Tag Archives: film

And now for a momentous occasion

Yes, it was a momentous occasion yesterday. For the people of my generation (that would be the generation that is old and decrepit), Yesterday it was the 50th anniversary of Monty Python. I got told this by the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250407-how-monty-python-and-the-holy-grail-became-a-comedy-legend). I completely forgot that it had been so long. I was there, in front of my TV when the birth of Monty Python was shown to us on a 4:3 screen and I saw it on a black and white TV. Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle and Michael Palin with additions from Terry Gilliam showed us a totally new concept in Television. They called it comedy and it was magnificent. 

OK, I have to make a slight adjustment. It was 50 years since their masterpiece Monty Python and the holy grail came out. The TV series are older. Still, we forget the larger picture. The movie made them globally funny, the TV was (in those days) often limited to Europe (mainly UK, Netherlands, Belgium) but the movie made them a global household name. These younger pups think that comedy comes from some guy named Steve Carell, what do they know? Apparently a marketeer from Dutch Barn disagrees, but I have no idea what that is about. And now that idea might never have worked, there is word that the youthful young Jim Halpert played by John Krasinsky was taken to a quiet place by his wife, so that’s that. And what do those people know? Monty Python was here first and it was magnificent. I remember those days. I was one year too young for the movie (14 years and older) but I became a knight who said ‘ni’ as well. I saw it a year later and it was magnificent. Of course I already knew Monty Python from TV and as such The TV characters were known to me but yesterday’s article brought it all back to the surface. Read it, it is a really good article. For one, I never knew that funding was a bit of a problem and the legendary band Led Zeppelin brought the bread to the table. We get from Michael Palin: “I say to people, ‘Led Zeppelin gave us £50,000 – and look where they are now.’” Apparently Pink Floyd also aided in the support of the movie. And it was money well spend. I still have the movie on DVD (I had the VHS tape as well) and it was the beginning of a great comedy movie franchise. And the setting of “the film’s budget was less than £300,000 ($393,000). This wasn’t much for a sweeping fantasy set in medieval Britain, so the team had to be inventive.” The realisation that that little money got a movie made that is still a character a timeless humor is to be revered. A movie that is hopefully still bringing in the pounds, shillings and dimes and it would have been doing that for 50 years. Today the average comedy like Evan Almighty is almost forgotten after 20 years, I enjoyed that movie and several other from him, he is a good actor, but the setting of 50 years is something completely different. It matters, and it brought a nice dish to the table. In the end the actor who played the Rabbit of Caerbannog was later served as Rabbit au vin and he was completely forgotten 2 days later, except for the eater, who caught indigestion for at least a week. Things happen.

Still, this milestone brings feelings to the surface, happy feelings and it was brought about by 7 youthful young individuals that went on shaping the stage of comedy. Later Terry Gilliam would blow my socks away with Time Bandits, Brazil, and later “12 monkeys” with Bruce Willis. 

Happy are feelings of those who bring is joy and the Monty Python team brought us a lot, including the thought that every sperm is sacred, so ladies don’t forget. 

Have a great day and if you haven’t seen Monty Python and the holy grail, try to see it this week, it will be the best thing you will have done all week.

