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The Beatles Celebration

The Beatles Celebration

List Price: $9.99
Your Price: $9.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Didn't actaully see it
Review: I just saw all of the 1 star comments--i had to put in a 5 star just to make it different

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Advoid this stink bomb
Review: I wish I could give this disc a 0 star because that's how bad this disc is. The quality overall is horrible, sound is very distored and the video is fuzzy through the whole thing. Not only that but its incredible dull and boring, the interviews are really drab and reveal nothing new or even remotely interesting about the Fab Four. And the commentator needs to do research on them before he even speaks about them again, he was so inaccurate that I totally died in laughter at times because of his stupidity. Advoid this disc and get something that really show's who the Fab Four are really - like Help! :-)

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: STAY AWAY FROM THIS They didn't have a NO STARS category
Review: I would venture to say that Geoffrey Giuliano has made a "career" of both beatifying and belittling the Beatles while trying to make himself out to be the foremost expert on the Beatles. All of his material contains much erroneous information which should be a sign to true Beatle fans that if this "expert" can't get these simple easily-researched facts straight, how can he keep his other so-called "facts" straight? I once corresponded with him and brought this to light and his response hinted that this wasn't important. Let's get this straight...if he has to rely on others to get info on the Fabs, then maybe its because they don't want to tell him anything. He gets a lot of material from previously published interviews and has no real new information. Click on his name ono the right left side of the page and you will see all the garbage media he has put out. WORD OF WARNING. He is the new ALBERT GOLDMAN.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: "Buyer's remorse" guaranteed here
Review: Luckily, I wasn't the unfortunate buyer in this case, but I feel bad for my friend who thought she was buying me a nifty Christmas present... The blurbs on the packaging promises a great documentary along the lines of The Compleat Beatles, and even during the initial scenes it's still easy to hold out hope for something good, but slowly but surely the realization sinks in that this documentary is all about stirring up anticipation without ever giving a payoff. One major strike against this film is that it contains no Beatles music, and the only exclusive interviews are with bit-players connected to the Beatles. The rest of the film consists of boring location shots overlaid with meaningless commentary interspersed with equally dull footage of random press conferences with solo Beatles... Geoffrey Guiliano has achieved what I would have thought impossible, in creating a boring film about the Beatles

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Scraping the bottom of the barrel
Review: My favorite moment in this DVD is near the end, when Giuliano does a voiceover, lamenting the proliferation of cheap knock-offs and other products meant to exploit the memory of the Fab 4. He should have added the phrase, "including the piece of crap you're watching right now."

A couple of notable tidbits: Danish TV interview with John and Yoko around the time of their wedding; The entire interview with Paul conducted the day after John's death -- source of the infamous "It's a drag" quotation. Those I hadn't seen before.

Naturally, no Beatles music. Not even any Beatles-like music, with the exception of some sitar noodling.

The current-day footage is poorly shot, poorly edited, and looks like a junior high school video production. I had to watch a couple of episodes of the Beatles Anthology to get the bad taste out of my mouth.

I paid $6.99 at Tower for this. However, I'm much more upset about the hour of my life I'll never get back. Beware.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Cheesy and unprofessional - save your money!
Review: Over the years, Geoffrey Giuliano has become, along with Albert Goldman, the Beatles' author the fans most love to hate. This stinker joins Giuliano's 20 volumes of books that only serve to dish the dirt about the Beatles.

Just because a video product is released on DVD is no guarantee of its quality. A disclaimer at the beginning of the DVD warns the viewer about the varying degrees of quality in the compilation. This is quite the understatement!

The production itself is very unprofessional. The film clips and photographs are strung together in a haphazard manner with an attempt by Guiliano, as narrator, to provide a segue with his overly effected prose and attempt at a high brow monologue. It's about the quality one would expect from a high school junior in an experimental film class. It actually reminds me of some of the home-made video compilations I put together as a teenager.

