Rowdy Rebel，rebe

阅读：0 来源：发表时间：2023-02-17 08:50作者：八卦会火

接要：求勇敢的心观后感一篇，英文的，300字左右1Wags enjoy razzing the 13th-century Scottish epic Bravehre...

问题二、求勇敢的心观后感一篇，英文的，300字左右

1Wags enjoy razzing the 13th-century Scottish epic Braveheart, starring Mel Gibson in the role of freedom fighter William Wallace, as Die Hard in a kilt. Wait till they get to the knobby question of how Gibson”s knees stack up against Liam Neeson”s in Rob Roy. No matter. Gibson gets the last laugh. Braveheart resists glib categorization. This rousing, romantic adventure is laced with sorrow and savagery. The audacity Gibson shows as the film”s director extends to the running time, which is nearly three hours. Hamlet, with Gibson playing the melancholy Dane, was shorter, and Braveheart isn”t Shakespeare. Don”t panic. Though the film dawdles a bit with the shimmery, dappled love stuff involving Wallace with a Scottish peasant and a French princess, the action will pin you to your seat. With breathtaking skill, Gibson captures the exhilaration and horror of combat in some of the most vivid battle scenes ever filmed.Wallace was knighted for leading his people in the fight against domination by England. Few facts are known about his personal life, which frees Gibson and screenwriter Randall Wallace (no relation) to run with the legend passed down mostly from the rhyming verse of a poet known as Blind Harry. It”s a shame that Harry predates Hollywood by five centuries — he could have made a killing cranking out kick-ass crowd pleasers.Gibson”s Wallace is a potent blend of Robin Hood, Attila the Hun and, yes, the wags were right, Detective John McClane in Die Hard. Wallace could relate to any story that pits one pissed-off fighter against the system. He faced an English army led by bad-to-the-bone King Edward the Longshanks, played by Patrick McGooban in a classic portrait of slithering sadism. Wallace also had to inspire Scottish peasants and nobles to follow his lead against daunting odds.It”s a ripping yarn, and Gibson could have slid by with the usual hack heroics. Kevin Costner”s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves did just that and still earned a pile. Gibson does it the hard way with attention to detail. He has retained the keen eye for character he showed in The Man Without a Face, his promising 1993 directing debut. Wallace doesn”t spring to life as a full-blown legend, though he does speak Latin and French when he returns to his village in Scotland to settle down as a farmer and marry Murron (the meltingly lovely Catherine McCormack), his childhood sweetheart. It”s the brutal fate dished out to Murron by the English that makes the farmer an outlaw.That”s when Wallace organizes the villagers into a ragtag militia. Brendon Gleeson”s Hamish, James Cosmo”s Campbell and Alun Armstrong”s Mornay register strongly, as does David O”Hara”s Stephen, the Irish warrior who joins the Scottish cause. The teasing camaraderie botched in Robin Hood is expertly handled here. Gibson”s impassioned performance as the hero who would not trade his freedom for English gold doesn”t shrink from showing the barbarian who emerges at a call to arms.”Are you ready for war?” Wallace shouts to his outnumbered troops at Stirling. It”s the film”s first major battle scene and a triumph for Gibson. Trying to stir hundreds of fatigued soldiers to action, Wallace rides his horse back and forth in a frantic effort to be heard. In most historical films, the stationary star manages to move multitudes with a throaty whisper. Gibson jettisons the Hollywood fakery. Riding among the men, his face streaked with woad (a blue dye used to terrify the enemy) and his voice hoarse from yelling. Wallace is a demon warrior crying out for vengeance.Cinematographer John Toll, an Oscar winner for Legends of the Fall, thrusts the audience into the brutal frays at Stirling, York and Falkirk. Superbly edited by Steven Rosenblum (Glory), these sequences recall the blood poetry of Welles” Chimes at Midnight and Kurosawa”s Seven Samurai. Sophisticated weaponry was centuries away. The Scots used hammers, axes, picks, swords, chains and even farm tools to crack skulls as they battered the English in the mud. They also set oil traps on the ground to burn their enemies, though shields and chain mail offered scant protection against the rain of English arrows. “Quite the lovely gathering.” says Longshanks, surveying the carnage and dispatching his officers to send in Irish volunteers instead of expert English archers. “Arrows cost money,” he sneers.Gibson”s handling of Wallace at war is so thrillingly done that one regrets the subplots that distract from the action. Wallace”s flirtation with the king”s French daughter-in-law, Princess Isabelle (Sophie Marceau), is fanciful fluff that undercuts his undying love for Murron, and the king”s homophobic revenge on his preening son, Prince Edward (Peter Hanly), and the son”s boy toy, Phillip (Stephen Billington), comes off as inexplicable gay ting. Judicious cutting might have sharpened the film”s focus and impact.Still, don”t get your kilt in a bunch over a spectacle that provokes such lively debate about the method and madness of war. Filmed with furious energy and surprising gravity, Braveheart takes the measure of a hero with a taste for blood to match his taste for honor. Wallace is an inspiring, unsettling role, and Gibson plays him, aptly, like a gathering storm.2Braveheart is an action/drama movie about William Wallace (Mel Gibson). The film is no less than amazing in any way. Though the movie sports us with a 177 minute run time, it is amazing to see the interesting way in which, Mel Gibson behind the camera, works his magic. As the acting is magnificent, and the war sequences are brutal and violent, the film works out as a movie which will always be remembered as a classic.The film focuses on William Wallace, growing up as a kid, his father was a fighter. After his death, his uncle took him in to watch over him, and teach him how to fight. When he is older though, he meets Murron MacClannough(Catherine McCormack). After he weds with her, she is murdered. Now avenging her death, William sets out ot fight for his freedom, his justice and the right to live.Mel Gibson did really an amazing job on capturing the character of William Wallace. Putting on the Irish accent, he shows us that he is a great actor and can do some things which we never thought he could do. Behind the camrea though, Mel is a completely different kind of person. He captures the fight scenes perfectly and beautifully. The one thing that was done well though, was the greatly realistic violence and brutal warfare of the film. The violence is spilled nicely, and realistically.3Braveheart is another film directed by its star, Mel Gibson. Close on the heels of Rob Roy, this is the second tribute to a legendary Scottish hero, this time round William Wallace, the great medieval warrior leader. Though less clever than its predecessor, it is much grander in its nearly three-hour epic sweep. The obvious comparison