| A Hard Day's Night | 
 enlarge | List Price: $9.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 365 reviews)
Sales Rank: 9724
Category: Video
Actors: John Lennon, Paul Mccartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Wilfrid Brambell
Director: Richard Lester
Publisher: Walt Disney Video
Studio: Walt Disney Video
Manufacturer: Walt Disney Video
Label: Walt Disney Video
Format: Black & White, Color, Original Recording Reissued, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), German (Original Language)
Rating: G (General Audience)
Media: VHS Tape
Edition: Original documentary "Things They Said Today"
Running Time: 108 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0788827596
UPC: 786936148398
EAN: 9780788827594
ASIN: B0000542D1
Release Date: September 24, 2002
Theatrical Release Date: August 11, 1964
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Description
The strikingly original classic captures all the fun, excitement, and unforgettable music of John, Paul, George, and Ringo at the height of Beatlemania! It's a wildly irreverent day in the life of the world's great rock 'n' roll band! As they prepare for a big TV appearance, the Beatles perform their songs, look for adventure ... and try in vain to keep Paul's mischief-making grandfather out of trouble ... all while avoiding hordes of screaming fans! Packed with all-time Beatle favorites including "A Hard Day's Night," "All My Loving," "Can't Buy Me Love," "I Should've Known Better," "She Loves You," and "Tell Me Why," director Richard Lester's groundbreaking motion picture collaboration with the "Fab Four" is itself a treasured piece of rock history that remains influential to this day!
Amazon.com essential video
The Fab Four from Liverpool--John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr--in their first movie. Nobody expected A Hard Day's Night to be much more than a quick exploitation of a passing musical fad, but when the film opened it immediately seduced the world--even the stuffiest critics fell over themselves in praise (highbrow Dwight Macdonald called it "not only a gay, spontaneous, inventive comedy but it is also as good cinema as I have seen for a long time"). Wisely, screenwriter Alun Owen based his script on the Beatles' actual celebrity at the time, catching them in the delirious early rush of Beatlemania: eluding rampaging fans, killing time on trains and in hotels, appearing on a TV broadcast. American director Richard Lester, influenced by the freestyle French New Wave and British Goon Show humor, whips up a delightfully upbeat circus of perpetual motion. From the opening scene of the mop tops rushing through a train station mobbed by fans, the movie rarely stops for air. Some of the songs are straightforwardly presented, but others ("Can't Buy Me Love," set to the foursome gamboling around an empty field) soar with ingenuity. Above all, the Beatles express their irresistible personalities: droll, deadpan, infectiously cheeky. Better examples of pure cinematic joy are few and far between. --Robert Horton
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| Customer Reviews: Read 360 more reviews...
 Great Movie! September 5, 2008
The Beatles are wonderful in this movie. It is fast paced and very funny. One has to pay attention to the dialogue to get the jokes and they are gems. The extras are good too. A lot of fun!
Still great after all these years September 1, 2008
I bought this DVD as I am phasing out my VHS tapes. I had the same issue in VHS, though this has interviews with many people that make the extras neat. My favorite was George Martin discussing the boys individually as writers and the individual songs. The film stands up well to 40+ years of time.
