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A Hard Day’s Night Streaming.
Movie Title: A Hard Day’s Night A Hard Day’s Night is available for streaming or downloading. |
Hard to enjoy that Miramax Entertainment could mess up this DVD so horribly. An anniversary release of one of the most essential films of the 20th century no less. Shame on them.
There are a lot of raves here about the fact that the film is being presented “letterboxed” for the first time. Actually, it’s unbiased the first time the top and bottom of the represent have been chopped off for no reason! “A Hard Day’s Night” was filmed in Academy standard 1.37:1. Slightly wider than your average TV tube, but not anything halt to the 1.66:1 prick job on the recent DVD. Full-frame would have been the worthy presentation.
As for the audio…they DID spruce up the dialog portions of the movie, so for perhaps the first time EVER, you can actually HEAR what everyone is saying - and it no longer sounds like they are speaking into an Edison cylinder recorder.
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But oh, the music. They replaced the new mono soundtrack with the standard mono AHDN CD to replace the overmodulated music on the unusual film. Never mind that there were a couple of different mixes in there that they should have left alone (”Yell Me Why”, “And I Treasure Her”, “If I Fell”) - BUT…they went and added microdelay and phasing to gain some kind of a half-assed 5.1 mix that through a standard stereo or mono downmixed output makes the audio sound phase-y and hollow. This is worse than the recent mono mix (available on the novel Beta & VHS release from 1982 or the print aired on AMC several years ago) and the fact that the standard mono mix was NOT made available as alternate audio on the disc (as it was on the “Yellow Submarine” DVD) is an oversight punishable by public stoning.
As for all the bonus material…not ONE interview with an accurate Beatle? Not even McCartney? The closest we come by is George Martin?
The person slack this mess is none other than Martin Lewis, self-proclaimed Beatle “expert” and all around media whore. Lewis’ involvement explains why no-one at Apple would have anything to do with the project. With some two-hours of useless interviews as “bonus” material, here’s what you DON’T get:
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The unique theatrical trailers
The reissue theatrical trailers
The recent theatrical “making-of” featurette
The surviving outtake footage (”You Can’t Do That”) [which, as a sidenote was left off the MPI DVD, making having the VHS & Laserdisc necessary]
The aforementioned MPI documentary DVD
Any surviving smooth photos of the other missing sequences
Running commentary on an alternate audio track
The promised (but not included) Richard Lester’s “Running Jumping Standing Smooth Movie”
Anything of any relevance.
What makes this all the worse is that the image looks terrific. However, it’s been so horribly trashed that the only fine position for this DVD is the trash can or as a trade in at the old-fashioned DVD store.
Anyone who owns the new MPI DVD should maintain on to it and achieve thier tewnty bucks.
Thanks to my friend Steve for enlightening me on this…
Being a titanic Beatle fan, and a gigantic fan of this movie, I highly anticipated the arrival of this title on DVD. The sound on this DVD is terrible, there is absolutely no dynamic range. The volume level seems to cruise at the same level through out the film, there is no contrast in volume between the scenes when there is a unruffled conversation and the scenes where the band is playing. I also maintain the title on laserdisc and let me shriek you, the laserdisc has at least 30 db of dynamic range. While watching this film on laserdisc, you can adjust the level of playback so that the scenes where there is conversation is a comfortable 75 db, and when the band plays it jumps up to an ear thumping 105 db or more. This DVD lacks ooph, the band sounds like their playing in a box. This film deserves a better sound treatment, I highly recommend boycotting the DVD and lets wait till they release it in it’s fine area.
Cailyn2590703