is with Henry V (the Olivier, not the Branagh), and even though Randall Wallace may not be quite so good a screenwriter as Shakespeare, the movie can hold its own. Randall Wallace calls himself the spiritual descendant of William Wallace, and he has deftly incorporated the not many known facts about his namesake, and addressed the legend with gusto and eloquence. The result is an epic that, a few excessively romantic touches notwithstanding, is more realistic than most. These medieval Scots live in ferocious-looking hovels, seem (at least the men) heroically unwashed, and have coiffures in which a kestrel could nest. The friendly punches with which they communicate could easily kill a lesser fellow — an Englishman, say. Braveheart aims to be a thinking man”s epic. “It”s our wits that make us men,”” young William”s da tells him, and, after da and big brother are killed by the English, Uncle Argyll continues the boy”s ecation along similar lines. Pretty soon William has turned into Mel Gibson, a young man who wants to settle down and live in peace. But the English are making things hard, what with such things as ius primae noctis (in the film, more tersely but less correctly, the prima nocte) giving the English magistrate the right to deflower each lassie on her wedding night. Braveheartrending business, that. Finally William secretly marries the bonniest of lasses, Murron — played by the breathtakingly beautiful and talented Catherine McCormack — but the English get wind of it, and when she won”t put out for them, slit her throat in a shattering scene irradiated by Miss McCormack”s performance. So William turns avenger and, by one small further step, leader of the Scottish populace (as opposed to the nobles, suborned by Edward Longshanks, the Machiavellian English king). There are plots and counterplots as the nobles sabotage William”s efforts, and Robert the Bruce, who wants to help him, is prevented by his leprous father (well played by Ian Bannen), who expects the nobles to crown his son king. And much, much more. The love scenes are so-so, the political scenes ho-hum, but the fighting — both indivial contests and mass battle scenes — is first-rate, barbaric, and sublime. You might think that so much battle stuff would pall after a while: how much slashing, chopping, stabbing, and skewering — not to mention mangling and incinerating — can there be without diminishing returns? Quite a bit; Gibson, to give him his e, comes up with new forms of warfare, better ways to turn charging men and horses into shishkebabs, new modes of battering down castle gates in a rain of boiling pitch from the battlements, fresh tricks to outsmart the enemy. And whereas this much violence with modern weapons would be unbearable, with medieval arms it becomes heroic and exhilarating. There is something appealing about Mel Gibson — the ruggedly masculine countenance, the quick half-smile, the knack of conveying blue-eyed hurt (as when he discovers the Bruce under an enemy helmet), and a squarer-jawed determination than Dick Tracy”s — that sustains Braveheart even through the unlikely scenes with Isabelle, the Princess of Wales (indifferently played by Sophie Marceau), and through the Wallace”s — or the Gibson”s — unconvincing displays of polyglotism. Add to this the beauties of Scotland, searchingly chronicled by John Toll”s inexhaustible camera, the solid supporting performances among which Patrick McGoohan”s sardonic-sadistic Edward I is especially noteworthy (never before have terminal consonants been drawn out to such ironic length), and the intelligently deployed music by James Horner. A Scottish acquaintance, George Campbell, questions the use of the sweeter uilleann (Irish) bagpipes rather than the fiercer Highland ones ring the battle scenes, but these scenes are so exciting Horner could have used marimbas and I wouldn”t have noticed. The film put me in mind of a four-line poem by Scotland”s greatest modern poet, Hugh MacDiarmid: The rose of all the world is not for me. I want for my part Only the little white rose of Scotland that smells sharp and sweet — And breaks the heart. And that is high praise.4What is there that can be said about Braveheart that hasn’t been said before? It’s an epic movie that ought to be in the conversation about the best films of the past thirty years. And actually, “epic” might be too small of a word. Braveheart is as much about the inner drama of William Wallace as it is about the life-and-death drama of the war for Scotland’s independence in the late 13th, early 14th centuries. It’s a story told on a grand scale with a great deal craft – and flair (and humor). This is a movie that offers both style and substance. It’s a direct precursor to the success of the Lord of the Rings movies – indeed, one can argue that the success of Braveheart set the stage for those films. True, Braveheart may not have universal appeal in terms of genre, story, or its brutal portrayal of war. But there can be little doubt of the value of a film that is, simply, one of the best I have ever seen.The success of the film rests on the balance with which the story unfolds. Put simply, there’s something here for everyone: romance, action, character, philosophy, conflict, cinematography, great lines, music, and so on … and it all fits together almost flawlessly. I’m sure if you looked hard enough you could find fault with some parts of the movie, but considering its nearly three-hour run time it manages to avoid pitfalls remarkably well.This is William Wallace’s story. And through him, the audience is allowed a mirror with which to view itself. This is the true measure of a great story: its ability to not only provide commentary, but also to provoke introspection. And that happens here quite often. One of the film’s most quoted lines is “Every man dies, not every man really lives.” Within just those seven words there is a great deal of thought and sentiment. It encapsulates a philosophy, a raison d’être, that anyone can immediately identify with. And it’s a beautiful philosophy – like carpe diem. And it encourages us to find the purpose and meaning within our lives on a daily basis.This is also a love story, between William Wallace and Murron – a childhood friend. Theirs is a story that flows effortlessly from childhood tragedy and bonding, to althood romance and marriage. Indeed, it is Murron’s murder that proves to be Wallace’s motivation to launch his personal war against England whose king, Edward ‘the Longshanks’ is portrayed with a powerfully brutality in the film, making him a very compelling villain.Wallace’s quest is joined by a cast that is quite adept in their roles. There are hardly any weak links in the acting of this movie, which means that the underlying themes and conflicts are portrayed to maximum effect from start to finish. Mel Gibson’s directing certainly has to be credited for some of that success.This is, without question, Gibson’s film. And it’s not without a certain part of vanity from the lead actor and director. If you were looking