Big fan, hoping for the best, Grail & Brian are probably the twin peaks for me.
Big fan, hoping for the best, Grail & Brian are probably the twin peaks for me.
Ian
Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on progrock.com
https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-a...re-happy-hour/
Gordon Haskell - "You've got to keep the groove in your head and play a load of bollocks instead"
I blame Wynton, what was the question?
There are only 10 types of people in the World, those who understand binary and those that don't.
Of the movies, I think Life Of Brian is the best story from beginning to end. Outright hilarity - and I think it has aged the best too. The Meaning Of Life had some incredibly funny moments mixed with some pretty lame moments, and really was more sketch format than the previous films. I always loved the machine that goes "Ping!", (especially Palin as the hospital administrator) and Mr. Creosote is as classic as it gets. But the safari and the fishy-fish sections are head-scratchers. I think The Crimson Permanent Assurance acting as a short film before the main movie was wonderful. But then, I love the look of Gilliam's films.Originally Posted by NogbadTheBad
(Sharp-eyed viewers will note Patricia Quinn, a.k.a. Magenta from Rocky Horror, as Cleese's wife in the sex-ed class scene)
I always loved a quote I heard from Peter Hammill when describing Van Der Graaf's serious music as actually having some silliness to it, in a bit of a Pythonesque way, "much in the same way that a lot of Python was actually quite serious". That's always stuck with me.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
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Exciting news! I'd love to see them do some shows here in the States.
I grew up watching Flying Circus reruns on our local PBS station. Never got too much into the movies, though.
Amen to that, brother. I've seen each of the original Honeymooners episodes dozens of times and they still make me howl. I have the box set of the originals.
I have the 16-disc set and my kids love it. Their friends, for the most part, just don't get it.
Re: albums, they had the only three-sided single-disc album, with two grooves on one side.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
I got that 16-disc set from amazon a few years back when they had a super sale, and it was dirt cheap. I've watched them all many times over. I have a real fondness nowadays for the fourth series (with the aforementioned Mr. Neutron episode)... I loved the few times they stretched out one story into a whole episode. Too bad that last series was so short.
My wife bought me Monty Python's "Almost The Truth" DVD boxed set for Christmas a couple of years back, and that's another repeat viewing. I watched it when it originally aired and was dismayed when our DVR at the time broke down and I lost it. Fantastic documentary.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
*** Join me in the Garden of Delights for 3 hours of tune-spinning... every Saturday at 5pm EST on Deep Nuggets radio! www.deepnuggets.com ***
Got the 16 ton box set, got the docs, got the movies except the dreadful And Now For Something Completely Different. I'm somewhat of a fan, you could say.
Hoping this isn't just a money grab and something worthwhile comes out. I don't have high hopes as they have said this before and nothing happened.
I have to go now and shepherd my cats. It's shearing time.
I do have And Now For Something Completely Different, but only because it came in a cheap boxed set with Baron Munchausen and a redundant, no-frills copy of Holy Grail. Strange set.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
*** Join me in the Garden of Delights for 3 hours of tune-spinning... every Saturday at 5pm EST on Deep Nuggets radio! www.deepnuggets.com ***
In terms of Python related things, I'm a huge fan of "A Fish Called Wanda". As funny as Cleese and Palin are in that, Kevin Klein stole the show. In the 80's Cleese also did an episode of Cheers at it's peak, very funny episode if you get a chance to see it again.
While Holy Grail is possibly my favorite movie of all time, I'm luke warm to the other films, Life of Brian and Meaning of life. Both have some funny scenes in them for sure. For Life of Brian, I feel most of the jokes just fall totally flat. I want to laugh, but it just seems a little off. Meaning of Life had a lot of very wild, insane things happening, and while incredibly clever and well made, it just doesn't crack me up. OK, a couple scenes are hysterical to me. But again, I'm not sure if most scenes are not there just to shock and bewilder. One of those movies you can't take your eyes off the screen, and want to know what the hell they are going to do in the next scene. So I guess it's brilliant movie making in that way. But does it make me laugh like Holy Grail or Flying Circus? Nope, not even close.
I did get to see Spamalot, which was great. OK, I missed out on most of the original cast, we only had Tim Curry, as they had an understudy for David Hyde-Pierce that day, and the others were already out of the show. But I really liked what they added to the show that wasn't in Holy Grail. The expanded french taunter scene had me totally dying. What I found interesting that day was the reactions of much of the crowd, who seemed unfamiliar with the source material, but they totally loved it.
For the record, I'm going to defend And Now For... it was made for an American audience that hadn't seen the TV show, and some of the sketches are staged much better than their very cheap BBC counterparts
There was also great stuff in the Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus shows...
