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1-20 of 28 articles from 2009 « Prev | Next »
Holiday Gift Guide Countdown: #6 The Complete Monty Python's 16 Ton Megaset
21 December 2009 7:02 PM, PST
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A gift guide that doesn't include the Monty Python's Flying Circus gift set? Well that's not really a gift guide is it? I won't rest until every single man woman and child on the planet owns this. Especially now that it's priced to own. This thing used to run over a hundred dollars and it can be had now for under fifty. My only gripe is that somebody desperately needs to make the menus easier to navigate.
As the Python Gift Set grows physically smaller and smaller each year one has to ponder the commercial event horizon where, like Mathesons Incredible Shrinking Man, John Cleese is someday pondering the imponderable, lost in the wonder of realizing that to God there is no such thing as small. Of course he will likely be driving a nano-bot up the posterior of some futureman since that is all where our technology is eventually
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Podcast: Terry Gilliam
21 December 2009 12:56 PM, PST
| GreenCine Daily
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Beginning as a strip cartoonist and then animating member of the groundbreaking comedy troupe Monty Python's Flying Circus (celebrating its 40th anniversary this year), Terry Gilliam is most widely recognized today as the mischievous auteur behind such hallucinatory, darkly comic fantasies as Time Bandits, Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and 12 Monkeys. His latest flight of surreal whimsy is The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, credited with love as "A film from Heath Ledger and friends" since star Ledger unforeseeably died during its production:
Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) and his troupe make up an extraordinary traveling show where members of the audience get an irresistible opportunity to enter the world of their imagination. Blessed with the extraordinary gift of guiding the imaginations of others, Dr. Parnassus is cursed with a dark secret. Long ago he made a bet with the devil, Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), in which he won immortality. Many centuries later,
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Q&A: John Cleese Plans on Living Forever (or at Least Long Enough To Pay Off His Alimony)
19 November 2009 9:02 PM, PST
| Vanity Fair
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John Cleese did a pretty good job of explaining his comedy formula during last month's Monty Python reunion at New York's Ziegfeld Theatre. "Graham (Chapman) and I wrote sketches where people started out fairly calm," he said, "and finished up shouting at each other." Some might argue that Cleese's contributions to Python were a little more complex than that, but it's essentially the nuts and bolts of his genius. The silly walks made him famous, but there are few things in this world as perfectly hilarious as John Cleese losing his temper.
During the reign of Monty Python's Flying Circus—originally broadcast on the BBC from 1969 to 1974—Cleese was the ensemble's volatile nucleus. He wasn't the cast member who responded to chaos with a befuddled, dazed expression. He was the one who exploded in anger with little or no provocation, whether howling inconsolably about being sold a dead parrot or
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The Good, The Bad And The Wtf: Clashing News, Wolves and All
10 November 2009 6:57 PM, PST
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Things to know about at this week: the first Clash of the Titans teaser, Steve Guttenberg still hanging onto his 80's glory, toy movies are still wanted, and the fantastic piece of news that is the death of the Oldboy remake. What's that? That's right. Read along.
The Good
• A very good poster for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland was posted on the Mad Hatter's official Facebook page. Two more are coming, presumably on the Red Queen and White Queen pages.
• A selection of props from Duncan Jones' Moon are up for auction on eBay, including Gerty himself! It's the actual full-size thing, measuring 83” x 33” x 27.5" and even signed by the director himself. As of writing it's still bidding at £1,000, so totally affordable if you're a collector.
• After being impressed by the new trailer for The Wolfman that was released a couple of weeks back, now I'm even more impressed by the posters.
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- Arya Ponto
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Monty Python Enters New Jersey Governor's Race; Copyright Infringement Charged Against Chris Christie
1 November 2009 10:00 PM, PST
| Cinemaretro.com
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The members of Monty Python are accusing New Jersey candidate Chris Christie of copyright infringement.
