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The eternal fascination with all things Beatle pretty much guarantees an audience for any offering from the group and its respective members, and that will likely be the case with Paul McCartney: The Space Within US, a documentary recorded during his 2005 world tour (and broadcast in truncated form by A&E). Not that it's by any means bad. McCartney and his crack four-piece band are seen performing a variety of Fabs faves, from the delightful trifle that is "I'll Follow the Sun" to the genuine masterpiece that is "For No One" (the latter is a solo job, as are "I Will," "Yesterday," and others); as Apple computer poo-bah Steve Jobs, one of the many talking heads on hand to sing Macca's praises, points out, just hearing these classics played and sung by the guy who wrote (or co-wrote) 'em is a treat, and the great sound and high-definition video certainly don't hurt. On the minus side, the camera spends a lot of time in the audience, capturing their rapturous and often quite touching responses to the music. There are also bits focusing on a Beatles-obsessed family from Columbus, Ohio, all three generations of which are excited, to put it mildly, when Sir Paul pays them a brief visit before going onstage, and on two astronauts on board the International Space Station, for whom McCartney plays "English Tea" (from his 2005 CD Chaos and Creation in the Backyard) through a live feed from his Anaheim, California gig. These tangents may be distracting to fans who just want to watch McCartney and company at work, but considering that this was dubbed "the Us Tour," they should hardly come as a surprise. Same goes for the disparate line-up of celebs and others, ranging from Bill Clinton and various academic types to Tony Bennett and Eddie Vedder, whose comments punctuate (and occasionally interrupt) the music. Bottom line: there are better McCartney concert videos (like Live in Red Square), but this is a Beatle we're talking about here. For many, that will be more than enough. --Sam Graham More McCartney
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