 Will Miramax and MPI please stop tampering with our memories? July 28, 2008
The other night I decided to pull out HDN and watch it for the first time in several years. I have both the MPI and Miramax DVDs so I reached for my good old MPI edition and popped it in. The 1.33:1 aspect ratio always bugged me a bit but I thought "so what" and decided to watch it because I love the opening "I'll Cry Instead" prologue on that version. When the movie got to the "And I Love Her" sequence I started, for the first time, to notice that the mix was different than the video tape I'd seen years ago. Paul's vocal, which should be single-voiced on the main verses, was double tracked throughout. During the song, the director's assistant positions George's amp on an amp stand. When George tries to lean against it, it falls and in the original soundtrack you can HEAR the amp fall backward and George stumble. When I saw that the sound to that moment was missing I realized MPI had used the released mix of the song and simply stuck it in the soundtrack. Always one to HATE it when studios tamper with a work of art, especially one as important and influential as this one, I removed the MPI version and but in the Miramax. When the same sequence appeared again I could hear that the mix was correct and the stumble was there in the background, but it seemed that heads were chopped off and scenes looked different than they should due to the 16:9 "enhancement." It was at this point I decided to try and figure out just how much of the picture each release had sacrificed since there seems to be no end to the conjecture on this subject on the internet. I place both DVD's in my computer, captured an identical scene on each and then compared them in Photoshop. Now I have heard over and over that the original film was shown in a ratio of 1.66:1. When I compared 1.66:1 to a ratio of 1.77:1 (roughly what 16:9, the Miramax version, translates to when changed to units of 1) I saw that if the original film was in 1.66:1 only a tiny bit of the picture should be cropped (about 3 to 5 percent) at the top and bottom of the Miramax DVD. What I found was that Miramax had chopped off about 20 percent at the top and bottom. 20 PERCENT!. That's a lot of the image folks! MPI had hacked off about 10 to 15 percent from the sides so they didn't do much better. When I tried to see what aspect ratio the two pictures together formed, I kept coming up with a ratio of around 3:2 or around 1.5:1 not 1.66:1. The original aspect HAS to be around this size. So ultimately what you end up with is this: One of the most musically influential and historically important films ever made with around 20 percent of the image missing. And since MPI chops off almost as much of the sides and mutilates the soundtrack, owning it isn't much better. I would love to see, just once, someone release a work of art such as this without doing the viewers a "favor" such as hacking at the image so it will fit a 16:9 television or recording over a soundtrack because they feel no one will notice. While I will give Miramax a couple of points for making the color balance and contrast look great, that was the only thing they seem to get right (see the other complaints about how they somehow turned a mono soundtrack into 5.1 surround by messing with the music tracks and how weird it now sounds). Perhaps one day this magnificent film will be released in the correct ratio, with the correct soundtrack, and in the correct color balance. But I'm not gonna hold my breath. After all, the people producing these new releases seem to know so much more than us fans who actually spend money on them. If you love the movie as much as me, all I could suggest is rent the old VHS video tape from MPI and watch it. You'll get more of the picture and the soundtrack will be right. It won't be crystal clear like a DVD, but at least your memories will remain intact without someone else getting involved.
Movie Good / DVD Bad. July 10, 2008
I've had this Miramax DVD in my collection since it was released in 2002 but have only just got around to watching it on a decent TV with a 5.1 surround system.
Like many others here I love the movie but am hugely disappointed by this DVD....particularly compared to the job that was done with the recent Help! DVD.
The letterboxing is obviously annoying to some people and it is noticable that things have been cropped however it is not the main problem I have with this release.
The biggest crime is what they have done with the MUSIC. How they were allowed to mangle these songs is this way I will never know. The mix presented here is just awful: flat/muddy/bassy/echo-ey and lacks any kind of punch or excitement. Also the way the songs are presented mean that there is a noticable volume increase when the music starts and then a decrease when the song finishes. This mean that the flow of the film is lost as it is painfully obvious that the soundtrack isn't "real", it just sounds so separate from the visuals. It also means that it's hard to hear any subsequent dialogue for a few minutes while your ears adjust to the volume drop.
And worst of all is the fact that the songs run slower than the original versions. Did they think we wouldn't notice this!? These are songs than many of us have listened to for years and they have treated us with contempt thinking they could get away with doing this. Very poor.
The extras are a bit boring as well, I can take them or leave them.
I hope that one day this great film gets a proper treatment: decent sound mix (with a stereo track option) with better extras (some Beatles interviews would be good).
The Beatle's best movie! July 5, 2008
I think this is the boys best movie ever! The storyline is basically what a day in the life of a Beatle is (during Beatlemania). Great songs, they look great (still young and without the long hair) and hilarious! You really get to see each of their personalities. Anyone who loves The Beatles would enjoy this film, young and old.
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