Young at heart

Ah, to be young again. Just two days to go.

Just some quick things

Just a quick post here and a promise to come back tomorrow with the poster I made for the month of December for that weekly showing of films I mention below.

First of all, a BIG thank you to the guy that runs one of the most wonderful and complete blogs around, For the Love of Harry! He's emailed me with lots of lovely stuff for me to post in my little blog of blogs and that I shall be posting in the coming future. It's just that I've been a bit busy and still haven't come around to it.

Meanwhile, hope you enjoy the links I've added at the bottom right on a new column I decided to call, "Fun blogging". Lots of cool stuff for you to check out just around the corner.

See you tomorrow, then.

Son of Dracula

Hi, again! In this post I shall be postponing that pre-historic post yet again but also for a very good reason: I found you and myself yet another great link, courtesy once more by that great little blog called "For the Love of Harry, dedicated to all things Harry Nilsson". It's the link to a directly viewable version of that most elusive of Ringo's movies: Son of Dracula!

If you've ever wondered if it really is all that bad, well, now's the time for it. I personally wonder if Ringo ever wanted to "shoot himself in the head" at the general opinion of the movie at the time of its release? Didn't someone had the power to "pull the trigger" on all the production? Wait, that would be him...

OST - 3rd Part

Apologies in advance for the delay in posting the third and final part of my little survey of the soundtracks for most of Ringo's filmography.

So, last stop was Son of Dracula (and remember you can download it for free on that Harry Nilsson blog I mentioned below) and I guess that next I'll be talking about one of the most troubled title of all of Ringo's filmography: Lisztomania, that crazy whirlwind of a motion picture that continues to be absent on the DVD market as of now. Come on, Warner Brothers - move those behinds, ok?! But first things first. Its soundtrack was composed by Yes frontman, Rick Wakeman, of prog-rock fame. He went ahead and adapted some of Franz Liszt's original compositions in a style all his own. You can imagine the results, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, yes. They're over the top, alright. But strangely and imaginatively effective. But as we will see, we have now two different soundtracks for that particular movie: you can find the original one here and a recently (as of 2003) released and revised version is also out on CD. Get it here. Here's what the Amazon product description says about it:

This is an extremely rare find as the master tapes were long since considered destroyed, back in 1975 Rick was asked to oversee & write a lot of the music for the film 'Lizstomania' which was directed by Ken Russell. Rick was also given a part in the film & played the god Thor. A soundtrack album was produced by Rick which was subsequently turned down by A&M records. A&M then produced a soundtrack of their own which had very little of Rick on it & yet they thoughtfully put his name on the front cover. Rick was furious to say the least & hated the soundtrack album & told the press accordingly. It sold accordingly as well! The film became one of the cult films of all time & to find this original soundtrack is quite unbelievable as there was only one master ever produced & somehow it has survived more than 25 years in a box amongst some old football shorts!

I wonder whose shorts they were from! Anyway, both editions are out and for completists only, get them just to get a clearer picture of how things turn out.

Next on the list is the Mae West vehicle, Sextette. I cannot seem to find evidence that a LP was ever issued back in the day and since the movie was such a bomb at the box-office, I reckon nothing ever came out. However, the ever trustworthy Imdb has a soundtrack listing here that is of some help.

Finally, we have that glorious pre-historic comedy, Caveman, one of the most treasured among Ringo's movies and a landmark in itself on his private life (curious to know how, ain't ya? Well, you just have to wait until I post about it, ok?). Famous composer Lalo Schifrin wrote the score and sure enough, it's out on CD. Get it here.

Well, that completes my little survey and I hope I've been of some help. Do you feel yourself getting more and more into the Ringomania vibe? If you do, watch this space for even more and more of his erratic film career and my crazy ramblings. However, I could not leave you without posting what I just found: a picture of two of my favorite people, Ringo and Ms. Shelley Duvall. Together!

OST - Part One

Hello there! Missed me? Of course you all did! Want to know more about Ringo? Guessed you would! So here goes nothing.