Huge Python fan here, although I understand people who don’t get it. In fact back in the day when Python first came on the scene people either totally dug it or did not like it at all. There is not much middle ground with these guys as I think it is a particular brand of humor that is certainly not for everyone. As for the re-union, I guess we’ll l see. Re-capturing that magic is going to be tough. I got to see Eric Idle live a few years ago and thought he was great. He re-hashed a lot of old Python stuff, but also had quite a bit of new material. I also enjoyed “Spamalot” and have seen it twice. There were parts of it that did not work, but I thought parts of it were brilliant. The send up of “Phantom Of The Opera” (and really all Broadway musicals) called “The Song That Goes Like This” was hilarious to me.
Steve Sly
For the record, I'm going to defend And Now For... it was made for an American audience that hadn't seen the TV show, and some of the sketches are staged much better than their very cheap BBC counterparts
There was also great stuff in the Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus shows...
Deliciously silly.
I find it interesting that here in the UK the original Monty Python series are almost never shown on repeat - unlike almost every other comedy from the seventies!I think that confirms what my feeling always is whenever I do catch an episode - that the vast majority of it hasn't aged at all well.
For the films, Holy Grail and Life of Brian are both brilliant and hold up well, Meaning of Life not so much, and if there's any Python fans out there who haven't seen Time Bandits yet, I would urge you to do so. Brilliant film.
Loved the show growing up. Our PBS affiliate here in Chicago started showing it around '75 or '76, and though my ten year old self only understood about half of what I was watching, the whole thing was so 'from another planet' that I was enthralled; it immediately became my fave show at that time. I also remember catching other British shows on PBS back then. Does anyone remember M Palin in Ripping Yarns? I remember really liking that. I also loved a show called The Goodies, which had these three guys always getting into weird situations. I seem to remember an episode where they were living inside a dinosaur or something(!). Then there was No Honestly, which no one seems to remember. It was a sitcom-like show about a married couple (C.D. And Clara, I still remember the names). Those were the days!
I have to say, though, that nothing will ever surpass, for me, the original 39 episodes of the Honeymooners (following on from a few mentions made of that classic show). Timeless.
It's also worth mentioning that as a kid, I had a huge crush on Carol Cleveland. The image of her strutting around in those tight, revealing late-60's dresses sticks with me to this day. Or makes my pants stick to me. Either way...
Connie Booth, too. The other beauty of the Python world. Had I known about "Romance With A Double Bass" when I was a young teenager, well, let's just say I wouldn't have left my room.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
*** Join me in the Garden of Delights for 3 hours of tune-spinning... every Saturday at 5pm EST on Deep Nuggets radio! www.deepnuggets.com ***
Ripping Yarns was an excellent show.
Ian
Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on progrock.com
https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-a...re-happy-hour/
Gordon Haskell - "You've got to keep the groove in your head and play a load of bollocks instead"
I blame Wynton, what was the question?
There are only 10 types of people in the World, those who understand binary and those that don't.
Well, considering the bovine excrement that passes for comedy nowadays, I'm more than willing to take a chance that they can reignite their brilliance. There is a difference between satire and toilet humour and that is the blind spot for 99% of what passes for comedy now.
The Grail is easily my favourite movie of all time. Life or Brian was brilliant. Meaning of Life was hit and miss but had some great things. Their TV show was like Meaning of Life where some things worked and others didn't but you had to respect them at least trying to do something inovative and edgy.
I await this with baited garlic breath...
"The woods would be very silent if the only birds that sang were those who sang best..." - Henry David Thoreau
Across the Andes by Frog
I wonder what they will do. I mean, they've had to make peace with some of the things that they railed against in their early days. The way they went after the class system and the capitalist order, with a real unencumbered viciousness, is that even in them anymore? So if there is no "Crimson Permanent Assurance" or "Upper Class Twit of the Year," what will they go after?
I love Python, and they have been an unofficial shibboleth for me for most of my life. If a person digs Python, I know there is a possibility for a deep friendship. IMO, Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail is arguably the funniest film ever made. My favorite film of all time is Time Bandits.
One of the few shows that surpass the Flying Circus for me is Rowan Atkinson's The Black Adder. But that is still in the same tradition, IMO.
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
Possibly like many others when I first heard about this I though great. MP was very much a part of my teenage years and the humour and facts gleaned from watching their shows and films has stayed with me throughout my life. But we're talking over 30 years ago and their style of humour is not right for this day and age although I must admit I find it very hard to find anything remotely funny these days unless you've had a frontal labotomy that is.
Probably best to remember them as they were and reminisce. They will be forever to me at least the funniest bunch of guys ever.
I too think their brand of humor is a thing of the past. I enjoy old episodes but can't see how they could recapture that level of irreverence and silliness at their age. Its the same reason the 3 Stooges movie couldn't work.
Compact Disk brought high fidelity to the masses and audiophiles will never forgive it for that
Terrific movie--it's almost like a feature-length episode of Fawlty Towers. And although it's far from great, I've always had a soft spot for Splitting Heirs (with Idle and Cleese) even though I loathe Rick Moranis.
MY BRAIN HURTS
I bought my best friend the book for Christmas in 1978. That was my favourite story along with the escape from the POW camp.
"The woods would be very silent if the only birds that sang were those who sang best..." - Henry David Thoreau
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