Award winning documentary about the quiet Beatle is finally available for pre-order in North America

By Stephen Pate – Released in the UK and EU last October, fans on this side of the Atlantic will soon get to watch and own Martin Scorsese’s documentary “George Harrison: Living in the Material World.”

The release date on Amazon.ca is May 1, 2012. You can pre-order now and Amazon guarantees to protect pricing if the price goes down. Inexplicably, the Canadian pre-order saves you $5.00.

If you’re a Beatles fan, and who isn’t, this is a must-see video. It has a warts and all view of the “quiet Beatle” who played lead guitar and became the spiritual centre of the band in later years. 

Along with the video documentary there are exclusive never-before-seen videos like George Harrison’s solo on “Here Comes The Sun.”

Awards for Living in the Material World and Scorsese

“Living in the Material World” won the Critics Choice Award for Best Documentary Feature. It also won Best Documentary from the British Academy Film Awards. The film also garnered nominations for Best Documentary by the Directors Guild of America and the American Cinema Editors. Scorsese won 5 Academy Awards in 2012 for his 3D movie “Hugo”.

Two versions are being released – DVD and Blu-Ray.

The Blu-Ray version is a no-brainer. It has HD video and the sound is superb DTS HD. If you have a Blu-Ray player, the Blu-Ray version will look and sound awesome, according to reviews in the UK where it has been released for five months.

The DVD version will have DVD quality video and DTS sound, still great but not up to the latest and best sound quality of DTS HD.

Until DTS-HD, all digital music was a sampled version of the real analog sound. DTS-HD is lossless, that is nothing is lost in translation to the digital.

DTS-HD Master Audio supports up to 25 Mbps of 24 bit-192 kHz sampled audio. At that data rate, it is considered equivalent to the actual analog music. DTS, by way of comparison, delivers a maximum of 6 Mbps at 24-bit, 96 kHz sampled. DTS is the highest quality sound for DVD’s.

Update – A website in the UK lists the audio spec as DTS-HD but at the lower 16-bit, 48 kHz sample rate. That would be a shame, still better than the DVD, but a wasted opportunity to present the best audio experience. We’ll see as the saying goes.

To hear the difference, play a movie that has Dolby Digital II and DTS soundtracks. Switching back and forth between DDII and DTS you should be able to hear a more detailed, expansive sound with DTS. DTS contains approximately double the amount of digital sound data compared to DTS. DTS HD contains up to four times the sound data of DTS.

The Deluxe Edition has not been listed for release in North America yet.

Reviews of the UK release have been a very positive 4+ stars. Notable omissions are any references to Patty (Boyd) Harrison, his first wife, who as with him throughout the Beatles existence until their divorce in 1974. Probably that can be attributed to co-production credit to Olivia Harrison his wife at the time of his death. That leaves room for another video with the missing story.

Amazon’s description

George Harrison (photo credit - unattributed LA Times)

Directed by Martin Scorsese, George Harrison – Living in the Material World is a stunning double-feature-length film tribute to one of music’s greatest icons.

Scorsese uses never-before-seen footage from George Harrison’s childhood, throughout his years with The Beatles, through the ups and downs of his solo career, and through the joys and pain of his private life, to trace the arc of George’s journey from his birth in 1943 to his passing in 2001. Living in the Material World features private home videos, photos and never before heard tracks to chronicle the incredible story of the extraordinary man.

Despite its epic reach, the film is deeply personal. Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, Olivia and Dhani Harrison, among many others, talk openly about George’s many gifts and contradictions and reveal the lives they shared together. In every aspect of his professional, personal and spiritual life, until his final hours, George blazed his own path.

As his friend John Lennon once said: “George himself is no mystery. But the mystery inside George is immense. It’s watching him uncover it all little by little that’s so damn interesting.”

Where to pre-order Living in the Material World

[ws_table id=”14″]

Related Stories

Review – George Harrison: Living in the Material World

George Harrison Living in the Material World

 Pre-Order George Harrison Living in the Material World