By Lee Pfeiffer
The New Jersey governor's race is already one of the dirtiest and most bizarre campaigns imaginable. Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine should be coasting to re-election in a state that is largely liberal and largely Democratic. However, Corzine is fighting for his political life despite having virtually unlimited funds from his personal fortune to throw into his campaign. He has also had the benefit of several high profile campaign appearances by President Obama, who is extremely popular in this state. His main rival, Republican Chris Christie, a former Us Attorney, can't take much comfort, either. Despite running against a very unpopular incumbent, the best he has been able to do is draw even in the polls . (The election is Tuesday). Both men have run increasingly vitriolic campaigns, with Christie accusing Corzine of capitalizing
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- nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
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Cleese And Idle Clashed On Urine-drinking Sketch
22 October 2009 1:11 AM, PDT
| WENN
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Monty Python's Flying Circus stars John Cleese and Eric Idle clashed over a urine-drinking sketch, which the BBC banned from the troupe's cult comedy series.
Idle came up with the skit about a wine expert mistaking chardonnays and champagne for "wee-wee", and Cleese sided with TV bosses, who feared the segment was too off-colour to broadcast.
Cleese says, "I sided with the BBC... I found (it) really rather distasteful."
But Python pal Terry Gilliam insists the sketch wasn't cut from the show because it suggested the expert was drinking urine - but because the TV bosses read a little too much into one part of the skit.
He explains, "Apparently, one of the glasses of wine had a slight rose tint to it, which, to the BBC's mind, this was menstrual urine. Everything they came up with was more and more absurd... They were really twisted."
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Cleese: 'Chapman Should Have Been Fixed'
21 October 2009 6:36 PM, PDT
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Funnyman John Cleese has opened up about tragic Monty Python pal Graham Chapman in a new documentary, suggesting the late comedian "should have been sent back to the factory and fixed".
Cleese created the comedy troupe with the Life of Brian star, who lost his battle with cancer in 1989, but he now admits he never really understood his friend and found him tough to work with, especially when his well-documented heavy drinking became a real problem.
In a new U.S. TV documentary series, marking the 40th anniversary of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Cleese reveals, "He just didn't work properly... The simple stuff - getting the lines right, hitting his mark, he just was not an efficient creature... He was always late."
Chapman's former partner David Sherlock insists Cleese was "most uncomfortable" around the funnyman after he discovered Chapman was gay.
In the documentary, Month Python, Almost The Truth (The Lawyer's Cut), Sherlock says, "He discovered he'd been working all this time with someone he thought he knew, but now discovered he didn't know."
Cleese admits, "We were all surprised... We didn't mind that he was gay, but we were very, very surprised and I think Graham, sometimes, took the surprise for disapproval."
And Cleese wasn't the only member of the comedy troupe who struggled with Chapman.
Terry Gilliam says, "Graham was just a frustrating person. I never could make out who Graham was."
And Terry Jones adds, "Graham was a mystery... The only times I had lunch with him, we really hadn't got much to say to each other, really."
Michael Palin admits Chapman's drinking problem was a real issue. He recalls, "Sometimes he'd be quite funny and other times... he'd just irritate people for the sake of it."
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Coogan Was A Monty Python Parrot
20 October 2009 6:31 PM, PDT
| WENN
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Funnyman Steve Coogan has the Monty Python's Flying Circus troupe to thanks for getting him hooked on zany comedy - because he was his family's human video recorder as a child.
The actor/comedian was a big fan of the cult show in the days before the Vcr and he had to memorise skits and sketches so he could reenact them for family friends.
The Tropic Thunder star explains, "You couldn't replay it... My mum might be talking to a friend and she'd say, 'Did you see that...? Steve, do it, do what was on the show last night.'
"So I would just be a video recorder; I'd just try and replicate what I had seen."
And he became a Monty Python perfectionist: "I'd get angry if I saw people trying to describe what was in the show, and getting it wrong."
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Review: 'Python: Almost The Truth' a joyous experience, begins on IFC Oct.18
18 October 2009 12:03 PM, PDT
| Monsters and Critics
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Monty Python means more to me than just a left-of-center British comedy, it was a show I always caught with my dad, late at night, after Tom Snyder's "The Tomorrow Show." The humorous skits and graphic cartoons so bizarre in concept for its time entertained mightily, and their films always were my favorites, still in high rotation for the home DVD collection. The trouple of British (and an American) came together In 1969, working up a new comedy concept at the BBC. "Monty Python's Flying Circus" is now 40 years old. The 40th anniversary of the troupe is celebrated in an engaging and revealing six-hour documentary series, .Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer.s Cut),. which begins
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- April MacIntyre
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One of the First American "Python" Fans Recalls Series' Early Days -- in Canada
16 October 2009 7:21 AM, PDT
| Huffington Post
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I'm lucky. I got to see Monty Python before most Americans - both on TV and live.
