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The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus 16-Ton Megaset
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 136
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
Fantastic! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.
You're not a true Python fan until this is in your collection! I have waited three years for a price reduction. Amazon heard my pleas. Well worth the wait!
It's........... AWESOME. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.
What a deal! I've been pining for (the fijords) this DVD set for years, and when I saw that it was only $40, I had to jump on it. The Pythons are the Beatles of comedy, and this set is spectacular. The menus are great; you can watch whole episodes, or pick just the skits. There's all kinds of trivia too. The bonus features include the Hollywood Bowl performance, and a reunion special from Aspen ten years ago. I am so happy to finally have this amazing series in my collection, along with the Python movies.
Editorial Review:
14 discs of the complete monty pythons flying circus packed with every episode from the series 4 year run 2 additional discs filled with legendary live performances the 20 years of python retrospective hosted by steve martin the pythons 1st all german episode & more! Studio: A&e Home Video Release Date: 09/27/2005 Run time: 1749 minutes
The Complete Monty Pythons Flying Circus - Collectors Edition Megaset
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Total reviews: 8
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Dead Parrot, Silly Walks, Cheese Shop and More... 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 12 people found this review helpful.
"Monty Python's Flying Circus" was created in 1969 by the BBC as Britain's response to "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In," the NBC show that was enjoying huge ratings at the time. The Monty Python troupe consisted of Cambridge and Oxford graduates John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin. American-born Terry Gilliam provided the show's surreal animated sequences, which were interspersed among the skits.
"The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus Collector's Edition" is a massive, 21-disc box set containing every episode of the show's four-season run. The series is uneven and has its share of misfires, but when the comedy lands, the skits are hilarious. The "Ministry of Silly Walks" hangs on the long-legged Cleese's unbridled lunacy in high-stepping around the office, making methodical turns with precisely looney leg contortions and never skipping a beat delivering the dialogue. The skit is slapstick performed magnificently, and it's hard not to break up watching it.
"The Cheese Shop" also features Cleese, this time as a customer trying to order a bit of cheese from proprietor Jones only to be told, after requesting by name every type of cheese on the face of the earth, that it is either sold out, no longer available, not carried, or on order. Watching Cleese go from mild annoyance to apoplexy is a riot. Other highlights include the "Dead Parrot," the lumberjack song, and "The Spanish Inquisition."
The set also contains "Monty Python Live," a collection bringing together nearly 30 years of live performances, including the vintage 1972 "Live at the Hollywood Bowl," the 1998 reunion "Live at Aspen, 20 Years of Python," and the original 1972 "Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus #1" rare German episode. In addition, there are are six mini-documentaries in the "Monty Python's Personal Best Collection," with songs and sketches from the entire series. There are two new documentaries chronicling how the Monty Python team was born that feature interviews with the Pythons, rare vintage photos, and home movies. The set is also chock full of bonus features that take the viewer behind the scenes, offering insight into how comedy routines are created and developed.
Editorial Review:
Studio: A&e Home Video Release Date: 11/18/2008
The Personal Best of Monty Python's Flying Circus
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Editorial Review:
Monty Python is not a man. Monty Python is six men. Consisting of British actors Graham Chapman John Cleese Eric Idle Terry Jones Michael Palin and American Terry Gilliam the hugely influential comedy troupe evolved from Cambridge University's Footlight Society in the late 1960s in order to become one of the most worshipped comedy acts of all time. Groundbreaking both in terms of its offbeat acting style and radical approach to the most controversial taboo subjects (including sex race and politics) the legendary series MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS would forever change the face of sketch comedy. After the series' demise the unit would go on to create several big screen classics including MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL and MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN as well as spawning major Hollywood careers for its members (most notably Gilliam director of THE FISHER KING and TWELVE MONKEYS). This release includes some of the best episodes from the show.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 733961761689 Manufacturer No: AAE-76168
Monty Python's Flying Circus: Set 1, Episodes 1-6
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
Editorial Review:
In 1969, five overeducated British comics and an American illustrator invaded the homes of unsuspecting BBC viewers with a brand of comedy that was, at the very least, odd. "Absurd," "bizarre," and "incomprehensible" are other descriptions that jump to mind. Nonetheless, this wacky sextet inaugurated an absurd tradition that continued through three and a half seasons of half-hour TV episodes, a series of live performances, a handful of movies, and a legacy of dead parrots and upper-class twits. Monty Python's Flying Circus, Set 1 features the first episodes foisted on a still-reeling public, introducing running gags ("And now for something completely different") and recurring characters (an armor-clad Terry Gilliam wielding a rubber chicken, Graham Chapman's pompous Colonel intruding on sketches he deems simply too silly, and of course Michael Palin's "It's a Man" wandered through the entire season). Among the sketch highlights in the first three shows are Nudge Nudge, the Funniest Joke in the World, How to Defend Yourself from a Man Attacking You with Fresh Fruit, Confuse a Cat, and The Dull Life of a City Stockbroker, all interspersed with various and sundry cut-out animation sequences by Terry Gilliam. These early episodes may lack the consistency and stream-of-consciousness flow of their later, more assured work, but they're packed with some of the most memorable moments of the group's brief but brilliant history. --Sean Axmaker
