Paul McCartney is Really Dead: Or I Saw Him On TV Recently

The Beatles. One of the biggest bands in the history of, well, forever. A worldwide following, thousands and thousands of adoring fans. If something were to happen to one of them in their heyday, would it cause levels of panic heretofore unseen in the world?

According to the film Paul McCartney Really Is Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison, yes. Yes it can.

Jason's premiere film for me in this format was the aforementioned flick, which I will refer to as PMRID, if I find the need to refer back to it. The crew behind this film purports to have obtained tapes recorded by George Harrison shortly before his death, which blows the lid off a huge cover-up by British Special Intelligence--namely that Paul McCartney died in a car accident in the 60's. Fearing some sort of epic mourning session by fans, they spent the time and money covering the death up by changing a man into Fake Paul, or "Faul", as the band reportedly took to calling him.

The film then goes on to confirm what diehard Beatles fans, and even casual listeners have heard before--that the Beatles, and Lennon in particular, went to great lengths to provide clues to fans, whether it's "Faul" facing away from the audience in pictures on album covers, to actually backmasking "Paul is Dead" into songs. Admittedly not a huge fan of the Beatles, I did find some of them quite interesting--if not a bit of a stretch.

Going in, I'll be honest--I was skeptical. Coming out of it, I'm still pretty skeptical. It's an interesting movie, because I'm not sure what the filmmakers' true intention was. If they were shooting for a full-on documentary, I have to question everything about it. For starters, they say that they have the audio tapes recorded personally by George Harrison. However, the voice that it has narrating the tapes sounds a lot like the cameo by the Beatles in the film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. (Warning: NSFW Language) Getting over that, it's still incredibly hard to believe something like that could get covered up by that many people for that long. Conspiracy theorists, on the other hand, are already willing to extend disbelief, so who knows?

On the other hand, if they were shooting for a mockumentary, more power to them. As a mock, the thing works perfectly. It's well drafted, has a solid enough footing in reality, but takes the ideas of the concept to some zany points. It almost seems to take itself too seriously, and that's what gives it some of that comedic effect.

Going in, I wasn't sure what to think, and to be honest, I wasn't sure I was going to want to watch it. Afterwards, though, I'm glad I did. I'm going to assume that it was put out there to give me a chuckle and entertain me, and it most definitely did that.

Fat Head - Feeding Us Tasty, Tasty Bologna

Noise, noise, noise...

Since I am the first one posting between me and Kev, I thought I'd give an explanation to our bloggity blog. Kev and I were chatting a couple of weeks ago, and we decided that we'd start a blog all around movies and entertainment. We'd try to get something out here once a week. The way it works is that I suggest a movie or television series to Kev and he do the same for me. We would try to enlighten one another to hidden gems and crazy things that just must be watched. Over the course of the following week, we'd try to watch what was suggested to one another and write a blog about them. Responses are welcome by one another. So, make sure you look in the comments section if you want to see our dialogue continue!

To kick off our blog, we thought it be best to find something that streamed on Netflix - but after that, anything goes. So to kick it off, I suggested a documentary called Paul McCartney Is Really Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison. I'm not sure that it was intentional, but we both just so happened to pick equally ridiculous documentaries. Mine to watch was Fat Head.

So I went into the documentary, Fat Head: You've been fed a load of bologna thinking that I just wouldn't buy it. It's not that I am a McDonald's hater nor a hater of fast food chains in general. I thought (and it really felt so after finishing it as well) that the film maker just had it a big time Jonesing for Morgan Spurlock. It's not that Morgan Spurlock's facts were irrefutable. I mean everyone knows that people do have a choice of what the eat and how much of it that they eat. I know that some people thought Morgan Spurlock was ridiculous for attacking McDonalds the way that he did - but he did it to open our eyes. If Morgan can be blamed for anything, it's that he failed to provide us the entire picture of why Americans' waistlines are growing. We don't exercise. We don't have active jobs any more. Food comes easy to us.

Those are the things that I did like about Tom Naughton's documentary. He did say HEY, you have to count your calories. You need to cut down the carbohydrates. Don't eat the largest size meal available. To that I applaud you Tom Naughton. Where this entire documentary falls apart for me is the humor that really wasn't that funny. I just felt like he was trying too hard to make us all laugh at the ridiculous reports from people like scientists and doctors and nutritionists. Obviously a Cub fan, computer programmer from the Midwest knows better than people that have dedicated their lives to studying eating habits. :)

I'm not saying that I know any better. I don't. I only have my experiences like Tom had and has his. If there's anything that I know it's that chronic disease is caused by many factors - not just diet. I know though that there are bad habits that fast food chains enable us to practice. Where Morgan Spurlock completely tried to tear apart the Fast Food Nation, Tom Naughton complete absolved it. If you want to tear apart Morgan Spurlock's research and experiment, I am okay with that. I think that any documentary should be held to truth, but we all know that most of these films are made with agenda and meant to be more entertaining than thought provoking. Both movies mentioned above fall into the side of entertainment.

Kev, I am glad I watched this, but I think it was a great movie to help me question film makers like Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore - not so much because I think they're liars - but like Tom Naughton - these other documentary film makers become invested in an idea. I only makes sense to use the statistics that make sense to the hypothesis s/he starts with.

The fact that all coins have a 50% chance of coming up either heads or tails doesn't change the fact that when I flipped a quarter 5 times today, it came up heads 100% of the time - and if I needed to make a documentary on flipping coins, I'd tell you that heads came up 100% of the time in a controlled test - which would only be true 0% of the time.