#Submarine cartoon big movie
#Submarine cartoon big mod
#Submarine cartoon big series

(There would be another attempt to duplicate this formula … and it would not be as successful, to put it mildly.) But watching it now, as an artifact of both the band circa the late Sixties and the tripped-out times that produced it, what sticks with you is how how telling it all is. And that would be cut from American prints altogether.Īll that, combined with 10 older songs and a free-form storyline involving the town of Pepperland under siege from blue-skinned naysayers, turned Yellow Submarine into a singular synergistic achievement – a proto-jukebox musical that literally turned pop stars into pop art. Only John Lennon’s contribution, “Hey Bulldog,” stands out, a dense screamer that essentially points the way to the White Album, which would point the way to disillusion and dissolution. Or that “It’s All Too Much” is, well, not enough. Or that “All Together Now,” while building to a rousing pub-friendly finish, is not McCartney’s most lyrically impressive achievement (though kudos for that “can I take my friend to bed” bit in ’68 – more on this song later). It’s no coincidence that George Harrison’s “It’s Only a Northern Song” sounds like either a dry run or a dead-end experiment regarding sonic notions they’d explored more fully on Sgt.

#Submarine cartoon big mod

In classic we-can’t-be-bothered form, the Beatles decided to “gift” the film with some mod odds-and-sods leftovers and tunes rejected as being not up to snuff. It would also feature a lot of new orchestral music from Martin – see Side Two of the soundtrack album – and four new songs, recorded somewhat under duress and with no small amount of resentment.

#Submarine cartoon big movie

The end result would eventually win the Beatles over (though Paul, ever sentimentalist, still wished it been more “of a classic cartoon … the greatest Disney movie ever – only with our music”) they liked it so much that they consented to film a live-action section as a coda before they went to India to study Transcendental Meditation. Those Summer of Love dandies in their marching band regalia? That everything-including-the-kitschin’-sink methodology? The pomo boho references piled upon references? They could start to set sail now. Suddenly, there was a focal point to rally around.

#Submarine cartoon big series

(He was also the one who suggested that they construct the narrative as a series of shorts, “so the style should vary every five minutes or so, to keep the interest going.”) The story goes that the group was having trouble deciding on a direction when Sir George Martin gathered them together in 1967 and played them the Beatles’ unreleased new album: Sgt. (Liverpudlian poet Roger McGough would be brought on later to scouse things up his lack of proper credit for giving the film a regional sense of cheekiness is still a point of contention.) It was Jenkins who suggested adding Heinz Edelmann, a Czech-German graphic artist best known for his work on the magazine Twen and who’d be the person most associated with the movie’s fluid, lysergic look. So Brodax began gathering together a team of creative collaborators, including Canadian animator George Dunning, visual effects director Charles Jenkins, The Beatles cartoon vets Jack Stokes and Mike Stuart and several screenwriters, including Latin professor and future Love Story novelist Erich Segal. It’s still a hell of a lot weirder than you remember it being. screens in a new restored version right now.) It doesn’t matter whether it’s been decades or merely days since you’ve seen it last. Meet the Beatles (sort of) that star in Yellow Submarine, the psychedelic caricatures that graced the 1968 animated feature which, 50 years ago today, made it’s premiere on U.K. Specifically, between themselves and detonating clowns, apple-bonking henchmen, a giant killer glove and your run-of-the-mill Blue Meanies. No, these Fab Four are currently locked in a battle between good and evil. And they aren’t bickering in a studio or playing the single most bittersweet rooftop gig ever – that’s still in the near-future. Nor are they charming Ed Sullivan and the American press corps, or comically falling down together in the snow while locked arm in arm, or walking to the armored car that will take them out of Candlestick Park after their last public performance – we’re way past all of that now. They aren’t sprinting through a narrow street, laughing and tumbling over one another as they’re trailed by what appear to be hundreds of rabid teenyboppers.