for a critique, this would be the most fertile ground for it. But for the most part, whatever vanity Gibson may have been displaying is overshadowed by the craft of everything else. The action is riveting, the dialogue is crisp (and profound) and the music is deeply, deeply moving.James Horner’s score successfully taps into the heritage of Scotland while displaying a full orchestral presentation. The instrumentation and arrangements are all very well done, from wavering flute to the bagpipes to the thunderous percussion ring battle sequences.5I used to think that the history of Scotland around the end of the thirteenth century was one of those really complicated and messy affairs that could send any historian into a fit of sobbing. So imagine my surprise as I discovered it”s really all about a bunch of rowdy guys mooning each other across a battlefield and then playing dodgeball.”Braveheart” is one of those audacious films that implies that war is “bad” by putting the violence at the forefront, slowing it down and tossing in lots of extra blood, piercings, stabbings, castrations, amputations and assorted mutilations with random insertions of Mel”s butt — just to make sure that the women get into it too. This is all topped off by a really long and protracted moment where the camera lovingly dotes on Mel Gibson as he is taken to a platform to be tortured. It”s the kind of moment that makes preschoolers point to the screen and say, “Christ figure! Christ figure!” Either that or: “Look! He”s shamelessly grooming himself for the Oscars!” (Oscar committees love Christ figures.)After three delirious hours the message is clear: Buy an ax, kill a lot of people, wear a kilt, show your butt, screw a princess and (if you have some time left over) repeat this over and over and over and over and over… until you get caught. If ever a movie cried out for a halftime break, this was it.

你可能关注的问题四、谁可以帮帮我介绍一下The Beatles啊~~~~~~~~~

So much has been said and written about the Beatles — and their story is so mythic in its sweep — that it”s difficult to summarize their career without restating clichés that have already been digested by tens of millions of rock fans. To start with the obvious, they were the greatest and most influential act of the rock era, and introced more innovations into popular music than any other rock band of the 20th century. Moreover, they were among the few artists of any discipline that were simultaneously the best at what they did and the most popular at what they did. Relentlessly imaginative and experimental, the Beatles grabbed a hold of the international mass consciousness in 1964 and never let go for the next six years, always staying ahead of the pack in terms of creativity but never losing their ability to communicate their increasingly sophisticated ideas to a mass audience. Their supremacy as rock icons remains unchallenged to this day, decades after their breakup in 1970. Even when couching praise in specific terms, it”s hard to convey the scope of the Beatles” achievements in a mere paragraph or two. They synthesized all that was good about early rock & roll, and changed it into something original and even more exciting. They established the prototype for the self-contained rock group that wrote and performed its own material. As composers, their craft and melodic inventiveness were second to none, and key to the evolution of rock from its blues/R&B-based; forms into a style that was far more eclectic, but equally visceral. As singers, both John Lennon and Paul McCartney were among the best and most expressive vocalists in rock; the group”s harmonies were intricate and exhilarating. As performers, they were (at least until touring had ground them down) exciting and photogenic; when they retreated into the studio, they were instrumental in pioneering advanced techniques and multi-layered arrangements. They were also the first British rock group to achieve worldwide prominence, launching a British Invasion that made rock truly an international phenomenon. More than any other top group, the Beatles” success was very much a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Their phenomenal cohesion was e in large degree to most of the group having known each other and played together in Liverpool for about five years before they began to have hit records. Guitarist and teenage rebel John Lennon got hooked on rock & roll in the mid-“50s, and formed a band, the Quarrymen, at his high school. Around mid-1957, the Quarrymen were joined by another guitarist, Paul McCartney, nearly two years Lennon”s junior. A bit later they were joined by another guitarist, George Harrison, a friend of McCartney. The Quarrymen would change lineups constantly in the late “50s, eventually recing to the core trio of guitarists, who”d proven themselves to be the best musicians and most personally compatible indivials within the band. The Quarrymen changed their name to the Silver Beatles in 1960, quickly dropping the “Silver” to become just the Beatles. Lennon”s art college friend Stuart Sutcliffe joined on bass, but finding a permanent drummer was a vexing problem until Pete Best joined in the summer of 1960. He successfully auditioned for the combo just before they left for a several-month stint in Hamburg, Germany. Hamburg was the Beatles” baptism by fire. Playing grueling sessions for hours on end in one of the most notorious red-light districts in the world, the group was forced to expand its repertoire, tighten up its chops, and invest its show with enough manic energy to keep the rowdy crowds satisfied. When they returned to Liverpool at the end of 1960, the band — formerly also-rans on the exploding Liverpudlian “beat” scene — were suddenly the most exciting act on the local circuit. They consolidated their following in 1961 with constant gigging in the Merseyside area, most often at the legendary Cavern Club, the incubator of the Merseybeat sound. They also returned for engagements in Hamburg ring 1961, although Sutcliffe dropped out of the band that year to concentrate on his art school studies there. McCartney took over on bass, Harrison settled in as lead guitarist, and Lennon had rhythm guitar; everyone sang. In mid-1961, the Beatles (minus Sutcliffe) made their first recordings in Germany, as a backup group to a British rock guitarist/singer based in Hamburg, Tony Sheridan. The Beatles hadn”t fully developed at this point, and these recordings — many of which (including a couple of Sheridan-less tracks) were issued only after the band”s rise to fame — found their talents in a most embryonic state. The Hamburg stint was also notable for gaining the Beatles sophisticated, artistic fans such as Sutcliffe”s girlfriend, Astrid Kirchherr, who influenced all of them (except Best) to restyle their quiffs in the moptops that gave the musicians their most distinctive visual trademark. (Sutcliffe, tragically, would die of a brain hemorrhage in April 1962). Near the end of 1961, the Beatles” exploding local popularity caught the attention of local