review - Trolls and Tickled

NewsTalk ZB Review - Trolls and Tickled

This week on Newstalk ZB it was time to talk Trolls, both the toys and the internet kind.

Listen to the review of Trolls from Dreamworks and Tickled below.

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/audio/darren-bevan-trolls-review/