Restored and Rereleased, the Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ Is Revealed to Be the Joyful Documentary It Always Was

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic A year ago, the Cannes Film Festival presented the world premiere of what was widely taken to be Jean-Luc Godard’s final film. He had died by assisted suicide eight months before, and the 20-minute-long “Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: ‘Phony Wars'” felt, by nature, like the aestheticized version of a last will and testament. It was a collage film, and it was (surprise!) oblique, yet it offered tea leaves to read about Godard’s state of mind as he prepared to leave the world.

Ringo Starr has given the newly restored Let It Be documentary his seal of approval, despite previously claiming that there was “not a lot of joy” in it.Directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Let It Be was first released in cinemas 54 years ago, and featured footage of The Beatles while they were working their 12th and final studio album of the same name in 1969.While the original film has been difficult to obtain over the past five decades, last month, NME exclusively announced that Disney+ were to release a restored version of the 1970 film.The film arrived on May 8, and was restored by renowned filmmaker Peter Jackson – who also worked on the 2022 docuseries Get Back. He used state-of-the-art digital technology to restore the 55-year-old film reels to crisp, modern quality.However, before the film was shared earlier this month, drummer Ringo Starr made headlines after revealing that he thought that the film didn’t have “a lot of joy in it”.Speaking with Associated Press, he said: “I think Peter Jackson has done an incredible job.

Paul McCartney has been confirmed as becoming the first billionaire musician in the UK, with his net worth skyrocketing over the past year.The former Beatles icon was among those named in the 2024 edition of The Sunday Times Rich list, and was revealed to be the UK’s first musician to become a billionaire.In the list, the singer, songwriter and bassist was placed between Vladimir Makhlai and Chris Sheppard and his family, and ranked as the 165 richest person. In the listing, he is said to have a net worth of £1billion – a figure which has grown significantly over the past 12 months.In the past year, The Sunday Times reports, the 81-year-old music icon boosted his wealth by £50million.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe's worth after buying a stake in Manchester United has been revealed in a new list of the country's wealthiest people..

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Eight years ago, the writer-director Andrea Arnold packed up her hand-held-camera brand of kitchen-sink British austerity and took it across the pond to make “American Honey,” a movie about a wolf pack of kids in a van who seemed to incarnate the tumult of the 21st century. The movie, crafted in a style that I thought of as hip-hop Dardenne brothers, was an indie explosion that felt like a landmark. Now, though, in “Bird,” the first dramatic feature that Arnold has made since (in between, she directed episodes of “Big Little Lies” and “Transparent” and made the documentary “Cow”), she’s back to chronicling the miserablism of aimless, scroungy British young folk who experience their lives as a dead zone.

Beatles tribute concert led to concertgoers walking out of the venue, according to new reports.The gig took place at the 1,000-year-old Winchester Cathedral, and saw numerous attendees leave the event early due to the “deafening acoustics” at the venue.Hundreds of people were in attendance to see the “ultimate tribute” to the iconic rock veterans, but reports later emerged that the choice of venue led to a “wall of sound” being created, and the songs becoming indistinguishable from one another.According to a report from GB News, tickets to the event were around £40 per person, and numerous attendees claimed they couldn’t tell which song was playing at the Beatles by Candlelight concert.“We had been looking forward to it for weeks, we were really excited. We thought it would be a really nice evening, but no,” one concertgoer told The Telegraph about the experience.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The first thing to say about “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is that it’s not like any other “Mad Max” film. The movie, which runs 2 hours and 28 minutes, is teemingly, sprawlingly, phantasmagorically ambitious. Where “Mad Max: Fury Road” was set over three days, “Furiosa” takes place over 15 years and tells the origin story of Imperator Furiosa in five chapters (which come with titles like “The Pole of Inaccessibility”).

shout — a lot.Ringo Starr, 83, admitted that The Beatles had their issues with one another in a new interview with Dan Rather, 92, for AXS.“No no, we didn’t get along,” the drummer said of the iconic English rock band on May 10. “We were four guys. We had rows.”But Starr said that the drama with the other Beatles — Paul McCartney, George Harrison and John Lennon — “never got in the way of the music no matter how bad the row was.”“Once the count in, we all gave our best,” Starr explained.

