The music video for The Beatles’ “final song”, featuring unreleased footage of the band, has been released.
The track, Now And Then, was released yesterday and features all four Beatles. Now the music video, directed by three-time Oscar winner Peter Jackson, has given fans unseen footage of the legendary band’s early days.
Now And Then was initially written and recorded by John Lennon in the late 1970s and later developed by the other band members, including George Harrison, in 1995.
Limited technology meant they were unhappy with the sound quality and did not release the single.
However, new audio restoration technology, pioneered by Jackson, allowed Sir Paul McCartneyand Sir Ringo Starr to finish the song more than four decades after the first recording.
The song was released yesterday as a double A-side with a remastered version of the band’s 1962 debut single Love Me Do and cover art by US artist Ed Ruscha.
There have already been almost five million streams of the audio version of Now And Then on YouTube, with other fans listening on streaming sites like Spotify and Apple Music.
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Jackson revealed in a statement on The Beatles’ website that he was “very reluctant” to create the accompanying music video.
“To be honest, just thinking about the responsibility of having to make a music video worthy of the last song The Beatles will ever release, produced a collection of anxieties almost too overwhelming to deal with,” he said.
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“My lifelong love of The Beatles collided into a wall of sheer terror at the thought of letting everyone down.
“This created intense insecurity in me, because I’d never made a music video before, and was not able to imagine how I could even begin to create one for a band that broke up over 50 years ago, had never actually performed the song, and had half of its members no longer with us.
“It was going to be far easier to do a runner.”
Jackson said in the end it took him so long to “figure out a good reason for turning The Beatles down” that he “never actually agreed” to make it. He just got “swept along”.
“I knew The Beatles don’t take no for an answer if their minds are set on something.”
The filmmaker was supplied with “a few precious seconds of The Beatles performing in their leather suits, the earliest known film of The Beatles and never-seen-before”.
The video shows the Beatles acting “relaxed, funny and rather candid” and Jackson hopes it will “bring a few tears to the eye”.
He also received more than 14 hours of footage from the 1995 recording sessions.
Jackson added: “Having got to the end, I’m very happy I’m not waiting for the release of somebody else’s Now And Then music video.
“I have genuine pride in what we made, and I’ll cherish that for years to come.”
The release of the music video comes as Beatles super fans queued overnight at a special launch event in Liverpool to get their hands on a vinyl copy of Now And Then.
And it was none other than John Lennon – a Beatles fan who changed his name by deed poll from Alan Williams in April 2022 – who bought the first copy of the newly released track in the early hours of Friday morning.
Next Friday, two albums – remastered and expanded versions of the 1962-66 and 1967-70 collections – will also be released.
Speaking in a documentary released on Friday about the recording of Now And Then, Sir Paul said: “How lucky was I to have those men in my life and to work with those men so intimately and to come up with such a body of music?
“To still be working on Beatles music in 2023 – wow.
“Now And Then, it’s probably like the last Beatles song. And we’ve all played on it, so it is a genuine Beatles recording.”
Actor James Norton, who stars in a new film telling the story of the world’s first “test-tube baby”, has criticised how “prohibitively expensive” IVF can be in the UK.
In Joy, the star portrays the real-life scientist Bob Edwards, who – along with obstetrician Patrick Steptoe and embryologist Jean Purdy – spent a decade tirelessly working on medical ways to help infertility.
The film charts the 10 years leading up to the birth of Louise Joy Brown, who was dubbed the world’s first test-tube baby, in 1978.
Norton, who is best known for playing Tommy Lee Royce in the BAFTA-winning series Happy Valley, told Sky News he has friends who were IVF babies and other friends who have had their own children thanks to the fertility treatment.
“But I didn’t know about these three scientists and their sacrifice, tenacity and skill,” he said. The star hopes the film will be “a catalyst for conversation” about the treatment and its availability.
“We know for a fact that Jean, Bob and Patrick would not have liked the fact that IVF is now so means based,” he said. “It’s prohibitively expensive for some… and there is a postcode lottery which means that some people are precluded from that opportunity.”
