News and Notes
Commentary From the Editors
Friday, October 16, 2009
The Pythons, Then and Now
The members of Monty Python's Flying Circus (with part-time Python Carol Cleveland) at last night's 40th anniversary show in New York City...
...and in 1971 while filming the movie And Now For Something Completely Different.
Top photo, from left: John Cleese, Terry Jones, Cleveland, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Michael Palin.
Next photo, from left: Idle, Graham Chapman (who died in 1989), Palin, Cleese, Jones, Gilliam.
As an aside: Graham Chapman died of cancer on 4 October 1989, just one day before the 20th anniversary of the first Monty Python broadcast. Terry Jones called it "the worst case of party-pooping I've ever seen."
Cleese went Jones one better with his eulogy, saying jokingly of Chapman, "Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard! I hope he fries."
Labels: Carol Cleveland, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Monty Python, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 7:48 AM0 comments 
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Weird New Images From Heath Ledger's Last Film
Heath Ledger was filming a movie when he died: not Batman but The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, the latest hallucinatory (and typically cursed) project from Monty Python alumnus Terry Gilliam.How hallucinatory? New photos below.
The flick was described this way at Cannes:
Dr. Parnassus with his extraordinary travelling show "The Imaginarium" offers to members of the audience an irresistible opportunity to enter their universe of imaginations and wonders, by passing through a magical mirror. But Dr. Parnassus is cursed with a dark secret. An inveterate gambler, thousands of years ago he made a bet with the devil, Mr. Nick, in which he won immortality. Centuries later, on meeting his one true love, Dr. Parnassus made another deal with the devil, trading his immortality for youth, on condition that when his daughter reached her 16th birthday, she would become the property of Mr. Nick. Now it is time to pay the price.Tom Waits, incidentally, plays the Devil.
Ledger had the lead (but not the title role -- that's Christopher "Captain Von Trapp" Plummer) and his death threw the devil's monkey wrench into production.
Gilliam solved things by casting three actors to replace Ledger: Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law. They share the role with Ledger, his character now a shape-shifter in the mode of Dr. Who and his many incarnations. The film's due out this fall.
An un-cursed aside: Depp, Farrell and Law donated their pay to Ledger's daughter Matilda.
See still more photos of Parnassus/Ledger.
(Images supplied by WENN.)
Labels: Christopher Plummer, Colin Farrell, Dr. Parnassus, Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, Posthumidity, Terry Gilliam
Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 7:39 AM1 comments
