Noooobody expects I’ll need an orthopedic physician!…

Monty Python – The Autumn Years.

Their legs are grey, their ears are nulled, their eyes are old and bent. IT’S. Monty Python’s Flying Circus 2014. Oh, and one of them’s been dead for over 25 years like a very naughty boy.

MONTY PYTHON: AND NOW FOR SOMETHING RATHER SIMILAR is a documentary by IMAGINE, a BBC TV series (Season 23, Episode 4), following the Pythons as they prepare for their historic live shows at London’s O2 arena in July 2014. From all accounts – schedules, insurance, imminent deaths – their last ever appearance together onstage. You cannot, will not, and should not watch this feature without tears gushing like the mighty rivers of British Columbia down your lumberjack flannels; the nostalgia, the reunion, the glory, the Boys…

In 1998, the five remaining members of Monty Python (John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin) convened in Aspen for a tribute by the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. At that gathering (their last group appearance being 1982’s LIVE AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL; their last group film, 1983’s THE MEANING OF LIFE), when asked if they were going to “do something together again,” they made the “historical announcement” that they were!

So in July 2014, 16 years after making that promise (!) Monty Python at last align their stars and schedules to come together onstage for Monty Python Live (Mostly): One Down, Five to Go, a one-off live show at O2. It sold out in 43 seconds. In the end, 10 shows were performed.

Still crunchy after all these years…

But it was never about fun and games and keeping promises. Presenter Alan Yentob asks Eric Idle, “Why are you doing it?” We expect Eric to blurt, “The money.” That reliable go-to gag for people who obviously don’t need the money. And Eric actually blurts out, “The money”! Seriously. He outlines how they had to legally defend themselves from a producer on MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL who sued them, costing them a million pounds. Eric quipped to Jim Beach (manager of Queen, brought in for legal advice), “If we did a night at O2, we could pay this off in a second!” At the collective Python meeting the next day, Beach said the same thing. What a good idea, said Eric.

Eric Idle is painted as the one Python holding the mammoth production together, the producer if you will, organizing music, dancers, rehearsals, production design and finding the albatross; delegating, stipulating and fulminating, while the rest don’t really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia work base that has an attachment.

They’re busy. How busy? No one can tell. Yentob can go through each of their tales post-Python and still omit acres, oceans, planets of their storied careers. We hear about Palin’s travelogues and Diaries, but miss out on RIPPING YARNS (a natural progression from Python that I remember very fondly). We hear about Cleese’s FAWLTY TOWERS and A FISH CALLED WANDA, but not much else, even though he has appeared in over 70 productions since WANDA, TV series, video games, to say nothing of his speaking tours. And where does one start unspooling the surrealism of Terry Gilliam’s inimitable body of work (BRAZIL, THE FISHER KING, 12 MONKEYS, et al)? (So they focus on his most recent film and opera.) So it goes with Idle and Terry Jones as well, all short-changed because they’ve done too much. (And like Mr. Smoketoomuch, they’ve never thought about cutting down a little…)

Every time a classic Python sketch is mentioned, we see that sketch from the original series, not any permutations of it. It is a thing of beauty that it is.

Python memories are tied to an epoch when life was a simpler time, a better existence, a meaningful purpose. Python was not just for nerds and not just for elites. Python covered the spectrum, from Gumby Brain Specialist to Beethoven at home; from mountaineering hairdressers, to philosophy football. Monty Python’s flying circus was, and remains, the greatest comedy sketch show in history. So it’s a… disappointment… when we see the actual performances from the tour…

(The performances are not shown in this featurette, but can be found on YouTube.)

It’s not so much that their hair is gray, their teeth are false, their bowels are unreliable… Their conviction is lacking. Gone is the impeccable timing and energy of their youth, with each sketch being performed with a nudge nudge wink wink to the audience that everyone knows what’s coming next, so it doesn’t matter if it feels staged, if they forget lines or break out of character and corpse. And everybody expects The Spanish Inquisition… More than anything, it seems like “five slightly shriveled septuagenarians” (as the humorless Daily Mail put it) trying to fulfill a manifest, dutifully putting all the pieces where they belong.