Today, I'm going to sort of provide enough info and links to the soundtracks of most of Ringo's filmography. Am I up for the task? Well, that's what we are going to find out very, very soon.

Starting with The Beatles output, you can easily find them on any Amazon shop. Here are the links for Hard Day's Night, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine and Let It Be. Worth noting that these last two albums have alternate versions: here is the link for the former and the one for the latter.

As for Candy, as far as I know, there hasn't been any re-release on CD, although there definitely was one on LP format. Here is the link to a wonderful site I'll be linking more on this and other future posts that proves just that. Check out the cover artwork for the various LP releases too. Soundtrack Collector is a wonderful reference site for anyone even vaguely interested in Music written for the Cinema. Moving on, we have a tricky one. The Magic Christian did have a LP soundtrack release but sadly, there's been no sign of it on CD until now. Here's the link that proves it. However, if you want to listen to some of the songs written for it, you can find them at the Badfinger album, Magic Christian Music. Apparently, Paul McCartney was involved in it too, so I guess this is Beatles' completist heaven for some. Not for me, though.

Anyway, now that we've covered the 60's period and given you enough to google by, I promise to write about the 70's soundtracks tomorrow but before I leave, here's some more Ringo for thought (yup, I'll be talking about the movie this picture was taken from in the future as well, don't you worry):

Candy

The movie Ringo co-STARRed in that I'm going to write some words about today is readily available on DVD for quite a long time (though now currently Out of Print in the US but not in the UK), so if by the end of this post, you feel interested in checking it out, that particular task won't be as hard as the previously mentioned films in this little blog of ours.

It's called Candy, as you can see by the original theatrical poster on the left, and it was made in 1968 by frenchman Christian Marquand at the height of the hippie movement. And boy, does it show! Adapted from the novel by Terry Southern by the same name, it tells the story of a young ingénue named, you guessed it, Candy and her many adventures in search of... well, something. I've watched the movie quite a few times (rewatched it in fact just this weekend to prepare myself for these words) and I am still not sure what the movie is about.

Just so you can get a better picture of it, it involves a constantly wind-swept poet, a mexican gardener who's studying to become a priest (our own Ringo Starr, no less!), false indian gurus, homicidal surgeons, underground temples, members of the U. S. Army, a flying hunchback and the Mob! To confuse matters even more, apparently Southern's novel was loosely basen on literary classic Candide, by Voltaire, also the story of a naif character (a man, this time around) in search of Optimism. Sounds too erudite to you? Well, it should: it was written by a philosopher, if you're still wondering who Voltaire was.

With this sort of material, it should've been easy to make a fantastic movie, right? Right. But not in this case, though. Candy is yet another glorious cinematic mess that leaves you dumbfounded at the end and viewing it 40 years on, I'm quite sure that even the hippie crowd (clearly the target audience this movie was fabricated for) had a hard time figuring it all out. Nevertheless, it features some amazing cinematography by Fellini regular, Giuseppe Rotunno which achieves the impossible: to keep us glued to the screen for its whole two hours. No mean feat, I tell you.

And what about Ringo's part in it? Well, let's just say that his mexican accent sounds too liverpudlian to be believable but to see him on the big screen is always a pleasure (for me, at least). He seemed to enjoy it too, judging by the picture below with newcomer Ewa Aulin...

Hello!

Hi, there!

First ever post on a(nother) blog being inaugurated this instant on the place we now have come to call second home (yes, you guessed it: the www). One born every minute. Just like crap ideas.

With that out of the way, I'd just like to say that this will be a place where you will be able to find all sort of things and up-to-date news and reviews connected with that all-too familiar face (and body!) behind the drums of the most famous band to ever grace pop-dom. No, I'm not talking about The Spice Girls. They don't even have a drummer. Hey, they're not even a band, you know? In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'll tell you all about in on my second post.

Until then, I leave you with my favorite photo of Mr. Starr himself: I give you ...[drum roll]... RINGO!