Sunday 29 January 2012

Pre-order Holy Flying Circus Here

Holy Flying Circus, the fantastical pythonesque re-imagining of the controversy surrounding the release of Monty Python's 1979 film, Life of Brian - to be released on DVD on 6 February 2012 - can be pre-ordered here.

Holy Flying Circus

More about the DVD:
  • Written by Tony Roche
  • Cast includes: Darren Boyd as John Cleese; Charles Edwards as Michael Palin; Steve Punt as Eric Idle; Rufus Jones as Terry Jones; Tom Fisher as Graham Chapm; Phil Nichol as Terry Gilliam; and Stephen Fry as God.
  • Running time: 89 minutes
  • Originally broadcast on BBC 4, 20th October 2011
  • Price: £9.99
The Life of Brian/Jesus
If you like Holy Flying Circus, then it's possible you will also like the book The Life of Brian/Jesus by Julian Doyle which gives interesting insights into the Life of Brian and dramatically compares scenes in the film with the actual Biblical events and comes to some surprising conclusions. Price: £8.96

Friday 27 January 2012

Monty Python team set for film reunion with Absolutely Anything

Terry Jones, the Python who oversaw Life of Brian, to direct 'sci-fi farce' in which remaining comics voice a group of aliens

Full Monty … the remaining Pythons in 2009 (l-r): Michael Palin, John Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle. Photograph: Peter Foley/EPA

The Monty Python team is set to reunite for the cinema screen for the first time since 1983, according to a report in Variety magazine.

Terry Jones, director of Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life, as well as co-director (with Terry Gilliam) of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, is to helm a "sci-fi farce" called Absolutely Anything. The other Pythons are being lined up to voice the roles of a group of aliens who endow an earthling with the power to do "absolutely anything".

Sporadic attempts at a Python film reunion have been made since their cinema career as a group ended. All surviving Pythons bar Eric Idle participated in the recent A Liar's Autobiography, an adaptation of the book by former Python Graham Chapman, who died in 1989, and his long-term partner, David Sherlock.

But in a recent interview for the Guardian, Terry Gilliam cast doubt on whether a reunion would ever be successfully achieved. "We all have our own careers now … the BBC put us on 10 years ago, and it was an hour of mediocrity … the work wasn't what it should be."

Jones's directorial career hit the buffers after 1996's The Wind in the Willows with Steve Coogan; he was reportedly upset at its treatment by its distributors in the UK and US and decided to concentrate on TV, writing and opera instead.