"It was then that Delirium noticed that she had absentmindedly transformed herself into a hundred and eleven perfect, tiny, multicolored fish." — Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones
A bunch of funny people on what Monty Python means to them.
If you’re wondering what Monty Python — and maybe more so the the Penn State Monty Python Society — means to me, you could do worse than to check out an essay I wrote at the end of my tenure with the Society back in 2004, “One Life, Furnished in Early Python.”
Video via Mark Evanier.
Why I love Bruce Campbell:
“I would rather disappoint with a brand new original movie.”
“If your hero is smart, you can have good bad guys, because your bad guys can be smart.”
“The difference between my fans and Tom Cruise’s fans is that no one is tattooing Risky Business on their back.”
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First, some links. It’s amazing how these things will accumulate, isn’t it? |
On Saturday, I watched the original Dawn of the Dead. I’d rented it once before, years back, but for some reason never actually watched it. I’m very familiar with, but have never actually watched any of George Romero’s zombie movies before this.
It’s a really interesting movie — although, as Romero himself acknowledges on the DVD commentary, not a particularly frightening one. There’s more dark humor and social commentary than there are real scares. That’s not to detract from the film; those are precisely the things that have made it such an enduring classic, and arguably the quintessential film of the genre.
I definitely intend to watch Romero’s other zombie films. Although purists may be dismayed to learn that I’m also interested in seeing the 2004 Dawn remake.
As if their joke — it was a joke, right? — body spray wasn’t weird enough, now Burger King wants you to ditch your friends for food. Friendship is fleeting, but the Whopper’s flame-broiled empty calories are forever. [via]
As to the body spray, Burger King might be interested in a recent study that suggests it’s not how you smell, but how confident thinking you smell good can make you. [via]
Then again, as Maureen F. McHugh says, “I am willing to be convinced that food could be a fragrance….But fast food? It’s a terrifying world.”
“Sometimes the best laid plans have been known to go astray”
– John Mellencamp, “Sometimes a Great Notion”
So last week’s Battlestar Galactica, which I’ve finally watched, was pretty much exactly what I expected. (Spoiler warnings in effect.)
Not the specific twists and plot developments — which still seem mostly like unearned shocks and melodrama — but the overall feel and my reaction to it. Like just about all BSG episodes in recent memory, this was an intense (and sometimes very bleak) hour of television that afforded the actors some interesting scenes and suggested some not uninteresting things to come. (Or to have come again, if the cyclical nature of History is really what the show’s all about.) But narratively, it’s kind of a mess, betraying a lot of the same problems that have weighed down the show since at least season 3 — and which have likely been present from the very beginning.
I think my opinion of the show falls somewhere between Gerry Canavan and Abigail Nussbaum’s (links above). By no means have I lost all faith in Battlestar, and at this point I’ll continue to watch to the very end, but I didn’t see anything in “Sometimes a Great Notion” to suggest the last of the series will be less problematic or frustrating than what’s come before.
“And my heart, it lies at the bottom of the ocean”
– John Mellencamp, “Sometimes a Great Notion”