Monty Python's Flying Circus: Set 2, Episodes 7-13
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18
Average rating: 5.0 of 5
Editorial Review:
Michael Palin, haggard and exhausted under a scraggly beard and wild hair, crawls out of the ocean (or the forest or a side of a mountain) and croaks the now-infamous "It's...." Suddenly, the "Liberty Bell" march pounds over the cut-out animation of Terry Gilliam. It's another episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. No comedy has inspired such a fanatical following before or since, and the 45 episodes turned out by the group in their all-too-brief three and a half seasons have become classics. This set presents the final seven episodes of their inaugural season, a time of trial and error for the group as they perfected the elusive free-association structure that would define the wacky comedy. Connecting such all-time classics as the Lumberjack Song, the Dead Parrot sketch, and the epic Science Fiction sketch (featuring the tennis mad Blancmanges from outer space) are the ubiquitous letters to the BBC, Terry Gilliam's whimsical and ridiculous animated inserts, and John Cleese announcing, "And now for something completely different" with all the authority of a BBC announcer who suddenly finds his news desk hijacked by mobsters. The Pythons hit their first-season stride in the middle episodes, in which brilliant sketches and strange and wonderful linking gags come together with an absurd logic, but if the final episodes of the series flag compared to their comic peak, their brand of comic madness infects every episode with moments of pure lunatic magic. --Sean Axmaker
Monty Python Live
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 34
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Live at the Hollywood Bowl + Extras 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.
If you're a Python fan, you've probably seen all their TV episodes and their major feature films. This two-DVD set collects material you probably haven't seen, namely their concert film "Live at the Hollywood Bowl" and their early 1970s appearance on German television.
"Hollywood Bowl" is a true treat from the middle 1970s. By this time, Monty Python were bonafide celebrities and it's a thrill to see them perform so many of their best sketches in front of a live and supportive audience. I greatly prefer their performances here to their earlier renditions on their TV show - like all great teams they had gotten better with both experience and time. All the Pythons are especially self-confident as performers here, and as a bonus we have a couple of musical numbers courtesy of Neil Innes. I especially enjoyed the irreverent sketch where John Cleese plays the Pope.
The German Episode hasn't aged nearly as well. There's some good material (especially a mock-documentary about Albrecht Durer) but it's hampered by poor video quality. Honestly, the entire thing looks like it was filmed in Super 8 and the constant subtitling doesn't help matters. It looks like a third generation bootleg. The best of the sequences also appear (in considerably higher quality) in "Hollywood Bowl." You do get "The Lumberjack Song" sung in German, however. And it is a kick hearing Graham Chapman speak German with a thick American accent.
The remainder of the discs contain "20 Years of Monty Python," a greatest-hits style program hosted by Steve Martin, and a group interview conducted by Robert Klein. It's fun for completists.
Still, "Hollywood Bowl" is the real draw and its a pleasure to see it on a reasonably priced DVD with extras.
Editorial Review:
Studio: A&e Home Video Release Date: 10/22/2002 Run time: 225 minutes Rating: Nr
The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus Megaset
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 120
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
Editorial Review:
While more cautious fans may want to pick and choose among the previously released individual volumes of Monty Python for their collection, true Pythonites will want to own this definitive, 14-volume DVD-only boxed set that contains all 45 episodes (in chronological order) of Monty Python's Flying Circus. This "persistently silly" collection encompasses three-and-a-half seasons of dead parrots, cross-dressing lumberjacks, loonies, upper class twits, and spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, and spam. Click past the occasional clunker and go directly to such signature sketches as the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Spanish Inquisition, the Fish-Slapping Dance, the Dead Parrot Sketch, the Lumberjack Song, the Cheese Shop, the Argument Clinic, and Nudge, Nudge. Taken as a whole, one marvels at how Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam thoroughly subverted television convention with "something completely different," like sketches with no punch lines ("Your average TV viewer isn't going to understand this").A warning to the uninitiated: there is much "material that some may find offensive, but which is really smashing." Violations of something called the "Strange Sketch Act" are the least of the troupe's offenses, as witness the Oscar Wilde Sketch, the Dirty Vicar Sketch, and the Most Awful Family in Britain Sketch, all of which achieve "the really gross awfulness" all Python fans are looking for. Say no more. --Donald Liebenson
Monty Python's Flying Circus - Set 7 (Epi. 40-45)
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
Editorial Review:
