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    #76
    Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View Post
    I saw this recently. It's an odd premise for a film. The only asian man in Suffolk (bar his parents) is an eejit who has put off taking up his teaching job, in order to pursue a wildly unsuccessful career as a singer songwriter, yet somehow doesn't realize that the best looking woman in suffolk is spending an insane amount of time with him, and doesn't think he sings like a prat, even though she could literally be doing anything else. which may lead him to subconsciously suspect that she is an emotionally damaged head wrecker who probably isn't worth the hassle. there is some parallel universe bollocks that is largely irrelevant, and the movie is resolved when she has a passive aggressive emotional meltdown and emotionally blackmails him into giving up his dreams and take up his job teaching, so they can afford to buy a house or something. There didn't appear to be any jokes that didn't involve ed sheeran.

    a solid 2/10/
    Don’t be that guy.

    She didn’t blackmail him. Quitting music was *his* idea because he was so frustrated and poor. She wanted him to keep at it, because the idea of him, or anyone perhaps, quitting their “dream” was too sad to handle. I get that. If I had a friend trying an impossible dream like that, I wouldn’t have the heart to tell them to give up, no matter how much they sucked. (I don’t treat myself that way, but that’s another story.)

    He couldn’t accept that she loved him because he didn’t think he deserved it. And she didn’t think seem to think she deserved it, despite being the most beautiful woman in Suffolk, but this is movie world, where Lily James is only average looking and feels insecure.

    And because if they’d already gotten together, the story wouldn’t fit the Beatles songs. Not many of their songs are about being married with kids - even though at least two of them were during the Beatles period. Perhaps there will be a sequel where he uses “Maybe I’m Amazed” to patch up his marriage.

    But after his experience playing Wembley etc and getting famous off of somebody else’s songs and talking to an old wise seafaring John Lennon, he realized that being a star just for the sake of it isn’t that great, that he just wasn’t a great songwriter anyway, and that he was much more suited to teaching and playing Beatles covers as an amateur, because they are great songs, and making people happy is what pop music should be about.*

    He also realized that he didn’t need to be a rock star to deserve love. Hers or anyone’s.

    The storytelling is a bit clunky, but that’s the gist of it. When they make the Broadway/West End musical, they can tighten some of that up.

    Also, there’s no way in 2017 that he could have sung “She was just 17, if you know what I mean...” to universal acclaim. I mean, really. That’s not on. I think the Lennon and McCartney were about 20 when they wrote that, but still...


    * That’s a truth I’m not sure I wanted to learn. I’m frustrated by how most of the bands that play live where I live just do covers. I would like to see musicians actually trying their own stuff. But if the choice is between enduring a naff original and the whole audience singing along to a classic, I’ll take the latter.

    Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 28-09-2019, 20:30.

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      #77
      Originally posted by Wouter D View Post



      I think a subset of the Beatles songs would be massively popular when released in 2019, but I find it difficult to imagine which subset.
      Possibly the first four albums, when performed by The Stairs, The Coral and The Strypes.

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        #78
        HP, it's Richard Curtis. It's easier to get to the core of his movies if you just look at the way he portrays the main female character/characters. He's basically an older english john hughes.

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          #79
          I thought the main female character in this one was much more of a real person than any of the women in Four Weddings and a Funeral or Love Actually. She actually has agency and is able to ask for what she wants. She isn’t just an object of desire for the protagonist.

          In real life, she probably would have just gone off with the other guy and our protagonist would be stuck with regret. But to some extent, we have to accept the story the film offers because, in the words of Leslye Headland, “it’s a fucking romantic comedy.”*

          It’s a fairytale, not an unrelenting look at real relationships. If you want that, watch something like Blue Valentine or Manchester by the Sea. (Michelle Williams is in a lot of those kinds of films) In romantic comedies, people finally figure out how to get out of their own way and get into the right relationship. I’d estimate that only about 10% of real people ever do that, but it’s a genre convention because it’s something so many people want.


          * She was referring to her film, the underrated Sleeping With Other People, and her frustration with the expectation that Indy films must have downer endings. I think that applies here too.

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            #80
            Originally posted by Wouter D View Post

            George Harrison was 27 when they called it quits. It's insane how prolific they were at such a young age.

            I did appreciate how those two older people were teased as a major threat in the film, and then they were revealed to be anything but.

            I think a subset of the Beatles songs would be massively popular when released in 2019, but I find it difficult to imagine which subset.
            The Top 60 most streamed Beatles songs may be a rough guide as to what is popular these days (though not necessarily the same as what would sell if they were released today, of course).

