The Beatles: Eight Days a WeekThe Touring Years,” but that looks to me like three separate titles jostling for attention. Such blurred indecision is unfortunate, given that the Beatles were masters of, among other things, the crisp and crunchy title. It was no less than their songs demanded. What moviegoers should ask for, as they line up to buy tickets, is unclear. Maybe they should just stand there, numbly hold out a credit card, and say, “Help!” The film begins in a cinema. To be exact, in the ABC in Manchester, England, on November 20, 1963, and the Beatles onstage, smacking into “She Loves You” without ado. One reason that they need no introduction, as Howard realizes, is their habit of dispensing with introductions to their songs; “She Loves You” gets a short clobber of drums, as if Ringo were tumbling downstairs in clogs, before the rest of the gang proclaims the opening chorus. The verse must wait its turn. That heavenly haste is yet more acute in “All My Loving,” which is what the Beatles kicked off with on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” in February, 1964. The avuncular host who had once asked Walter Cronkite what he made of “those bugs, or whatever they called themselves”promised that his audience would “twice be entertained by them.” The first thing they did was not to entertain, however, but to command: “Close your eyes, and I’ll kiss you.” Snow White never had it so
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