The video program is little more than previously published photographs interspersed with some home video of Giuliano standing in front of various Beatles landmarks such as No 10 Forthlin Road, Abbey Road studios and Strawberry Fields. As Giuliano walks across the famous Abbey Road crossing in his ill-fitting 60s style Nehru jacket, the viewer is almost hoping for a car to come along and run him down. At each location, he refers to the landmark, then turns his back to the camera to point at it. Uh, I seem to recall this kind of broadcasting faux pas was covered in Journalism 101.

In his introduction, Giuliano tells the viewer to get ready for a higher level look at the Beatles - that this will be an intelligent program. Over the next 50 minutes or so, Giuliano covers only the negative publicity that cropped up during their career. He includes some film footage of Pete Best at a fan convention dissing McCartney; former Lennon assistant Fred Seaman saying that it was John and Lee Eastman who broke up the Beatles (not Yoko or Linda as most of us were led to believe!), Brian Epstein's comments on the "we're more popular than Jesus" controversy, the skirt chasing ways of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and the much-publicized pot busts of the McCartneys. Giuliano's editorial comment: "the family that gets by stays high." While standing in front of the gates of Strawberry Field orphanage, Giuliano refers to Lennon relating to the "inmates" who lived there. During a press conference with Eric Clapton for their late 80s tour of Japan, George Harrison rags about "every time Paul wants some publicity, he says the Beatles are getting back together." This is followed by a McCartney press conference, where he is saying, "what George 'really' said was . . ." Ringo is the only Beatle who seems safe from Giuliano's wrath, although his narration about him is along the lines of "he's not really as stupid as you might think."

Perhaps the irony of the whole piece is a montage of home video of the various Beatles memorabilia shops in the UK, and Giuliano badmouthing these businesses for trying to make money on the Beatles. This is immediately followed by a commercial of Giuliano plugging his sets of CD interviews.

Not only should you not buy this, but make sure that your relatives know not to buy it as a stocking stuffer or birthday present for you just because of the low price. However, it might be cheap entertainment when you have some of your Beatles friends over for a party - you can make an evening of booing and hissing and laughing at this atrocity.

This even has subtitles in Chinese! I found that to be quite a selling point for this DVD - not!

At least the one star is for all the laughs I've had from this thing.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Didn't actaully see it
Review: Paraphrasing a line George Harrison spoke in "A Hard Day's Night": The author of this DVD is a "drag, a well-known drag..."

Laserlight, the distributor of this DVD, handles cheap-o, marginal programs, at budget prices. But this is a new low, even for them. To saddle up with infamous Beatle-leech, Geoffrey Guiliano (the Jerry Springer of Beatles "experts"), and distibute his childish and smarmy "Celebration" is below even their standards.

Even for the price shown, this is a complete waste of money. There is absolutely nothing of value, interest or entertainment on this DVD. Purchasing it will only cause Guiliano to do this again.

Avoid...

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: It's hard to believe a budget label would release this
Review: Paraphrasing a line George Harrison spoke in "A Hard Day's Night": The author of this DVD is a "drag, a well-known drag..."

Laserlight, the distributor of this DVD, handles cheap-o, marginal programs, at budget prices. But this is a new low, even for them. To saddle up with infamous Beatle-leech, Geoffrey Guiliano (the Jerry Springer of Beatles "experts"), and distibute his childish and smarmy "Celebration" is below even their standards.

Even for the price shown, this is a complete waste of money. There is absolutely nothing of value, interest or entertainment on this DVD. Purchasing it will only cause Guiliano to do this again.

Avoid...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Amatuer video
Review: This documentary relies mostly on existing footage woven together in a somewhat coherent manner. The short "news conference" with Pete Best is probably the highlight. Relatively interesting to watch but nothing to get overly excited about. The Anthology series may be overkill for a casual fan-but this dvd is too brief and generic!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: This "Celebration" is as fun as a funeral!
Review: This DVD completly stinks! It is truely terrible! I can't put into words how disappointed I was with it. I was appalled that there was no music, and Ringo (The cutest of them all) was hardly even on it! Save your money, don't buy it! If you already have bought it, return it. And do it now!!!


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