Over the years, this long-time newspaper TV critic has been asked: What's your all-time favorite series? Without hesitation: Monty Python's Flying Circus, the brilliant BBC series marking its 40th birthday this week with a series on the Independent Film Channel.
The timeless comedy was brilliantly written and acted, and that's largely why it still stands up and still doesn't look dated.
Why did I get to see Python before most Americans? I moved to Montreal in 1970 just as the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) was beginning to air the iconoclastic British import. (It finally premiered in the U.S.on PBS in 1975 -- after it had ended its BBC run.)
Plus, the Pythons did their only North American
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- Bill Mann
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Monty Python Recordings Saved By U.S. Fans
15 October 2009 6:31 PM, PDT
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Early episodes of cult British comedy Monty Python's Flying Circus would have been lost forever if BBC bosses hadn't landed a deal to air the TV show in the U.S.
The cult series, starring John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Eric Idle and the late Graham Chapman, was picked up by BBC network bosses in 1969.
But there would be no trace of the troupe's early comedy shenanigans if the funnymen hadn't broken into the American market in 1975 - because network executives were eager to erase the original recordings of Monty Python to clear some space in their vaults.
Cleese explains, "The technology was so clumsy; I mean the tapes that the shows were stored on were so wide and took up so much space that the BBC started wiping the shows."
Jones adds, "There were no VCRs (video recorders), no DVDs in those days. The BBC nearly wiped all the shows. We got a call one day from our video editor saying they were about to erase all the shows - the BBC had put them onto Phillips cassettes, the only thing we had at the time. So, for a time, I thought the only record we had of the first Monty Python series was in my basement!
"In fact, the BBC would have wiped the Python TV shows if they hadn't suddenly sold them to the United States, so thank you the United States!"
Cleese reveals he suffered a similar fate with another TV comedy he made with late pals Chapman and Marty Feldman - and would have nothing to look back on had it not been for a superfan in Sweden.
He explains: "I did a show with Graham and Marty Feldman, called At Last the 1948 Show, and they (BBC bosses) completely wiped it.
"It wouldn't exist apart from the fact that, quite seriously, some guy in Sweden found seven episodes in a vault and sent them (to Cleese). So these classic series got completely wiped because the technology took up too much space."
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John Cleese on 40 years of 'Monty Python,' 'Fawlty Towers,' and sex!
14 October 2009 3:14 PM, PDT
| EW.com - PopWatch
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It is now 40 years since the legendary and hugely influential comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus was first broadcast in the U.K. How do we know this? Well, partly because Python member John Cleese is so unbelievably decrepit. "I'm old and incontinent!" laughs the comedian. The Python crew's 40th anniversary is also being marked by a series of events. Tonight the five surviving members (Cleese, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam) will reunite for an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Tomorrow they will grace (and possibly silly walk across) the stage of New York's
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- Clark Collis
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Q+A: Terry Gilliam for The Imaginarum Of Doctor Parnassus
13 October 2009 9:30 AM, PDT
| The Hollywood News
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In the dark days following the death of Heath Ledger, Terry Gilliam was grieving the loss of a close friend and couldn't bring himself even to contemplate what would happen to the film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, that they had both been working on when the young Australian actor sadly passed on.
"It was a terrible time," he says. "And frankly I was just devastated by the loss of such a great guy. The film didn't really come into it at that point."
But gradually, encouraged by his collaborators including his daughter, Amy Gilliam, who is a producer on the film, he began to accept that finishing it would be a fitting tribute to Heath even though, at first, he couldn't see how they could do it. Ledger died in January 2008 with the British end of the production completed but with weeks of shooting still planned on sound stages in Canada.
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- Paul
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Monty Python turns 40: ComicMix Quick Picks for 10/6/09
6 October 2009 4:21 AM, PDT
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Still slow going around these parts, but have these tidbits to keep you warm during the cold season:
Not strictly comics-related, but the work of Monty Python is close enough to our hearts here at ComicMix that we'd feel remiss in not wishing them a happy 40th anniversary-- the first episode of Flying Circus aired October 5, 1969.
