http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1-NpyaOWV0
Easily one of my favorite sketches Python ever did. It’s really the sudden burst of madness that I think draws me to it. Though what I love most might be their uncompromising dedication to utterly bizarre juxtaposition. The very well-to-do, and proper British upper class meets a scenario in which their limbs inexplicably are detached from their bodies. Heaven.
Even more wonderful is perhaps the notion that Robert Hewsion cited this sketch for his book “Monty Python - The Case Against!”
I wish this were real life.
I Didn’t Forget About This
I’m just really, really lazy.
Still though, here’s an incredibly provocative debate between David Bentley Hart (probably the best theologian working today) and Terry Sanderson, The President of the National Secular Society in England.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI4uh0FKIrg
It’s part 1 of 5, so buckle up for a half hour of YouTube with no video component.
The Truth Is (still) Out There
So I thought I’d begin my first foray into blogging by posting John K. Muir’s (one of the best independent film and television critics writing today) 2009 interview with X-Files creator Chris Carter - an often under sung genius of contemporary science fiction.
http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com/2009/12/interview-with-chris-carter.html
Some really cool stuff getting talked about:
JKM: Robert Patrick was terrific. And in Doggett you suddenly had a non-veteran set of eyes on these X-Files cases. You saw someone with vulnerability in “Via Negativa,” for instance. We always knew after seven years that Mulder and Scully would be there for each other, but we didn’t know yet about Doggett. He was alone, in a way, and suddenly you had this new uncertainty, which the show got a lot of mileage out of, in my opinion.
CARTER: It was kind of meta-X-Files because it was commenting on itself at the same time, and the show turned inward, in a way. The characters deepened. The concept deepened. And I think for some people that was interesting and for some people it became inaccessible.….
JKM: It seemed as if we were watching a movie every week. So much so, that I must hold you responsible for the fact that horror movies in the 1990s didn’t do particularly well. Every Friday night, for many years, you could get a better experience at home watching The X-Files or Millennium instead of going to the theater and being disappointed.
CARTER: I always said that we weren’t doing horror and couldn’t do horror based on the standards-and-practices that were applied to the shows. We did an episode like “Home,” and the day after we did it I was given a very stern lecture about never, ever pushing those limits again.
And you see where horror went after The X-Files. The Saw series for instance. It had to push limits that we couldn’t push on television.…
JKM: Bottom line, did I Want to Believe make enough money to ensure production of a third X-Files movie?
CARTER: I wouldn’t use the word ensure. But because of the business the movie did, especially the international business, it is a possibility.
Fuck and yes. These guys are so smart. Even better is the prospect that a third film could happen. And though I enjoyed the religious undertones (ehhh, maybe they were overtones) of the last film, I want some apocalyptic themes integrated back into my Files.