Graham Nash surprised fans this week by making a surprise appearance at a tribute concert for Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Find footage of the moment below.The moment took place on Monday night (May 13) as the music of the iconic trio was celebrated with a tribute concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall.Various artists including Todd Rundgren, Steve Earle, Yola, Iron & Wine, Real Estate, and more were enlisted to perform at the event, and each broke out renditions of the group’s most iconic tracks in the name of charity.It was held as the 19th edition of Michael Dorf’s annual Music Of charity show, which has raised over $2million (£1.6m) for music education and previously honoured iconic names in rock such as Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, Prince, and Paul McCartney.David Crosby died in January 2023, and neither of the surviving members of the trio, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, were set to perform on the night.

Ringo Starr has revealed that The Beatles wouldn’t have made as many records had it not been for “workaholic” Paul McCartney.The drummer of the legendary band sat down with journalist Dan Rather for a new interview on AXS TV. Starr opened up about how The Beatles didn’t get along and how without Macca, they wouldn’t have made nearly as many records as they did.“No no, we didn’t get along.

The Beach Boys have discussed their new Disney+ documentary, the support they had from The Beatles, and the health of songwriter Brian Wilson.Interviewed by Mariella Frostrup alongside The Beach Boys’ documentary director Frank Marshall at Abbey Road Studios last night (May 13), the pair revealed that the 81-year-old Wilson – who has recently been placed under conservatorship for what his doctors call a “major neurocognitive disorder” – was still able to perform with the band for the film.“Brian remembered things that I had forgotten from high school at times,” said Love. “His long-term memory is right there.

The Beatles have released a brand new restored video for ‘Let It Be’.The video features clips from the newly released and restored 1970 film Let It Be, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, and uses rarely-seen alternate camera angles of the Fab Four and Billy Preston as they were recording the song.The meticulous restoration was done by Park Road Post Production from the original 16mm negative. According to the video’s description on YouTube, it was “filmed on the day after the January 30 rooftop concert” in 1969.‌The Let It Be film is now streaming on Disney+, marking the first time the documentary has been available in over 50 years.In a four-star review of the film, NME shared: “There may not be a more punk rock bit of film on earth than George being told the police were on the roof to shut them down, and casually turning his amp back on.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Thirty years ago (in fact, it will be 30 years to the day this Sunday), Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, and cinema was never the same. Tarantino’s 1994 epic-crime-pretzel-meets-pop-monologue masterpiece smashed open one door after another, and an inevitable result is that we saw a great many movies in the ’90s that were Tarantino knockoffs — underworld capers of baroque violence and exuberant scuzz, movies that not only bent the dirty hedonism of film noir into new shapes but did it with a special brand of self-consciousness, a “Look at what we’re up to!” effrontery.

The Beatles‘ classic 1970 documentary film Let It Be was premiered in London earlier this week (May 7), before arriving on Disney+. Speaking at the press launch, creators explained how one of the most vital scenes – and significant moments in music history – never happened.The film was screened in front of an audience at the Curzon Mayfair which included original recording engineer Glyn Johns and Giles Martin (son of legendary Beatles producer George Martin, who remixed the music in Let It Be), Louis Theroux, James Bay, The Lightning Seeds frontman Ian Broudie and Captain America and Indiana Jones actor Toby Jones.The documentary, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, was first released in cinemas 54 years ago and has been difficult to obtain since primarily because the original master tapes were stolen from Apple Corps shortly after the film was made.Speaking in a Q&A hosted by former Radio 1 DJ Edith Bowman, Jonathan Clyde producer of the film and director of production at Apple Corps, said: “When we first started talking about [restoring] it with [head of Apple Corps] Neil Aspinall in 2000, he said rather unenthusiastically, ‘I suppose we’d better do something about Let It Be’.“But the problem was that the master sound, that’s 450 to 500, 15 minute reels of master sound from the 20-odd days of shooting, had been stolen from Apple [Corps] in the early ’70s.”He continued: “So in truth, there was not a lot we could do except whoever it was who pilched them was licensing them to bootleggers who were then bootlegging vinyl and CD box sets.