Now, IVF is considered a wonder of modern medicine. More than 12 million people owe their existence today to the treatment Edwards, Steptoe and Purdy worked so hard to devise.
But Joy shows how public backlash in the years leading up to Louise’s birth saw the team vilified – accused of playing God and creating “Frankenstein babies”.
Bill Nighy and Thomasin McKenzie star alongside Norton, with the script written by acclaimed screenwriter Jack Thorne and his wife Rachel Mason.
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The couple went through seven rounds of IVF themselves to conceive their son.
While the film is set in the 1970s, the reality is that societal pressures haven’t changed all that much for many going through IVF today – with the costs now both emotional and financial.
“IVF is still seen as a luxury product, as something that some people get access to and others don’t,” said Thorne, speaking about their experiences in the UK.
“Louise was a working-class girl with working-class parents. Working class IVF babies are very, very rare now.”
In the run-up to the US election, Donald Trump saw IVF as a campaigning point – promising his government, or insurance companies, would pay for the treatment for all women should he be elected. He called himself the “father of IVF” at a campaign event – a remark described as “quite bizarre” by Kamala Harris.
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Bill Nighy ‘proud’ of new film on IVF breakthrough
“I don’t think Trump is a blueprint for this,” Norton said. “I don’t know how that fits alongside his questions around pro-choice.”
In the UK, statistics from fertility regulator HEFA show the proportion of IVF cycles paid for by the NHS has dropped from 40% to 27% in the last decade.
“It’s so expensive,” Norton said. “Those who want a child should have that choice… and some people’s lack of access to this incredibly important science actually means that people don’t have the choice.”
Joy is in UK cinemas from 15 November, and on Netflix from 22 November
Cillian Murphy and his wife Yvonne McGuinness have bought a cinema the Oscar-winning actor used to visit as a child.
The couple will refurbish The Phoenix Cinema in Dingle, County Kerry, south-west Ireland, next year.
The venue, which had previously been used as a dance hall, had been in operation for more than 100 years, and on the market for three before Murphy and McGuinness bought the building.
Oppenheimer and Peaky Blinders star Murphy, from Cork, said: “I’ve been going to see films at The Phoenix since I was a young boy on summer holidays.
“My dad saw movies there when he was a young man before me, and we’ve watched many films at The Phoenix with our own kids. We recognise what the cinema means to Dingle.”
McGuinness added: “We want to open the doors again, expand the creative potential of the site, re-establishing its place in the cultural fabric of this unique town.”
The Phoenix is the only cinema in the tourist area of the Dingle Peninsula, and without it, the closest other movie theatre for residents of the town is in Tralee, almost 30 miles away.
It opened in 1919 and was reconstructed twice in the decades that followed, after fires damaged the building.
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Its previous owners struggled to keep The Phoenix going amid the COVID-19 pandemic and shut the cinema’s doors in November 2021, citing rising costs, falling attendance and challenging exhibition terms.
Murphy took awards season by storm this year, winning a Golden Globe, a Bafta and an Oscar for his performance as the titular character in Oppenheimer.
Next year, he will reprise one of his most well-known roles by playing Tommy Shelby in a movie version of Peaky Blinders.
Ed Sheeran helped Ipswich Town to sign a player over the summer just before getting on stage with Taylor Swift, according to the club’s chief executive.
Mark Ashton claims the pop star got on a video call to encourage a prospective new signing to seal his move to the East Anglia outfit.
He did not reveal the player’s name, but said he is “certainly scoring a few goals” and is a fan of Sheeran, who is a minor shareholder at his hometown club.
“Ed jumped on a Zoom call with him at the training ground, just before he stepped on stage with Taylor Swift,” Ashton told a Soccerex industry event in Miami.
“Hopefully that was a key part in getting the player across the line.”
Sheeran and pop icon Swift were on stage together on 15 August at Wembley Stadium, one day before Sammie Szmodics signed from Blackburn.
After scoring an overhead kick in Ipswich’s 2-1 win over Tottenham this month, he shared a picture of himself with Sheeran on Instagram.
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