record store manager Brian Epstein, who was soon managing the band as well. He used his contacts to swiftly acquire a January 1, 1962, audition at Decca Records that has been heavily bootlegged (some tracks were officially released in 1995). After weeks of deliberation, Decca turned them down as did several other British labels. Epstein”s perseverance was finally rewarded with an audition for procer George Martin at Parlophone, an EMI subsidiary; Martin signed the Beatles in mid-1962. By this time, Epstein was assiously grooming his charges for national success by influencing them to smarten up their appearance, dispensing with their leather jackets and trousers in favor of tailored suits and ties. One more major change was in the offing before the Beatles made their Parlophone debut. In August 1962, drummer Pete Best was kicked out of the group, a controversial decision that has been the cause of much speculation since. There is still no solid consensus as to whether it was because of his solitary, moody nature; the other Beatles” jealousy of his popularity with the fans; his musical shortcomings (George Martin had already told Epstein that Best wasn”t good enough to drum on recordings); or his refusal to wear his hair in bangs. What seems most likely was that the Beatles simply found his personality incompatible, preferring to enlist Ringo Starr (born Richard Starkey), a drummer with another popular Merseyside outfit, Rory Storm & the Hurricanes. Starr had been in the Beatles for a few weeks when they recorded their first single, “Love Me Do”/”P.S. I Love You,” in September 1962. Both sides of the 45 were Lennon-McCartney originals, and the songwriting team would be credited with most of the group”s material throughout the Beatles” career. The single, a promising but fairly rudimentary effort, hovered around the lower reaches of the British Top 20. The Beatles phenomenon didn”t truly kick in until “Please Please Me,” which topped the British charts in early 1963. This was the prototype British Invasion single: an infectious melody, charging guitars, and positively exuberant harmonies. The same traits were evident on their third 45, “From Me to You” (a British number one), and their debut LP, Please Please Me. Although it was mostly recorded in a single day, Please Please Me topped the British charts for an astonishing 30 weeks, establishing the group as the most popular rock & roll act ever seen in the U.K. What the Beatles had done was take the best elements of the rock and pop they loved and make them their own. Since the Quarrymen days, they had been steeped in the classic early rock of Elvis, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, and the Everly Brothers; they”d also kept an ear open to the early “60s sounds of Motown, Phil Spector, and the girl groups. What they added was an unmatched songwriting savvy (inspired by Brill Building teams such as Gerry Goffin and Carole King), a brash guitar-oriented attack, wildly enthusiastic vocals, and the embodiment of the youthful flair of their generation, ready to dispense with postwar austerity and claim a culture of their own. They were also unsurpassed in their eclecticism, willing to borrow from blues, popular standards, gospel, folk, or whatever seemed suitable for their musical vision. Procer George Martin was the perfect foil for the group, refining their ideas without tinkering with their cores; ring the last half of their career, he was indispensable for his ability to translate their concepts into arrangements that required complex orchestration, innovative applications of recording technology, and an ever-widening array of instruments. Just as crucially, the Beatles were never ones to stand still and milk formulas. All of their subsequent albums and singles would show remarkable artistic progression (though never at the expense of a damn catchy tune). Even on their second LP, With the Beatles (1963), it was evident that their talents as composers and instrumentalists were expanding furiously, as they devised ever more inventive melodies and harmonies, and boosted the fullness of their arrangements. “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” established the group not just as a popular music act, but as a phenomenon never before seen in the British entertainment business, as each single sold over a million copies in the U.K. After some celebrated national TV appearances, Beatlemania broke out across the British Isles in late 1963, and the group generating screams and hysteria at all of their public appearances, musical or otherwise. Capitol, which had first refusal of the Beatles” recordings in the United States, had declined to issue the group”s first few singles, which ended up appearing on relatively small American independents. Capitol took up its option on “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which stormed to the top of the U.S. charts within weeks of its release on December 26, 1963. The Beatles” television appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964 launched Beatlemania (and the entire British Invasion) on an even bigger scale than it had reached in Britain. In the first week of April 1964, the Beatles had the Top Five best-selling singles in the U.S.; they also had the first two slots on the album charts, as well as other entries throughout the Billboard Top 100. No one had ever dominated the market for popular music so heavily; it”s doubtful that anyone ever will again. The Beatles themselves would continue to reach number one with most of their singles and albums until their 1970 breakup. Hard as it may be to believe today, the Beatles were often dismissed by cultural commentators of the time as nothing more than a fad that would vanish within months as the novelty wore off. The group ensured this wouldn”t happen by making A Hard Day”s Night in early 1964, a cinéma vérité-style motion picture comedy/musical that cemented their image as “the Fab Four”: happy-go-lucky, indivialistic, cheeky, funny lads with nonstop energy. The soundtrack was also a triumph, consisting entirely of Lennon-McCartney tunes, including such standards as the title tune, “And I Love Her,” “If I Fell,” “Can”t Buy Me Love,” and “Things We Said Today.” George Harrison”s resonant 12-string electric guitar leads were hugely influential; the movie helped persuade the Byrds, then folksingers, to plunge all out into rock & roll, and the Beatles (along with Bob Dylan) would be hugely influential on the folk-rock explosion of 1965. The Beatles” success, too, had begun to open the U.S. market for fellow Brits like the Rolling Stones, the Animals, and the Kinks, and inspired young American groups like the Beau Brummels, Lovin” Spoonful, and others to mount a challenge of their own with self-penned material that owed a great debt to Lennon-McCartney. Between riotous international tours in 1964 and 1965, the Beatles continued to squeeze out more chart-topping albums and singles. (Until 1967, the group”s British albums were often truncated for release in the