Don't expect the Spanish Inquisition in these six episodes from the fourth--and final--half-season of Monty Python's Flying Circus. By this time (1974), John Cleese had departed. His absence is keenly felt, but Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam--with invaluable assist from Carol Cleveland, Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), and songwriter Neil Innes--pick up the slack with some of the most surreal material Python ever produced. Like the third season's Cycling Tour, several of these episodes, including The Golden Age of Ballooning, Michael Ellis (set mostly in a very silly department store), and Mr. Neutron, are extended, near-program-length sketches. But there are memorable bits throughout: some indecipherable RAF Banter ("Bally Jerry hanged his kite right in the how's-your-father"); a Hamlet tired of people wanting him to recite "To Be or Not to Be"; a parade of bogus psychiatrists; a doctor whose nurse keeps stabbing, shooting, or garroting his patients; and The Most Awful Family in Britain competition, which achieves "the really gross awfulness that we're looking for." These episodes do not loom large in the Python legend, except perhaps as the basis for a lawsuit the troupe filed in 1975 against ABC, which aired them during late night in severely tampered-with versions. While, literally speaking, no Monty Python collection is complete without this boxed set, initiates are bound to watch these episodes with a disappointed, "Well, what's all this then?" --Donald Liebenson
Monty Python's Flying Circus: Set 3, Episodes 14-19
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Total reviews: 8
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
Editorial Review:
What do you do for an encore after confounding the general public with something completely different? Simple: give them something more completely different, from a semaphore version of Wuthering Heights to the last meeting of the Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things (you were expecting the Spanish Inquisition?). This two-volume set contains for the first time on DVD in chronological order the first six episodes from Monty Python's second season. No sophomore slump here. Episodes 14-19, which originally aired in 1970, contain the signature Python sketches The Ministry of Silly Walks and The Spanish Inquisition. Also in the Python pantheon are the documentary about The Piranha Brothers and their reign of violence and sarcasm, The Architect Sketch, and the scandalous game show Blackmail. While the sketches, filmed bits, and Terry Gilliam animations are enduringly silly, Monty Python's Flying Circus remains a loony marvel in the way it shattered television convention. In Episode 15, a clueless Graham Chapman character is recruited to be the straight man in a sketch, but is not given the punch line. In the same show, the dreaded, but tardy, Spanish Inquisition races to make its entrance before the closing credits run their course. All three volumes are indispensable for Python completists. --Donald Liebenson
Monty Python's Personal Best Six-Pack
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Total reviews: 4
Average rating: 3.5 of 5
Editorial Review:
John Cleese's Personal Best
For more than 40 years, John Cleese has made millions--nay, billions--of fans laugh themselves into a state of near incontinence.But have you ever asked yourself, "What makes John Cleese laugh?" You haven't, have you, you selfish git? Well, for once in your life think about someone else and pick up this copy of JOHN CLEESE'S PERSONAL BEST. It's chock full of Python bits selected by The Great Cleese himself, plus original never-before-seen material created by The Magnificent One exclusively for this sacred DVD.
Graham Chapman's Personal Best
Some say you can't take it with you. Others just refuse to go. Graham Chapman--doctor, tall actor, self-wrestler and really famous dead guy--is the latter.Chapman has a least 8 movie and TV appearances to his credit since he passed away in 1989, making him the most prolific corpse since Elvis. This DVD, GRAHAM CHAPMAN'S PERSONAL BEST, makes 9. In a comprehensive tribute written by the 5 other members of the incomparable Monty Python's Flying Circus, this program includes the sketches they believe Chapman would have called his very favorites. Of course, they could be wrong.
Eric Idle's Personal Best
Eric Idle--the outrageously successful actor, writer, composer, director, producer and Broadway impresario--is not satisfied yet.Determined to reshape the entire entertainment world in his image, Eric has gathered what he considers to be the very best Monty Python material of the entire four-year run and squeezed it all into one convenient package. This one. He's even created all-new, never-before-seen material exclusively for this DVD.
It's amazing what some zillionaire mega-stars will do for a few extra shillings, isn't it?
Terry Jones' Personal Best
Terry Jones--writer, director, actor, political satirist, polymath genius--still can't figure out what he wants to do with his life. So he's back to bother us.Between attempts to save the free world, Mr. "'I can't make up my ginormous mind" Jones has scrutinized the entire four-year run of Flying Circus and pretty much taken credit for all of it. Herein lie His Majesty's picks of the very best Python Sketches along with incontrovertible new evidence that it was all his doing.
So pour yourself a glass of sherry and join Terry at the piano for a silly walk down memory lane which he calls, "How I Created Monty Python's Flying Circus."
Terry Gilliam's Personal Best
Terry Gilliam--the disturbed American animator who shifted Monty Python from "very strange" all the way to "totally bizarre"--has finally snapped.From Baron Munchausen to Time Bandits to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, no project has challenged Gilliam's unstable mind like this one: building an entirely new Monty Python experience out of the best pieces of the entire four-year Flying Circus run. The results, in this tiny unassuming package, are truly devastating.
Brace yourself for the first-ever, ALL-ANIMATION Monty Python program--exactly as Gilliam would have done it if the BBC were crazy enough to put him in charge.
Michael Palin's Personal Best
Michael Palin--globe-trotting adventurer and "Comedian's Comedian"--has somehow managed to sit still just long enough to put together his compilation of the very best of MONTY PYTHON.Of course, the perpetually peripatetic Palin found it impossible to resist a bit of free travel, so he has courteously included an all-new, never-before-seen retrospective visit to the site of the notorious Fish-Slapping Dance.
And because he's the nice Python, Michael Palin has included, on this very disc, the world-famous Cheese Shop Sketch. Let's hear it for Michael! Huzzah.