Monty Python: The “Who’s Next?” Tour

In 2000, Eric did a tour called Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python. With Eric’s financial explanation about this tour, and with all the members not wanting to, or not having the time to, rehearse, and with the brand recognition they all enjoy when coming together (which only aids their individual pursuits), then surely it is now a case of Monty Python Exploits Monty Python. But then, isn’t that what we ALL do? Cherrypick our inimitable, explosive art from our youth and spend the rest of our wretched, diminishing lives trying to recreate it. Robert De Niro Exploits his Gangster Persona; Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley Exploit KISS; Pete Townshend Exploits The Who. But all the naiveté and nostalgia and sociological swirl of the times that were an integral part of creating that original art are in a different balance now. So one NEVER recaptures the EMOTION that was an integral part of that art, therefore any attempt at recapturing art FULLY will necessarily fail. I am saddened that that is the Truth – not in any capitalistic or cynical way – just in the sense that we all get older and snider. And nothing can retain the innocence and humor of youth. Sad sad sad. The reasons keep changing but I’m still weeping rivers.

But – as Cleese says – Python “made some people laugh.” And that is the bottom line. They did it. In such a giant way that it can never be undone. “Pythonesque” is not only in the Oxford English Dictionary – it’s in every English dictionary. They are part of history. They shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is black. Like a stream of bat’s piss.

Speaking of never being able to recapture art: Superman was in a wheelchair, Freddie Mercury died, Paul Stanley lost his voice, Clint Eastwood swerved rightwing nutjob, John Cleese can’t Silly Walk— Due to extensive knee surgeries, Cleese’s most iconic performance piece is nixed forever. And you ask why I’m still weeping rivers of British Columbia. Worse, the choreographer is putting the sketch to music and a host of young dancers play the ersatz Minister of Silly Walks. And that’s a biggus dickus bowl of wrong.

Carol Cleveland (the “seventh Python”) makes the show – aged like a fine wine (kept in a cellar for thirty years). Neil Innes (the other seventh Python), unfortunately does not. And Graham Chapman (not the Messiah, just a very naughty boy) appears in videos, his spirit living on in Python media and shows, so long after his death that he might just BE the Messiah….

Documentary ends on the five Pythons, gathered before the tempest, just about to hit the stage before their first show. Cut to black.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING RATHER SIMILAR is an excellent – though hardly detailed – featurette. If nothing else, it provides a whirlwind overview of what Monty Python means to the world, an honest snapshot of where they are now, and a grandiose tribute to what may be their last performance together. Witty, intelligent, poignant, and of course, very, very silly. (And it pays the legal bills…)

END

It was a Monster Mash!

How does Kate Beckinsale run in those stilettos? She is one of the most beautiful women on this ugly planet – but that Boris-and-Natasha accent is a real turn-off. Her Transylvanian is worse than Don Cheadle’s cockney.

In VAN HELSING, Beckinsale is Anna Valerious, a European village warrior woman with big hair, big sword and tight pants, whose quest is to destroy the monsters terrorizing her village. She is joined by one of the other most beautiful women on the planet, Hugh Jackman; curly cascading locks, magnificent chest, azure piercing eyes, aquiline nose, lips like sugar — waitaminute! Am I talking about him or her again?…

VAN HELSING is an old-fashioned monster tale with new-fashioned sex symbology. This ain’t your daddy’s Van Helsing. Vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing was introduced to the world in Bram Stoker’s lavish 1897 novel Dracula, and in all successive media, we’ve grown used to Van Helsing as a crotchety old curmudgeon with a wooden stake in upraised fist ululating at the lightning. But Jackman is more like Ted Nugent hunting caribou in a loincloth (and without the idiotic Republican ideology); witch’s hat and rock star hair, flouncing floor-length leather and a repeating crossbow, his Playgirl muscles on standby for the final werewolf-vampire battle.