States; when their catalog was transferred to CD, the albums were released worldwide in their British configurations.) In retrospect, critics have judged Beatles for Sale (late 1964) and Help! (mid-1965) as the band”s least impressive efforts. To some degree, that”s true. Touring and an insatiable market placed heavy demands upon their songwriting, and some of the originals and covers on these records, while brilliant by many group”s standards, were filler in the context of the Beatles” best work. But when at the top of their game, the group was continuing to push forward. “I Feel Fine” had feedback and brilliant guitar leads; “Ticket to Ride” showed the band beginning to incorporate the ringing, metallic, circular guitar lines that would be appropriated by bands like the Byrds; “Help!” was their first burst of confessional lyricism; “Yesterday” employed a string quartet. John Lennon in particular was beginning to exhibit a Dylanesque influence in his songwriting on such folky, downbeat numbers as “I”m a Loser” and “You”ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” And tracks like “I Don”t Want to Spoil the Party” and “I”ve Just Seen a Face” had a strong country flavor. Although the Beatles” second film, Help!, was a much sillier and less sophisticated affair than their first feature, it too was a huge commercial success. By this time, though, the Beatles had nothing to prove in commercial terms; the remaining frontiers were artistic challenges that could only be met in the studio. They rose to the occasion at the end of 1965 with Rubber Soul, one of the classic folk-rock records. Lyrically, Lennon, McCartney, and even Harrison (who was now writing some tunes on his own) were evolving beyond boy-girl scenarios into complex, personal feelings. They were also pushing the limits of studio rock by devising new guitar and bass textures, experimenting with distortion and multi-tracking, and using unconventional (for rock) instruments like the sitar. As much of a progression as Rubber Soul was relative to their previous records, it was but a taster for the boundary-shattering outings of the next few years. The “Paperback Writer”/”Rain” single found the group abandoning romantic themes entirely, boosting the bass to previously unknown levels, and fooling around with psychedelic imagery and backward tapes on the B-side. Drugs (psychedelic and otherwise) were fueling their already fertile imaginations, but they felt creatively hindered by their touring obligations. Revolver, released in the summer of 1966, proved what the group could be capable of when allotted months of time in the studio. Hazy hard guitars and thicker vocal arrangements formed the bed of these increasingly imagistic, ambitious lyrics; the group”s eclecticism now encompassed everything from singalong novelties (“Yellow Submarine”) and string quartet-backed character sketches (“Eleanor Rigby”) to Indian-influenced swirls of echo and backward tapes (“Tomorrow Never Knows”). Some would complain that the Beatles had abandoned the earthy rock of their roots for clever mannerism. But Revolver, like virtually all of the group”s singles and albums from “She Loves You” on, would be a worldwide chart-topper. For the past couple of years, live performance had become a rote exercise for the group, tired of competing with thousands of screaming fans that drowned out most of their voices and instruments. A 1966 summer worldwide tour was particularly grueling: the group”s entourage was physically attacked in the Philippines after a perceived snub of the country”s queen, and a casual remark by John Lennon about the Beatles being bigger than Jesus Christ was picked up in the States, resulting in the burning of Beatle records in the Bible belt and demands for a repentant apology. Their final concert of that American tour (in San Francisco on August 29, 1966) would be their last in front of a paying audience, as the group decided to stop playing live in order to concentrate on their studio recordings. This was a radical (indeed, unprecedented) step in 1966, and the media was rife with speculation that the act was breaking up, especially after all four spent late 1966 engaged in separate personal and artistic pursuits. The appearance of the “Penny Lane”/”Strawberry Fields Forever” single in February 1967 squelched these concerns. Frequently cited as the strongest double A-side ever, the Beatles were now pushing forward into unabashedly psychedelic territory in their use of orchestral arrangements and Mellotron, without abandoning their grasp of memorable melody and immediately accessible lyrical messages. Sgt. Pepper, released in June 1967 as the Summer of Love dawned, was the definitive psychedelic soundtrack. Or, at least, so it was perceived at the time: subsequent critics have painted the album as an uneven affair, given a conceptual unity via its brilliant multi-tracked overbs, singalong melodies, and fairy tale-ish lyrics. Others remain convinced, as millions did at the time, that it represented pop”s greatest triumph, or indeed an evolution of pop into art with a capital A. In addition to mining all manner of roots influences, the musicians were also picking up vibes from Indian music, avant-garde electronics, classical, music hall, and more. When the Beatles premiered their hippie anthem “All You Need Is Love” as part of a worldwide TV broadcast, they had been truly anointed as spokespersons for their generation (a role they had not actively sought), and it seemed they could do no wrong. Musically, that would usually continue to be the case, but the group”s strength began to unravel at a surprisingly quick pace. In August 1967, Brian Epstein — prone to suicidal depression over the past year — died of a drug overdose, leaving them without a manager. They pressed on with their next film project, Magical Mystery Tour, directed by themselves; lacking focus or even basic professionalism, the picture bombed when it was premiered on BBC television in December 1967, giving the media the first real chance they”d ever had to roast the Beatles over a flame. (Another film, the animated feature Yellow Submarine, would appear in 1968, although the Beatles had little involvement with the project, either in terms of the movie or the soundtrack.) In early 1968, the Beatles decamped to India for a course in transcendental meditation with the Maharishi; this too became something of a media embarrassment as each of the four would eventually depart the course before its completion. The Beatles did use their unaccustomed peace in India to compose a wealth of new material. Judged solely on musical merit, The White Album, a double LP released in late 1968, was a triumph. While largely abandoning their psychedelic instruments to return to guitar-based rock, they maintained their whimsical eclecticism, proving themselves masters of everything from blues-rock to vaudeville. As indivial songwriters, too, it contains some of their finest work (as does the brilliant non-LP single from this era, “Hey Jude”/”Revolution”).