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Reinvention

That is the thought of the day. We all reinvent ourselves. Shakespeare was reinvented several times through Hamlet in movies and plays. I particularly liked the version with Ethan Green Hawke. I liked the approach of an adaptation that kept the Shakespearean dialogue but presents a more modern setting, with technology such as video cameras, Polaroid cameras, and surveillance bugs. It makes for an amazing view in a new setting. I like it because someone took the trouble of reinventing the play, not merely the stage of the play, but reinventing the concept of the wheel. I like that. We can have version after version but when you make the car it drives a hovercraft it becomes something else entirely. Who would have guessed that the series I loved as a kid (Battlestar Galactica) could become the stuff of legends by Ron Moore. He pulled it off. What was just a decent dreary thing kids loved would become the version adults would revere. Lorne Greene was the version we adored when we were young and was decades later replaced by Edward James Olmos. The lieutenant that stood standing next to Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas became the stuff of legends as he gave greatness as William Adama (callsign “Husker”). Reinvention does that and as I see it, I gave the BlueRay a 96% rating, one of the highest rating I ever gave a TV series. As such reinvention is key to decades of entertainment. It enabled me to create the movie ‘How to Assassinate a politician’ (aka ‘Essay’). From there I started the stage of Residuam Vitam a miniseries where death is the central player and the views we have becomes altered in the hands of 8 billion, but only after people die. And the stage of Atheism becomes a new player, being it a tender one. So when we set the stage of history it becomes another matter. That let me to the beginning of us all. Erich Anton Paul von Däniken, the  Swiss author of The Gods Were Astronauts and he was not wrong. The origin of the Greek gods was just that and they came from the Sombrero galaxy (galaxy M104). I explore that in Kenos Diastima and it forms in me as a TV series (three seasons). Where it is not merely what we look like, it sets the stage of how we are set up. This rotates in another direction as Engonos the later series. Engonos translating as ‘Grandson’ where the first season was the view that he has, the second season shows us where it still is about the gods and the third season (for now) is shaped as the hidden trap the gods set for all of us and the hidden levers they set up their own system to never be held to any kind of account. So how is that seen when they are themselves their own creators?

Reinvention is key in all of this. I tried to ‘sell’ the script of ‘How to assassinate a politician’ to Dubai Media (as islam is centre in all of this) then I also tried to approach Saudi Broadcasting Authority (SBA) and I can report with saddened intonation that I was unsuccessful. This media is not my stage. I created stories and I create what could be seen as dialogue. I believed that there was an islamic market for people, especially as islamophobia becomes an overwhelming issue and I personally believe that these idiots and morons hiding behind ‘Free Palestine’ to destroy anything they can like cheap Football Hooligans and soon that setting will grow tired on too many people and we get new fields of malice and destruction. In that I felt that I was able to corner a new market and with the Dutch politician Geert Wilder (before he became Prime minister of the Netherlands) I saw a story emerge where Arabic children saw their way to wrote him to death and we see his demise five times over. The setting where a movie was played in Dammam, Amsterdam and The Hague helped as I saw that this had never been done before. No matter how you reinvent things, it helps for the stage to be new and largely unknown to the watching audience. I thought I saw an option. However Dubai media and the Saudi Broadcasting Authority seemingly did not see it that way. My view was a story that appealed to millions of Islamic viewers and they? Perhaps they saw an immature script. That part is speculative as they never gave me any feedbacks (other than we have other projects running). 

You see reinvention also sets you up for two settings. The ego of others and the ego of self. The ego of others is what it is. You can cry, you can sulk and this setting merely is. The ego of self is different. It wants to believe in self, but the truth is that it also needs criticism of self to endure and see the brighter life of what could be. This is what I see in Hamlet (2000) and Battlestar Galactica (2004) they did more then endure. They reinvented themselves in more ways and we all enjoyed what came from that. The only thing I can do is to reinvent more and more. Games, stories, movies and ideas. I particularly like to reinvent in a different format. What was a scrolling game could be an sandbox RPG, what was a book could become a movie with a difference and there are other ways too. The idea in one form could be reinvented in other forms because it attracts a new audience. Look at Star Trek it went from the original series into the next generation and now there is Strange New Worlds. Yet for the most it attracts the same audience. That can be an option. To grow from the original audience to include a larger audience. This is what was achieved with Picard and it was an amazing achievement. But it is not a trajectory I am on (and I have no starting audience). Still the boundaries of reinvention are vast and there are so many corners to see. I merely hope that I find a corner that will find appeal to an audience.

All this looks nice (and academic) but there is a hidden corner is any creator (in me too). It is the setting of the imperfect creator hypothesis. It is what it is. The only way around that is to reinvent the reinvention. I sets the value of imperfection at bay but it also creates more doubt in self. A vicious circle to say the least. But any creator loves the battle that goes on inside ones self. The stage of creation and doubt goes on an on and perhaps at some point I will see one of my creations become a reality. 

Have a great day and seek the sunlight if you can. Not really an option in Vancouver, but in Sydney it was 30 degrees today with full sun during this day.

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