This Van Helsing is a hired assassin for Mother Church, hunting all manner of supernatural and unholy beast. They call him “The Left Hand Of God” (how Christian of them, as if that euphemism absolves them of their mortal crimes). He also gets bitten by a werewolf (shove that in your Van Helsing canon!), so his blood becomes mutated, his body becomes hairier than Paul Stanley’s chest and he grows long steely claws; in other words, he becomes Wolverine.

And he’s hunting… Dracula (Richard Roxburgh), who seems to have a clouded past with Van Helsing, calling him Gabriel in an avuncular tone, rather than Abraham (but in that pseudo-Transylvanian, so it sounds like Gabryelle, with umlauts and stuff).

All the old monsters are here, with in-your-face technological upgrades. Modern CGI animates gigantic werewolves, more powerful and vicious than we’ve ever seen, pale-blooded nude harpies devoid of nipples, vampire bat-babies and Frankenstein’s Monster (Shuler Hensley).

And there’s even Dracula’s craven assistant named Igor (Kevin J. O’Connor), who, whenever Dracula calls his name, must answer in that monster lisp, “Yesh, Mastah!” as he does that body-turn with arms flailing loosely.

David Wenham is Van Helsing’s friar sidekick, who is the voice of plot, outlining tales of intrigue with the convenient device of archaic tomes that always have pictures to illustrate exactly what he describes. This old cinematic technique – even in this fun-filled romp – is wearing on my patience. There are always PICTURES of the horrors that someone describes, like the listeners (audience included) cannot take the storyteller’s word for it unless we see those medieval hand-drawn Bosch-esque devil-drawings in a magnum volume guarded by monks. Even Beckinsale’s high tight corset doesn’t make up for that annoyance.

Dracula is trying to drain Frankenstein’s monster for the juice that will sustain his bat-babies. (Don’t even ask; I guess since Friar David read this plot from a medieval hand-drawn Bosch-esque magnum volume guarded by monks, it must be credible.)

A lot of work was put into this lavish production – most of it done by those computer nerds we take for granted – but Dracula himself is not selling me. Being fey is not a downfall when playing Dracula, but Roxburgh is not even selling the fey – only when he becomes a computer-nerd-created monster to battle Wolverine’s computer-nerd-created werewolf does he approach any level of monster mash.

And then – it was a graveyard smash!

END

Overwrought Underworld.

Guns, Gore and Grrrrrls in growling leather.

The Salad Dealer

UNDERWORLD gives a shot in the arm, so to speak, to the vampire and werewolf iconographies, updating/reimagining both to be in an ongoing millennia-aged war that is escalating, plopping them in modern day Europe (or somewhere with underground rail transport and rain that won’t quit) with automatic weapons and computers. And leather.

Selene (Kate Beckinsale, who would soon marry the director – luckiest man alive, Len Wiseman) is a vampire “Death Dealer,” with guns bigger than her acting abilities and leather so tight and curve-hugging my Carnal Nerve nocturnally emissioned. She’s a lethal stalker and killer of werewolves (“lycans” in sexy new street cred).

Story is interesting twist on the legends, yet if you enjoy werewolf slash vampire movies, this may or may not be your cup of blood. You see, whereas all other werewolf and vampire movies have been correctly slotted into the horror genre, UNDERWORLD is an “action” movie whose characters happen to be vamps and thropes. We’re in their world now, so their intrinsic alienness is the norm, rather than an anomaly. Movie can get on with the shooting and running and blood-fests as common occurrence between the two “races” (just as any two given races on Earth at any given point in history will engage lovingly in shooting and running and blood-fests). Subsequently, dialog is childish, and action is filmed in that style that suddenly slams into slomo to accentuate the flounce of capes and the thrill of tight butt-leather, with no meaning other than for the sake of capes flouncing and butt-leather bouncing.

Latent werewolf, Michael (Scott Speedman) is bitten by a vampire – to breed a hybrid race that will win the war for the lycans, who are jealous that the vampires have such cool leather. Even though he’s a transgender, Selene inexplicably falls for Michael. Because he’s hot, I’m guessing. But vampire-werewolf love cannot be. So it is written in the ancient scrolls of the TV Guide. For advice on her love life, she calls on the Dr. Phil of vampires, their sleeping king, Viktor (Bill Nighy), who in hibernation looks like a zombie husk of a mummy, until he is revived by fresh blood, whereupon he looks like Bill Nighy (i.e. a zombie husk of a mummy).

