DEVIN McKINNEY  •  Note: These are not new impressions, but ones jotted down in May 2012, the day Early Takes: Volume 1 came in the mail, and embellished more recently. George, in a photo taken in a Bahamian pool during the filming of Help!, holds his head above the water’s crystal surface, his face the perfect expression of the solemn young seeker braving the eddies and tidepools of the material world: a Siddhartha for the ‘60s. The image is rich, quiet, suggestive, like George at his best. It’s beautiful wrapping on a gift that isn’t quite there. Olivia Harrison, Giles Martin, and [...]

Imagine there's no ... DEVIN McKINNEY  •  Offered in spirits of love and objectivity: One notices that the talk at Hey Dullblog tends, in a broad sense, to revolve around, or devolve toward, precisely two subjects: John and Paul. (Or John or Paul; or John versus Paul. Or John. Or Paul.) Start at virtually any discussion point, and reader heat will amass itself around their two heads—as if they were not just the most interesting of the four, which they are, but as if they were the four in total, which they are not. It’s only natural, in a sense, [...]

Several nowhere boys ED PARK • Just saw this on Salon—a very good review of the Scorsese documentary on George and of "Nowhere Boy." I love that the author, Erik Nelson, describes himself as "a card-carrying Beatlemaniac, with a mail-order degree in advanced Moptopology." This is my favorite paragraph: "A much scruffier and ultimately more revealing insight into the Beatles Creation Myth comes from the 2009 "Nowhere Boy." This movie is set entirely in those moments when a strange kind of human alchemy transpired, in the grimy laboratory of Liverpool. No attempt is made to explain how the magic happened, but the viewer gets [...]

George with his other supergroup Just finished watching it myself. While I'm collecting my thoughts, I thought it might be helpful/fun to provide a list of some notable/thoughtful reviews. Enjoy, and suggest others.Salon—Matt Zoller SeitzUncut MagazineRoger EbertRichard CorlissMatt Blick (Beatles Songwriting Academy)...and since the editing of the film seems to be one of the few areas of contention about it, here's an interview with the editor himself, David Tedeschi.