The Beatles: Love Me Do

Rating:
Summary: Can we milk this dry any further?
Review: I only saw this at a friends house. This was a kind of fun DVD, but rather cheaply put together.

The thing is, their history is continually being stuffed down our throats. And they seem like the only classic band that Big Network Media will "allow" 2-hour prime time specials on them to this day. ("How dare we put the 'The Kids are Alright' in place of '8 Simple Rules' and 'Jim', leave that to VH-1...oh, The Beatles?....oh, OK"!)

As much as I love the Beatles, this DVD seems like another bandwagon-job. And no other classic band gets any contemporary spotlight for some reason. It's always these guys. McCartney's constant camera-hogging these days doesn't help much either, bless him.

Next, we'll be having documentaries on their favorite food.

Rating:
Summary: For Beatlemaniacs Only
Review: Only serious Beatle fans would be able to follow this DVD as its very disorganized. There were a few short moments of Beatles interview footage that I had never seen, but on the whole there's not anything new here and I found it rather boring.
The box says its going to give you details on the Beatles early years, but there really wasn't much of that. A large segment of the DVD is simply an interview with the actor Victor Spinetti.
Like the other reviewer said there are worse DVDs out there, but this is certainly not an essential one.

Rating:
Summary: There are much better things to spend your money on
Review: This isn't terrible most of the time, but over all it's not that interesting either. No new information, just all the same old stories anyone who's seen or read the Anthology already knows (and if you haven't, why aren't you buying those instead?) You get people saying things like "I wasn't there, but I was told...blah blah blah." Victor Spinetti's interview is the best part of this just because I hadn't seen him interviewed before.

The big question is, since most all of this evidently was recorded around the time George passed--why is this DVD just mono? I wouldn't expect 5.1 for this, but even interviews are done in stereo these days. There is a section with Tony Sheridan playing "My Bonnie" with his current band in the studio (for whatever reason) and that is even in over-modulated distorted mono!

If you have some extra Beatle cash, buy the 4 show Ed Sullivan set, or the "Fun With the Fab Four / Unauthorized" combo disc, or any number of other fringe titles that you will get more out of than this one. Then again, it's not nearly as bad as "The Journey", "Lennon The Messenger", or "Big Beat Box".

Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: This was the first Beatles dvd that I bought, and I found it very enjoyable. There is an extensive interview with Victor Spinetti, an actor who worked with the Beatles on their movies, and who was able to offer some insight into their lives. Although the part with the complete "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" song was a little much, this dvd was a good beginning to my Beatles collection. However, the Beatles Anthology is the best set of Beatles' dvds out there, but this one is good for its price.