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              #81
              I've decided that, for now, "Tomorrow Never Knows" is my favorite Beatles song.

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                #82
                Good call.

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                  #83
                  It's not bad...but it's just a ripoff of that Chemical Brothers song...

                  We Can Work It Out is my favourite. Short, tight, and messes with the time signature.

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                    #84
                    My favorite is It's All Too Much. A blindly optimistic six-and-a-half-minute long psychedelic freakout; yes, please.

                    Tomorrow Never Knows would be my runner-up.

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                      #85
                      Right now? And Your Bird Can Sing.

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                        #86
                        Originally posted by Wouter D View Post
                        My favorite is It's All Too Much. A blindly optimistic six-and-a-half-minute long psychedelic freakout; yes, please.

                        Tomorrow Never Knows would be my runner-up.
                        Harrison's best, that and Hey Bulldog make the utter shite Yellow Submarine worth buying.

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                          #87
                          I have a soft spot for Revolution No. 9
                          that I don't think is just me being contrary. Can almost lick the lysergic from it, and there's a sly humour. There's bits you can almost groove to it.

                          "take this brother, May it serve you well" <vibrating sounds>

                          "The watusi, the twist.... eldorado".

                          Honey Pie is almost perfect pastiche too.

                          Though Mother Nature's Son is just straight up White album second disc lovely.

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                            #88
                            Everybody knows how to distill the White Album down to an excellent single 14-track disc. No two people will agree on exactly how to do so. I appreciate about the White Album that it doesn't take too many participants in this exercise to find at least one advocate for every track. The double album is a very mixed bag, but there is some charm to be found in every track. Yes, even in Wild Honey Pie.

                            We did have a thread about this a while back.

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                              #89
                              Wild honey pie and bungalow bill should be taken out back and shot mind you. And Glass onion is just volcanically unpleasant sounding.

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                                #90
                                Rocky raccoon needs a good slap.

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                                  #91
                                  Yeah, none of those are in my 14. But I do include Savoy Truffle, and most people seem to hate that one.

                                  I wonder if there would be anyone who would leave either While My Guitar Gently Weeps or Happiness Is A Warm Gun out of their list. Most of the other tracks are debateable, but these two surely...

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                                    #92
                                    I tolerate Cry Baby Cry for the shout out to my home town, but apart from that it's creepy and worthless. Lennon's Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

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                                      #93
                                      The problem with Savoy Truffle is all the desserts sound like things I wouldn’t like. I like heavy stodge.

                                      Current favourite is a close run thing between the single (up tempo) Revolution and Ask Me Why.

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                                        #94
                                        Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
                                        I tolerate Cry Baby Cry for the shout out to my home town, but apart from that it's creepy and worthless. Lennon's Maxwell's Silver Hammer.
                                        In Commander Cody's version it's a fine song.

                                        And Hot Pepsi's review of Yesterday is absolutely spot-on.

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                                          #95
                                          Probably not news (and may well have been covered earlier in the thread). Only surprise is that he is free to talk like this about it (unless the NDA was time bound NDA, which would defeat the purpose of having one really).
                                          The writer of 'Yesterday' tells us that he was insulted and cast aside by one of the UK's most beloved screenwriters.

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                                            #96
                                            Read that earlier today and found it frank and fascinating. Curtis does not come out of it at all well.

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                                              #97
                                              I don't know whether I've put this up before, but when I first saw the synopsis, I immediately thought of the 90s BBC series Goodnight Sweetheart ​​​​​​, a main part of the plot had the time travelling hero becoming a famous songwriter in the 40s by claiming Beatles songs as his own.

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                                                #98
                                                Hmm, so this guy wrote a story that made a hell of a lot more sense, and richard curtis changed it in a variety of ways, each of which made it weirder and weirder, and then erases the orginal story from history. There's something about these stories, and the way he portrays women in his movies that make me suspect that he's something very dark, hiding in plain sight. It will be interesting to hear what comes about him after he dies.

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                                                  #99
                                                  The original version of the story is more interesting than what got made.

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                                                    Turns out it was news (I was reading it on my phone, linked from a tweet and thought it was maybe an old article that had re-surfaced. It's bringing out quite a few examples on Twitter of general dickishness from Curtis but nothing too sinister (that I've seen anyway).

                                                    Found it interesting in many ways, and one angle was that I had heard Yesterday (which I still haven't seen) marketed as "Directed by Danny Boyle, written by Richard Curtis, from an idea by Mackenzie Crook" so our guy here was overshadowed twice.

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