Slashdot Mirror
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
Dolemite_the_Wiz writes "The BBC reports that Monty Python's 'Life of Brian' will be re-released, with the remaining Python troupe's full support, in US theaters next month. The Film's Distributor, Rainbow Film Company are marketing the film as an alternative to all the hype that Mel Gibson's film 'The Passion of the Christ' has generated. Trailers for the Film will begin running in theaters on Good Friday. Wait until Biggus Dickus hears about this!"
Although I seriously doubt it will be as widely popular; I am am excited about seeing this on the big screen. Great movie, even if it could be considered sacrilege...
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
Every scene in that movie is hilarious, from the shopkeeper who refuses to sell a fake beard without haggling first, to the Roman guard who insists that grafitti in the Latin language be grammatically correct.
I'm going to round up everyone I know who's never seen it and drag them to the cinema.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
All in all, mocking this movie may not be exactly appropriate as it may insult some religious people, but at least some people have the guts to say THEIR opinion of the life of Christ and the religions based on it.
(This is my 0.02$ and I hope I am not insulting anyone)
DrkBr
The thumpers finally get a film and someone has to get all opposition-like. Sheesh. Let the fairy-tale sucklers have their little MOOvie.
ObBrian: The graffiti scene is one of the greatest scenes ever filmed in movie history.
"People called Romanes they go the house?" :-)
Would a Hollywood film ever have fun with Latin?
No. In the Hollywood version, they'd have to have to words "bitch" and "ass" in the scene 50 times, and there would be at least one fart.
--- Ban humanity.
"are marketing the film as an alternative to all the hype that Mel Gibson's film 'The Passion of the Christ' has generated."
Or as a way to cash in on all the hype of 'The Passion of the Christ'. Frankly I have to say that I respect Mel Gibson for getting this movie made when no one else would but the after effect marketing, the passion of the christ pins at Books a Million, and now this is just too much. I find it sad the Monty Python would try and cash in like this. I am even a Python fan but this is just sad.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
> considering it doesn't mock Christ as much as
> some might think...
With the exception of labelling Christ a "Bloody do-gooder", there is nothing againt him at all. He is shown first in the manger, then secondly giving the sermon on the mount.
Who is does mock, however, are those factions within the church (and politics in general) who spend all their time bickering about inconsequencial differences rather than presenting a common front based on the 95% of their beliefs that co-incide.
That's why some churches are dead against it.
Still.. my favourite scene is the "romans go home" conjugation.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Social satire prgramming includes (but is certainly not limited to) shows like "The Chappelle Show", "South Park", "The Simpsons" (which is still one of the most subtle), and when it was still airing, "Futurama". It's interesting how many of these kinds of programs are animated. Is it easier to speak dangerous words when your face isn't on the screen?
For reference, the two main Marian manuscripts cited are "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ" by Anne Catherine Emmerich and "The Mystical City of God" by Saint Mary of Agreda.
If Jesus was just a clever, wise or insightful man, his entire life was essentially wasted, and on top of that he is recorded as lying about his abilities. All of the serious documentation we have available from the time (and there's a surprising amount of it) indicates that he was considerably more than that. Jesus is better documented than any of the Caesars. There's also a heck of a lot of non-literate archaeological evidence which is very difficult to explain if the canonical record is not reliable.
But in everyday life "we're all individuals" and will carry on believing what the majority tell us. "I'm not!"
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Followed by a superb "Not the Nine O'Clock News" satirical sketch: a heated debate between a devoted follower of the Church of Python and a Bishop about "The General Synod's Life of Christ" -- an obvious parody of the life of our comic messiah John Cleese -- even the initials are the same!
Does anyone have a transcript of this sketch?
For those who can't wait, there's an interview with Eric Idle [RealPlayer Audio] from yesterday's "Which Way, L.A.?" program on KCRW. Apparently, the Pythons want to cash in on the furor over "Passion of the Christ." In the interview, Eric claims he's a "lapsed anti-Catholic" and an "Alzhimer's agnostic" - great stuff!
--- Corporations Are A Fad.
It's interesting how many of these kinds of programs are animated. Is it easier to speak dangerous words when your face isn't on the screen?
;-) )
It's more flexible, which the satire can take advantage of to the hilt. On one of the Family Guy DVD commentaries, they observed how impossible the show would have been in live action, prompted by the show where Peter goes from fat slob, to thin slob, to thin, buff man, back to fat man in the course of half an hour. (Obviously you can fatten up an actor artificially, but the other direction is too violent to use for a TV show, and you certainly couldn't get them back to fat in one show's taping time.)
Cartoon Nixon on Futurama is funnier then the real thing or an actor playing Nixon could ever have been. (On one of the Futurama commentaries, Matt Groening says when he was a kid he always dreamed of doing something to make fun of Nixon; he never dreamt how successful Nixon-mocking would be 25 years later...
Yes, I listen to the commentaries. Best part sometimes.