六、the beatles 的背景资料,要英文版的。谢了

So much has been said and written about the Beatles — and their story is so mythic in its sweep — that it”s difficult to summarize their career without restating clichés that have already been digested by tens of millions of rock fans. To start with the obvious, they were the greatest and most influential act of the rock era, and introced more innovations into popular music than any other rock band of the 20th century. Moreover, they were among the few artists of any discipline that were simultaneously the best at what they did and the most popular at what they did. Relentlessly imaginative and experimental, the Beatles grabbed a hold of the international mass consciousness in 1964 and never let go for the next six years, always staying ahead of the pack in terms of creativity but never losing their ability to communicate their increasingly sophisticated ideas to a mass audience. Their supremacy as rock icons remains unchallenged to this day, decades after their breakup in 1970. Even when couching praise in specific terms, it”s hard to convey the scope of the Beatles” achievements in a mere paragraph or two. They synthesized all that was good about early rock & roll, and changed it into something original and even more exciting. They established the prototype for the self-contained rock group that wrote and performed its own material. As composers, their craft and melodic inventiveness were second to none, and key to the evolution of rock from its blues/R&B-based; forms into a style that was far more eclectic, but equally visceral. As singers, both John Lennon and Paul McCartney were among the best and most expressive vocalists in rock; the group”s harmonies were intricate and exhilarating. As performers, they were (at least until touring had ground them down) exciting and photogenic; when they retreated into the studio, they were instrumental in pioneering advanced techniques and multi-layered arrangements. They were also the first British rock group to achieve worldwide prominence, launching a British Invasion that made rock truly an international phenomenon. More than any other top group, the Beatles” success was very much a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Their phenomenal cohesion was e in large degree to most of the group having known each other and played together in Liverpool for about five years before they began to have hit records. Guitarist and teenage rebel John Lennon got hooked on rock & roll in the mid-“50s, and formed a band, the Quarrymen, at his high school. Around mid-1957, the Quarrymen were joined by another guitarist, Paul McCartney, nearly two years Lennon”s junior. A bit later they were joined by another guitarist, George Harrison, a friend of McCartney. The Quarrymen would change lineups constantly in the late “50s, eventually recing to the core trio of guitarists, who”d proven themselves to be the best musicians and most personally compatible indivials within the band. The Quarrymen changed their name to the Silver Beatles in 1960, quickly dropping the “Silver” to become just the Beatles. Lennon”s art college friend Stuart Sutcliffe joined on bass, but finding a permanent drummer was a vexing problem until Pete Best joined in the summer of 1960. He successfully auditioned for the combo just before they left for a several-month stint in Hamburg, Germany.Hamburg was the Beatles” baptism by fire. Playing grueling sessions for hours on end in one of the most notorious red-light districts in the world, the group was forced to expand its repertoire, tighten up its chops, and invest its show with enough manic energy to keep the rowdy crowds satisfied. When they returned to Liverpool at the end of 1960, the band — formerly also-rans on the exploding Liverpudlian “beat” scene — were suddenly the most exciting act on the local circuit. They consolidated their following in 1961 with constant gigging in the Merseyside area, most often at the legendary Cavern Club, the incubator of the Merseybeat sound.They also returned for engagements in Hamburg ring 1961, although Sutcliffe dropped out of the band that year to concentrate on his art school studies there. McCartney took over on bass, Harrison settled in as lead guitarist, and Lennon had rhythm guitar; everyone sang. In mid-1961, the Beatles (minus Sutcliffe) made their first recordings in Germany, as a backup group to a British rock guitarist/singer based in Hamburg, Tony Sheridan. The Beatles hadn”t fully developed at this point, and these recordings — many of which (including a couple of Sheridan-less tracks) were issued only after the band”s rise to fame — found their talents in a most embryonic state. The Hamburg stint was also notable for gaining the Beatles sophisticated, artistic fans such as Sutcliffe”s girlfriend, Astrid Kirchherr, who influenced all of them (except Best) to restyle their quiffs in the moptops that gave the musicians their most distinctive visual trademark. (Sutcliffe, tragically, would die of a brain hemorrhage in April 1962). Near the end of 1961, the Beatles” exploding local popularity caught the attention of local record store manager Brian Epstein, who was soon managing the band as well. He used his contacts to swiftly acquire a January 1, 1962, audition at Decca Records that has been heavily bootlegged (some tracks were officially released in 1995). After weeks of deliberation, Decca turned them down as did several other British labels. Epstein”s perseverance was finally rewarded with an audition for procer George Martin at Parlophone, an EMI subsidiary; Martin signed the Beatles in mid-1962. By this time, Epstein was assiously grooming his charges for national success by influencing them to smarten up their appearance, dispensing with their leather jackets and trousers in favor of tailored suits and ties. One more major change was in the offing before the Beatles made their Parlophone debut. In August 1962, drummer Pete Best was kicked out of the group, a controversial decision that has been the cause of much speculation since. There is still no solid consensus as to whether it was because of his solitary, moody nature; the other Beatles” jealousy of his popularity with the fans; his musical shortcomings (George Martin had already told Epstein that Best wasn”t good enough to drum on recordings); or his refusal to wear his hair in bangs. What seems most likely was that the Beatles simply found his personality incompatible, preferring to