To celebrate, IFC announced it will air all episodes from the original Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch comedy series starting October 18th as part of the network's "Python-a-thon" week through the end of 2010. IFC has acquired all four seasons of the Monty Python series (45 episodes). IFC's "Python-a-thon" runs October 18-23 consisting of the original six-part docu-series Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut) each night at 9 pm followed by a Python feature film at 10 pm and capped off by an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus at 11:30 pm. Additionally, IFC will air
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- Matthew Weinberger
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Have some Spam in honor of Monty Python's 40th anniversary
5 October 2009 6:09 PM, PDT
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One of the world' most quotable and iconic comedy shows made its television debut 40 years ago today.
Monty Python's Flying Circus first appeared on British television on Oct. 5, 1969, a show that branched into four feature length films, launched the careers of six very funny dudes and inspired millions of countless nerds to quote their most famous lines to death (myself included).
I'm sure everyone with a working set of eyes and a television set remembers the first time they saw Monty Python. What's your earliest memory of the show and more importantly, did it include any images of nude ladies?
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Reality-Free, British TV
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- Danny Gallagher
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'Monty Python's Flying Circus' turns 40
5 October 2009 4:07 PM, PDT
| EW.com - PopWatch
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Today marks the 40th anniversary of the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, so we're celebrating both the specific troupe but also modern sketch comedy as we know it. Before comedy geeks swapped Simpsons esoterica or Mr. Show references, before a Kids in the Hall line served as the password to the sketch-dork club house, there was Monty Python. Here's 10 ways they changed comedy, and here's my favorite Python bit of all time, which isn't from the TV show but I think still counts:
Is it the best? Perhaps not -- that might be no one expecting the Spanish Inquisition,
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- Margaret Lyons
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Iiiittttt's....Monty Python's 40th Anniversary
5 October 2009 3:37 PM, PDT
| GetTheBigPicture.net
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And now for something completely different...
Monty Python's Flying Circus, the masterful absurd sketch comedy series, first aired on BBC 40 years ago today. The first episode (October 5, 1969) contained the famous "Funniest Joke in the World" sketch, and two weeks later came "Nudge Nudge." It would be almost two full months before the legendary "Dead Parrot" sketch, one of Python's signature moments.
The series would run for four seasons, after which the ensemble turned their attention to movies, including two undeniable classics, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Life of Brian, both of which featured the late Graham Chapman in leading roles.
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- Colin Boyd
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Celebrate The 40th Birthday Of 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' With Our Five Favorite Sketches
5 October 2009 3:00 PM, PDT
| MTV Movies Blog
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Forty years ago today, the world became a funnier place with the grand debut of "Monty Python's Flying Circus," the television series showcasing the hilarious and often twisted comedy of the Monty Python sketch group, which included the likes of John Cleese, Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle among others.
But 40 years is a long time, as many of you out there -- myself included -- weren't even alive at the time of the show's inception. Hell, maybe your parents hadn't even met yet. Nonetheless, the various sketches and skits of "Flying Circus" hold up incredibly well today, and every young fan of comedy owes it to themselves to partake in at least the bare essentials of the comedy troupe's catalog.
Of course, there are an almost unlimited amount of gems to choose from -- but these five sketches are some of my favorites, and are as good a place to
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- Josh Wigler
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Forty Years of Dead Parrots and Crunchy Frogs: Happy Birthday, Monty Python's Flying Circus!
5 October 2009 1:30 PM, PDT
| Pastemagazine.com
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Forty years ago today, the lads of Monty Python debuted their wonderfully absurdist Flying Circus show on British television. Although it was sandwiched in a terrible spot in the Sunday lineup, it went on to gather a cult following and become a worldwide phenomenon. Thusly did dead parrots, the Spanish Inquisition, Spam, and a whole host of silly walks enter the common parlance.
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Happy 40, Monty!
5 October 2009 2:43 AM, PDT
| JoBlo.com
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October 5th, 1969 at 10:55pm, British TV audiences, albeit not a lot of them then, heard an announcer come onto BBC1 and forever change their cultural landscape with 6 simple words: "And now, for something completely different." And different, they were.
It was 40 years ago on this day that John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Eric Idle and the incomparable Terry Gilliam took to the airwaves under the name Monty Python's Flying Circus.
There's way to much to be
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- Tony Lang
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