Casting Kate Beckinsale was not a mistake. Garbing her in such tight leather is. Because I am blinded to anything else when she is onscreen. She is just too breathtakingly beautiful, too achingly sensual– Those pointy incisors; those devil-blue eyes– Look at that cutie go! Two-fisted gun barrels blazing, Hard Guy Overcoat flouncing, rain dripping pruriently from hand-grab spinner waist in leatherbound corset, spike-heeled boots and porcelain-creamy neck–

Uh, what was the question again?–

END

Pearl Before Swine.

In garish detail and stunning investigative probing, PEARL HARBOR digs deep below the surface of the gasoline embargoes and jingoistic fomenting and reveals exactly what this WWII conflict was all about – the love triangle between three young American Models.

You see, Ben loves Kate. And Kate loves Ben. But Ben’s best friend, Josh, also likes Kate. And there’s a war with Germany or something happening. Ben is a hot pilot, and reports to somewhere overseas that is Not America for hot dogfights that make his biceps thrum with the need to hold Kate.

Ben is shot down and reported Missing In Action back in the United States, a land where every waking hour is spent looking to get laid (if you were a nurse like Kate) or looking to get laid (if you were a flyboy like Josh). So when Ben is reported missing, Kate cannot face the next five long days wondering if she will ever get laid again, so she falls in love with Josh.

Now Josh loves Kate. And Kate loves Josh. But Ben comes back. And he hits Josh for falling in love with Kate. Then they have a beer. And then the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. The end.

Don’t even want to go into the real politics behind that Day of Infamy, December 7, 1941, when the Japanese launched a surprise attack that wasn’t really a surprise on the American Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. God knows, director Michael Bay doesn’t.

Remember, if it weren’t for those young models in love, none of this woulda happened. Written with emotive overkill by Randall Wallace (BRAVEHEART, 1996, THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, 1998), HARBOR reminds us of TITANIC (1997), where the insufferable love story sucked all the oxygen out of the movie until James Cameron redeemed himself with that magnificent CGI boat-tipping.

Michael Bay movies are like the women I date: beautiful but stupid. Discounting the three-way pap between Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale, PEARL HARBOR’s redeeming war scenes are why we go to the movies: fictional cinematography at its best! And by that I mean, this attack is not really happening, but onscreen, with CGI, models, mattes, process shots, etc., Bay has created Real War, scrappier and more authentic than every single war movie released before 1998. Spielberg never took to the air in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998) – he still holds the crown for best ground skirmishes – it takes Michael Bay’s sweeping cranes to now claim the crown for best air-to-sea battles and best dogfights. Affleck gets to fly a Spitfire – the coolest fighter plane ever – in rampaging skirmishes that put us so square in his hot pilot’s combat seat that we can feel the sweat puddling on the backs of our patriotic thighs.

The scenes of the stealth Japanese planes flying low over American farmers and people out enjoying the world, thinking the war was in some other country, look surreal enough now – imagine how it must have looked in 1941. The thunderous grumble of amassed Zero engines splitting the rural morning, each plane loaded with one bomb each, tilting low over fields and schools, under American radar, Bay’s characteristic American Blond Kids in slow motion below them.

The Pearl Harbor attack is launched with a tracking shot of a bomb loosed from a Japanese plane down to the USS Arizona, silently falling, then exploding and actually undulating the ship like a steel snake spasming. From there, the incredible realism of old school battle is more exhilarating than walking in on Kate Beckinsale sandwiched between Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett.

Bay and cinematographer John Schwartzman have such a knack for creating iconic images that even whilst we cringe at the melodramatic slomo and hero framing of certain scenes, they wring a tear as well, with their beautifully evocative composition. The art overshadows the story.