enlist Ringo Starr (born Richard Starkey), a drummer with another popular Merseyside outfit, Rory Storm & the Hurricanes. Starr had been in the Beatles for a few weeks when they recorded their first single, “Love Me Do”/”P.S. I Love You,” in September 1962. Both sides of the 45 were Lennon-McCartney originals, and the songwriting team would be credited with most of the group”s material throughout the Beatles” career. The single, a promising but fairly rudimentary effort, hovered around the lower reaches of the British Top 20. The Beatles phenomenon didn”t truly kick in until “Please Please Me,” which topped the British charts in early 1963. This was the prototype British Invasion single: an infectious melody, charging guitars, and positively exuberant harmonies. The same traits were evident on their third 45, “From Me to You” (a British number one), and their debut LP, Please Please Me. Although it was mostly recorded in a single day, Please Please Me topped the British charts for an astonishing 30 weeks, establishing the group as the most popular rock & roll act ever seen in the U.K. What the Beatles had done was take the best elements of the rock and pop they loved and make them their own. Since the Quarrymen days, they had been steeped in the classic early rock of Elvis, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, and the Everly Brothers; they”d also kept an ear open to the early “60s sounds of Motown, Phil Spector, and the girl groups. What they added was an unmatched songwriting savvy (inspired by Brill Building teams such as Gerry Goffin and Carole King), a brash guitar-oriented attack, wildly enthusiastic vocals, and the embodiment of the youthful flair of their generation, ready to dispense with postwar austerity and claim a culture of their own. They were also unsurpassed in their eclecticism, willing to borrow from blues, popular standards, gospel, folk, or whatever seemed suitable for their musical vision. Procer George Martin was the perfect foil for the group, refining their ideas without tinkering with their cores; ring the last half of their career, he was indispensable for his ability to translate their concepts into arrangements that required complex orchestration, innovative applications of recording technology, and an ever-widening array of instruments. Just as crucially, the Beatles were never ones to stand still and milk formulas. All of their subsequent albums and singles would show remarkable artistic progression (though never at the expense of a damn catchy tune). Even on their second LP, With the Beatles (1963), it was evident that their talents as composers and instrumentalists were expanding furiously, as they devised ever more inventive melodies and harmonies, and boosted the fullness of their arrangements. “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” established the group not just as a popular music act, but as a phenomenon never before seen in the British entertainment business, as each single sold over a million copies in the U.K. After some celebrated national TV appearances, Beatlemania broke out across the British Isles in late 1963, and the group generating screams and hysteria at all of their public appearances, musical or otherwise. Capitol, which had first refusal of the Beatles” recordings in the United States, had declined to issue the group”s first few singles, which ended up appearing on relatively small American independents. Capitol took up its option on “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which stormed to the top of the U.S. charts within weeks of its release on December 26, 1963. The Beatles” television appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964 launched Beatlemania (and the entire British Invasion) on an even bigger scale than it had reached in Britain. In the first week of April 1964, the Beatles had the Top Five best-selling singles in the U.S.; they also had the first two slots on the album charts, as well as other entries throughout the Billboard Top 100. No one had ever dominated the market for popular music so heavily; it”s doubtful that anyone ever will again. The Beatles themselves would continue to reach number one with most of their singles and albums until their 1970 breakup. Hard as it may be to believe today, the Beatles were often dismissed by cultural commentators of the time as nothing more than a fad that would vanish within months as the novelty wore off. The group ensured this wouldn”t happen by making A Hard Day”s Night in early 1964, a cinéma vérité-style motion picture comedy/musical that cemented their image as “the Fab Four”: happy-go-lucky, indivialistic, cheeky, funny lads with nonstop energy. The soundtrack was also a triumph, consisting entirely of Lennon-McCartney tunes, including such standards as the title tune, “And I Love Her,” “If I Fell,” “Can”t Buy Me Love,” and “Things We Said Today.” George Harrison”s resonant 12-string electric guitar leads were hugely influential; the movie helped persuade the Byrds, then folksingers, to plunge all out into rock & roll, and the Beatles (along with Bob Dylan) would be hugely influential on the folk-rock explosion of 1965. The Beatles” success, too, had begun to open the U.S. market for fellow Brits like the Rolling Stones, the Animals, and the Kinks, and inspired young American groups like the Beau Brummels, Lovin” Spoonful, and others to mount a challenge of their own with self-penned material that owed a great debt to Lennon-McCartney. Between riotous international tours in 1964 and 1965, the Beatles continued to squeeze out more chart-topping albums and singles. (Until 1967, the group”s British albums were often truncated for release in the States; when their catalog was transferred to CD, the albums were released worldwide in their British configurations.) In retrospect, critics have judged Beatles for Sale (late 1964) and Help! (mid-1965) as the band”s least impressive efforts. To some degree, that”s true. Touring and an insatiable market placed heavy demands upon their songwriting, and some of the originals and covers on these records, while brilliant by many group”s standards, were filler in the context of the Beatles” best work. But when at the top of their game, the group was continuing to push forward. “I Feel Fine” had feedback and brilliant guitar leads; “Ticket to Ride” showed the band beginning to incorporate the ringing, metallic, circular guitar lines that would be appropriated by bands like the