finally available to stream on Disney+ this week.Was it worth the 54-year wait?Well, yes — and no.Some context is needed here first: If you watched “The Beatles: Get Back” — the three-part, eight-hour docuseries directed by none other than Oscar-winning “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson that also premiered on Disney+ in 2021 — you’ve already seen a lot of this.And seen it in the kind of exhaustive detail — from the same footage that Jackson used from “Let It Be” director Michael Lindsay-Hogg — that you can probably break down the level of scruffiness in Paul McCartney’s faux-badass beard.But thankfully — whether or not you’ve already watched the tedious-at-times “Get Back” — this is only 80 minutes versus eight hours of your time.For anyone but the biggest of Beatlemaniacs, that math is math-ing.But here’s the real difference: Whereas “Get Back” captured every bit of Liverpudlian shade, side-eye and Yoko Ono rock-blocking, this “Let It Be” is all about the music that was made in the slow fade of the Fab Four.For most of this film — which documents The Beatles working out songs for what would turn out to be their final album, 1970’s “Let It Be,” in January 1969 — it’s just like being a little four-winged insect on the wall of those sessions at their Apple Corps headquarters in London.Rehearsing, working out songs and just jamming — even with all the mounting tension which is actually more between McCartney and George Harrison than Sir Paul and John Lennon (for all those who still blame Ono for the Beatles’ breakup) — it’s a magical mystery tour behind the scenes of what many consider to be the greatest band of all time.When McCartney and Lennon are in such easy harmony and camaraderie on “Two Of Us” — with the

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” opens with Caesar lying in state, surrounding by a horde of mourning chimps, as his dead body is covered in flowers and ritually set on fire. The movie then cuts to the jungle, where a title informs us that it’s “many generations later.” In other words, the tale we’ve been watching in the last three “Apes” films — “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011), “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” (2014), and “War for the Planet of the Apes” (2017) — is now ancient franchise history.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music (This article is unintentionally a counterpoint to my colleague Owen Gleiberman’s considerably more-positive take on the Beatles‘ “Let It Be” film, restored by Peter Jackson and released today on Disney+.) When I was a Beatles-obsessed seven-year-old, my mother, in an act of selfless parental love, took me to a Fab Four film festival: “Hard Day’s Night,” “Let It Be,” “Yellow Submarine” and “Help!,” one after the other. My mom was a cool assistant professor of English at the local university who dressed “hip,” loved music and picked up some listening habits from her students.

Naman Ramachandran Raven Banner Entertainment will launch international sales at the Cannes Film Market for Steven Kostanski‘s latest feature “Frankie Freako.” Kostanski’s previous feature “Psycho Goreman” premiered at SXSW in 2020 and gathered a cult following worldwide. Reviewing the film for Variety, critic Owen Gleiberman described the film as “‘The Toxic Avenger’ remade by the Robert Rodriguez of ‘Spy Kids.'” “Frankie Freako” is described by Raven Banner as Kostanki’s homage to the practical-FX-driven monster horror-comedies of the 1980s like “Gremlins 2” and “Ghoulies 3: Ghoulies Go to College.” It tells the story of workaholic yuppie Conor Sweeney (“The Editor,” “Father’s Day”) whose perfect life is turned upside down when he accidentally unleashes a trio of tiny trouble-makers into his home, led by the maniacal rock-n-roll party monster Frankie Freako.

He was nicknamed the 'Wolf of Widnes' in a nod to Leonard De Caprio's portrayal of the infamous stockbroker Jordan Belfort. And just like drug-crazed Belfort in the Wolf of Wall Street, Shaun Attwood's multi-million empire would come crashing down in spectacular fashion.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Unfrosted,” the first movie directed by Jerry Seinfeld (who also stars in it), is an agreeably flaked-out piece of surrealist vaudeville. It’s a comedy about the creation of the Pop-Tart, back in 1963. That makes it sound like part of the new wave of mass-market product biopics — movies like “Flamin’ Hot” (about the creation of Spicy Cheetos), “Blackberry” (about the invention of the smart phone), and the one I think of as the “Citizen Kane” of the genre, “The Founder,” with Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc, the man who changed the world by taking over and franchising McDonald’s.