A year ago i went to a christian school. I am not a christian myself, but all of the teachers were. The most fanatic teacher of them all were asked if we could see "Life of Brian" in religion class. Surprisingly enhough he answered "I really love that movie, but I dont dare to show it in class, since I may get reactions from the other teachers".
this is probably the most boring sig in the world
I've always thought "The Life Of Brian" was a parody of the radical 60's political movement. Brian joined the Jewish underground because he's attracted to a girl, not because he really cares about politics. They plot meaningless proganda attacks against the Romans, and argue with splinter factions. I tought the aquaduct and "why can't men have babies" scenes where priceless.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
It amazed me at the time that there were so many supposed christians campagning against the most christian film I had ever seen. LoB manages to be very humane and also very positive towards christianity, not an easy combination to pull off.
The big biblical epics took more liberties with christianity than LoB did (compressing events and so on). Things I have read about Gibson's film indicates he does too.
I presume we are in for a good summer of weirdoes and loonies complaining about LoB and praising Gibson. I do home sometime I see one of these people pinned down and asked to name where exactly the pythons clash with scripture.
Just because the gospels don't mention the space battle, that doesn't mean it didn't happen!
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Re-releasing makes perfect sense if you can make money off of it. If a movie came out a generation ago (which Life of Brian did) then that's a whole generation in the original target demographic that didn't see it in the theaters, most of whom never saw it at all.
Frankly I wish they'd re-release more good old movies. It would cut down on the embarassingly crappy remakes, and hopefully cut back on the number of crappy movies made yearly as well since they'd have some stiff competition. Film festivals just don't have the critical mass and eyeball coverage that a wide re-release does.
Personally I rarely watch anything more than once, and if I do it's generally many many years apart. So buying DVDs/videos doesn't make any sense to me in the first place. I rent or see it in the theaters.
As for The Passion, Mel Gibson has cleverly made a film that people go to as an act of faith. He'll be making money hand over fist on this film for years if not decades to come. People don't even have to enjoy it, they just have to feel like seeing it makes them pious. Because if you haven't seen The Passion you're not a good Christian.
So here's the real question - what will be re-released next year around easter as counterprogramming to the re-release of The Passion of The Christ? And the next? And will this lead to more companies re-releasing old films in theaters?
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Get your theology straight! God uses multiple inhieritance to bring together the father, the son, and the holy spirit!
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Does it occure to you that Mel Gibson might have been just as innaccurate in Bravehart and The Patriot, as he was in The Passion of Christ? Its just he's found a different group of people to be innaccurate about this time. For one thing, he has his soldiers speaking Latin, when that part of the Roman Empire was Greek speaking. 5 minutes reading the introduction to Mark's Gospel Pocket Edition (let alone checking his facts with a real historian) would have told him that.
Regardless of how good or bad the Passion is, the churchies are going quite nuts over it. There are groups doing drives to raise money to buy tickets and to try and convince people to go. That is just silly. They aren't liking it because it's a good movie, they like it because it's about Jesus and so they feel they are SUPPOSED to like it.
Well, this is a poke back at that. I mean people (probably the same people doing the Passion drives) just VILLIFIED The Life of Brian when it came out because it dared to make fun of the church. They ignored any merits of the movie and hated it simply because they were supposed to hate it since it made fun of the church.
Oh, I don't know, I think being drawn and quartered would be worse. Actually, I don't know how you can say crucifixtion is any worse than most of the toys in a medieval torture chamber.
But I'm not a christian...
Well, he did vanish from Palestine for quite a few years (some say over a decade), then came back no longer a zealot (in the classical sense of the word) but rather a humanist philosopher. It seems that he had also learned healing techniques and remedies.
Since he was most certainly fleeing the romans, it would have made sense for him to go East, not West. He could easily followed the Silk road to India, and have been exposed to Buddhism while there (in addition to learning magic tricks and medical secrets).
Of course, all of this is just a bunch of supposition, but we don't have much more to go on when studying the "historical" Jesus.
Reminder: find a new sig
If I remember correctly, (it's been a while since I've seen the movie) the "christ-figure" was not actually a religious leader, but was assumed to be a "christ" by to general populace.
I don't think this is really heretical, but rather an illustation of how easily people will believe anything religious teachers will tell them, and even some things they don't tell them!
I went to a baptist school...
DATA comments; PROC SORT DATA = comments BY score; PROC DELETE comments >> 1; RUN; DATA entertainment SET commen
Could you please provide us some links to any of this great corpus of literature you allure to?
As far as I understand it, there isn't a single piece of historcial literature where Jesus was ever mentioned. You can find a summary of historical evidence here, or read a detailed account Truth About Jesus, The : Is He a Myth?, available as Gutenberg etext #6107.