Cuba Gooding Jr. fires a big deck gun. Tom Sizemore runs around his airfield and swears. Jon Voight shucks off his Republican idiocy to play Democratic president, FDR with great empathy. Obvious that Bay believes HARBOR to be his MIDWAY (that 1976 war epic with A-Listers piled on A-Listers: Heston, Fonda, Coburn, Mitchum, Mifune, Wagner…), as he populates his film with numerous “names” in smaller roles: Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Garner, Mako, Colm Feore, Dan Aykroyd, Ewen Bremner…

Beckinsale – ever the female double standard bearer – asks boxer/cook, Cuba Gooding Jr., “So why do you have to fight with your fists to get respect?” completely forgetting that her own boyfriend is gunning down strangers in planes to keep her respect, with his big Spitfire-shaped penis.

Kate tells Josh as he’s going off to war, “I love you and I’ll be here waiting for you when you come back.” Of course, that’s provided you don’t go MIA and my thigh twitch compels me to turn to the Next Best Thing…

Cuba looked pretty hot on that big gun…

END

That Magnificent Man and His Flying Machines.

A powerful biopic of sex, insanity and aeroplanes. In any order.

Martin Scorsese directs THE AVIATOR based loosely on the life of Howard Hughes, with Leonardo DiCaprio adequately filling the shoes and flying the skies of the eccentric billionaire. (Leo’s star status slightly distracts, as does his phony accent. Jim Carrey – originally slated for the role – would have pulled off a better visual hook; young Hughes resembled Tyrone Power more than Leo and the older mustachioed Hughes looked more like Bernie from WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S.)

Set in an era when Scarface was Paul Muni, not Al Pacino; when Hell’s Angels were the U.S. Air Force 303rd Bombardment Group, not the guys who killed Meredith Hunter at Altamont; when Jane Russell, not Pam Anderson, was the dirtiest thing on two boobs, THE AVIATOR (written by John Logan) follows Hughes from his halcyon days of filming his revolutionary WWII flying aces film, HELL’S ANGELS (which would cross over from the silent era to sound, featuring flying sequences to curl toes and splice spleens, and making its star, Jean Harlow, a household name), to his political swashbuckling with airliners and aeroplane building, to his starlet-hopping, to locking himself in his germ-free room drinking his own urine. There is probably not enough time in any feature film to encapsulate the storied misadventures of Hughes, so the breakneck plot touches on everything it can in the time allotted.

That Magnificent Cucumber in his Flying Machine

The film’s narrative flits from one vignette to another, almost as if mirroring Hughes’ creatively spasming mind: scandal over starlet’s flesh (with Ian Holm giving a grand, impromptu lecture on how much boob exposure is too much); many OCD episodes, from being unable to eat meat once an uninvited guest touches his plate, to suddenly obsessing over washing his hands and then not wanting to touch the bathroom door to exit; electronically bugging his lover’s house through jealousy; his aeroplane crash which took off tops of houses in Beverly Hills and left him crippled; his political battles over the largest plane ever built, the H4 Hercules, which flew only once in 1947, with him at the controls…

With the ultimate phallic symbol at his fingertips, is it any wonder Hughes made mile-high headlines with Ava Gardener (Kate Beckinsale – mm! lovely!), Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Jean Harlow, [insert any starlet]. We can surmise that they didn’t fall at Hughes’ feet for his looks alone, but because he could literally fly them to Paris for lunch. The movie portrays Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) as a main squeeze, when in reality she was just another fling. Her character is intimidating enough to throw Hughes momentarily, “Men can’t be friends with women – they must possess them, or leave them be.” Though she burbles truth, she can’t live by her words, as her whole ideology breaks down once she settles in as Howard’s toy.

Unable to sit still and contemplate anything wisely, Hughes’ many mental problems contributed to his diving into unfinished projects, obsessing over small details when the madness took him. He was also a racist – but pretty Leo can’t be a racist, so we never see this side of him. (Well, not until DJANGO UNCHAINED at least…)

At a party, two suspicious characters shadow Hughes, who asks his aide, “Who are those guys? Do they work for me?”

“Everybody works for you, Howard.”

Power like that is almost as beautiful as Leo himself.

END