Byrds; “Help!” was their first burst of confessional lyricism; “Yesterday” employed a string quartet. John Lennon in particular was beginning to exhibit a Dylanesque influence in his songwriting on such folky, downbeat numbers as “I”m a Loser” and “You”ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” And tracks like “I Don”t Want to Spoil the Party” and “I”ve Just Seen a Face” had a strong country flavor. Although the Beatles” second film, Help!, was a much sillier and less sophisticated affair than their first feature, it too was a huge commercial success. By this time, though, the Beatles had nothing to prove in commercial terms; the remaining frontiers were artistic challenges that could only be met in the studio. They rose to the occasion at the end of 1965 with Rubber Soul, one of the classic folk-rock records. Lyrically, Lennon, McCartney, and even Harrison (who was now writing some tunes on his own) were evolving beyond boy-girl scenarios into complex, personal feelings. They were also pushing the limits of studio rock by devising new guitar and bass textures, experimenting with distortion and multi-tracking, and using unconventional (for rock) instruments like the sitar. As much of a progression as Rubber Soul was relative to their previous records, it was but a taster for the boundary-shattering outings of the next few years. The “Paperback Writer”/”Rain” single found the group abandoning romantic themes entirely, boosting the bass to previously unknown levels, and fooling around with psychedelic imagery and backward tapes on the B-side. Drugs (psychedelic and otherwise) were fueling their already fertile imaginations, but they felt creatively hindered by their touring obligations. Revolver, released in the summer of 1966, proved what the group could be capable of when allotted months of time in the studio. Hazy hard guitars and thicker vocal arrangements formed the bed of these increasingly imagistic, ambitious lyrics; the group”s eclecticism now encompassed everything from singalong novelties (“Yellow Submarine”) and string quartet-backed character sketches (“Eleanor Rigby”) to Indian-influenced swirls of echo and backward tapes (“Tomorrow Never Knows”). Some would complain that the Beatles had abandoned the earthy rock of their roots for clever mannerism. But Revolver, like virtually all of the group”s singles and albums from “She Loves You” on, would be a worldwide chart-topper. For the past couple of years, live performance had become a rote exercise for the group, tired of competing with thousands of screaming fans that drowned out most of their voices and instruments. A 1966 summer worldwide tour was particularly grueling: the group”s entourage was physically attacked in the Philippines after a perceived snub of the country”s queen, and a casual remark by John Lennon about the Beatles being bigger than Jesus Christ was picked up in the States, resulting in the burning of Beatle records in the Bible belt and demands for a repentant apology. Their final concert of that American tour (in San Francisco on August 29, 1966) would be their last in front of a paying audience, as the group decided to stop playing live in order to concentrate on their studio recordings. This was a radical (indeed, unprecedented) step in 1966, and the media was rife with speculation that the act was breaking up, especially after all four spent late 1966 engaged in separate personal and artistic pursuits. The appearance of the “Penny Lane”/”Strawberry Fields Forever” single in February 1967 squelched these concerns. Frequently cited as the strongest double A-side ever, the Beatles were now pushing forward into unabashedly psychedelic territory in their use of orchestral arrangements and Mellotron, without abandoning their grasp of memorable melody and immediately accessible lyrical messages. Sgt. Pepper, released in June 1967 as the Summer of Love dawned, was the definitive psychedelic soundtrack. Or, at least, so it was perceived at the time: subsequent critics have painted the album as an uneven affair, given a conceptual unity via its brilliant multi-tracked overbs, singalong melodies, and fairy tale-ish lyrics. Others remain convinced, as millions did at the time, that it represented pop”s greatest triumph, or indeed an evolution of pop into art with a capital A. In addition to mining all manner of roots influences, the musicians were also picking up vibes from Indian music, avant-garde electronics, classical, music hall, and more. When the Beatles premiered their hippie anthem “All You Need Is Love” as part of a worldwide TV broadcast, they had been truly anointed as spokespersons for their generation (a role they had not actively sought), and it seemed they could do no wrong. Musically, that would usually continue to be the case, but the group”s strength began to unravel at a surprisingly quick pace. In August 1967, Brian Epstein — prone to suicidal depression over the past year — died of a drug overdose, leaving them without a manager. They pressed on with their next film project, Magical Mystery Tour, directed by themselves; lacking focus or even basic professionalism, the picture bombed when it was premiered on BBC television in December 1967, giving the media the first real chance they”d ever had to roast the Beatles over a flame. (Another film, the animated feature Yellow Submarine, would appear in 1968, although the Beatles had little involvement with the project, either in terms of the movie or the soundtrack.) In early 1968, the Beatles decamped to India for a course in transcendental meditation with the Maharishi; this too became something of a media embarrassment as each of the four would eventually depart the course before its completion. The Beatles did use their unaccustomed peace in India to compose a wealth of new material. Judged solely on musical merit, The White Album, a double LP released in late 1968, was a triumph. While largely abandoning their psychedelic instruments to return to guitar-based rock, they maintained their whimsical eclecticism, proving themselves masters of everything from blues-rock to vaudeville. As indivial songwriters, too, it contains some of their finest work (as does the brilliant non-LP single from this era, “Hey Jude”/”Revolution”). 太长，完整地址http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token;=ADFEAEE4791CD84AA97320D3973649CCBD21A1298F15A9C01D2F4749D69F321CA92F27E440A7C6CFB7E577B479A8B32FA6500DDAC0ED52ECAD1B&sql;=11:995j8qmtbtn4~T1