Mohammed's life makes a great comedy. He married an older women for money. He became a used camel dealer. He had a favorite slave girl, Zaid. Then he went into religion around age 40. For years, he was considered a nutcase. Somehow, he and his followers managed to take over Medina, after which he started invading and conquering neighboring countries.
Visualize the Python version of that. It would drive the Islamic world nuts. But it would be worth it. Make sure it gets on satellite TV and file-sharing networks, so Arab kids see it. In most of the Islamic world, kids are forced to OD on religion, because the religious types run the schools. It's like the Dark Ages in Europe.
The last major film about Islam, Mohammed, Messenger of God, was way too respectful. It doesn't even show the face of Mohammed (played by Anthony Quinn), to respect Islamic tradition. The Saudis use it as a training film. It was pulled from US theaters in 1976 after threats from people we'd today call terrorists. Today, the US wouldn't back down.
The problem with Tough Crowd is that Quinn (a) isn't really all that funny; and (b) uses the show to argue a conservative point of view against his guests, who are typically much funnier and more liberal than him. The show can be funny when he lets his guests speak long enough to deliver their punchlines, but too often it's just him trying to make a point about something.
I mean, it's obvious that Comedy Central wanted a show with a conservative bent to follow the generally liberal Daily Show. There's nothing wrong with that, but the man they chose for it takes it as his personal mission. If it weren't so cheap (any comic with career issues will come on, and lots of comics owe favors to Comedy Central), I'm sure they'd just cut it. What kind of ratings can it get anyway?
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Of course they do which I'll get to. It's funny though that you sound like some Christians I know when you say that
You are putting words in my post that weren't there. I never said that Jesus wasn't a historical person. What I said was "myth" was the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There are lots of more mundane reasons for being unable to produce Jesus's body, such as the followers stealing it and hiding it where the authorities couldn't find it.
Sorry about that - unintended. OK, so we're agreed Jesus was a historical figure who was executed for blasphemy during a Passover sometime in the early first century AD. We differ on whether he rose from the dead or not.
The problem is your "more mundane explanations" are much harder to defend given the evidence we have - especially the "followers stole the body" theory.
Instead, they suddenly appeared at a festival which has attracted righteous Jews from all over the area and preach that it was all part of God's plan that Jesus should die and rise again. Not only that but they claimed boldly and comprehensively how he is the Messiah who was promised in the writings they all know so well.
Did Jesus really say he was the Messiah? That is a debate that biblical scholars are still having today.
Yeah - he was executed for it.
Most of that came from John, which is by far the most "out there" of the Gospels w.r.t. earthly vs. supernatural events.
Not really. John only records seven miracles of Jesus - the least of all the gospels - because, and I paraphrase, "Jesus did all sorts of other things which would take all the books in the world to write down. I've carefully selected these ones in my account to show you who he was so that you might believe in him."
The whole point of Occam's Razor is that you don't accept the extraordinary (read supernatural) explanations (e.g. resurrection, reincarnation, alien abduction) if there are more mundane explanations that explain the facts.
That's a subtle and disingenuous misreading of the principle. Occam's razor says "of two competing theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred."
(from here)
So our two competing explanations are (if I have yours right - if not please correct me):
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Actually, the best geological explanation I've seen is the flooding of the Black Sea basin. There used to be a big lake down there until the passage breached and let the Mediterranean in.
h ttp://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/news/story9 _1.html
The archaeologists have actually down excavations down there and found "tells" under the sea on the old water line (belonging to the lake). This is a pretty good fit for the biblical flood given both it's scope and it's proximity to Babylon where the story could easily be brought by migrants, refugees and traders.
http://www.trinicenter.com/WorldNews/noah.htm
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
===---===
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
It wasn't necessarily exaggerated based on what is written in the Bible and what is historically known and documented about Roman practices. All of the gospels mention that Jesus was scourged then crucified. This was actually a common practice and scourging was brutal and has been documented as often leaving the flesh hanging in shreds. Whether this is exactly what happened to Jesus we don't know but it's a reasonable interpretation. Scourging could be performed using a range of implements and under Roman law would be limited to 40 blows, probably 39 incase they miscounted. So although it has never been emphasized in any other movies it is there in the bible and that is pretty much the source of the story the movie is telling, most of the gospels have no detail on the execution except John and he doesn't give any detail about the scourging. So you're left to interpret the events based on what is known historically about the practice.
There's actually a triumvirate of "rational" religious beliefs: atheism, agnosticism, and deism. All three say that, by looking at the world in an impartial manner, it is clear that there (is not/may be/is) some divine figure. Deism isn't very popular anymore, but many of the founding fathers of the US were Deist (there's a reason that they "hold these truths to be self evident").
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
...and to quote the imdb:
This film was initially banned in Norway for blasphemy. It wasn't released there until 1980. Subsequently, it has been marketed in Sweden as "The film that is so funny that it was banned in Norway!"
Je n'ai pas d'avenir Je n'ai qu'un destin Celui de n'être qu'un souvenir C'est pour demain