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Idea: Monty Python's Life of Brian Ultimate DVD request....

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Hello everyone! Long time reader, first (well, not really first, but its still early) time poster. I was wondering lately about Monty Python’s Life of Brian DVD editions that exist.

The Criterion DVD has far superior extras, like commentaries on the film by all surviving Pythons in two groups (Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam in one, John Cleese and Michael Palin in the other) and its deleted scenes as a feature, but the picture and sound quality of the UK release widescreen is better. For one, it has, unlike Criterion, 5.1 surround sound.

So I was just wondering… Wouldn’t it be best, if someone brought the two editions (Criterion and UK release) together? Just take the picture and sound quality of UK and keep the extras from Criterion the same.

I just never understood why an inferior in picture and sound quality had better extras, and another version exists with better picture and sound quality without the above mentioned extras.

Wouldn’t it be best if someone did the above suggested move? I don’t suppose it would be that hard. I’d do it, but I am completely UNAWARE of re-edits and digital progress. Although I am learning quite a bit around here…

Well?

My life is really... Complex!

Batman Returns
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The 5.1 is just an upmix. I couldn't care less, I always prefer the original mix. Maybe cleaned up, but not changed.
You could take the video and put it together with the criterion bonus stuff, but you'd probably end up having a less good picture then the criterion because you have to recode it in order to convert it to NTSC.
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Well one could actually spice up the dvd a bit more. Maybe adding music videos, and perhaps, if its possible that much talked about TV discussion between the Church people and Cleese and Palin. That would be a neat extra.

With that, one can take the picture transfer and the 5.1 surround sound with the commentaries to make one disk of the film, and then create a second disk with the "The Pythons" documentary and that aforementioned new extras - music vids and the TV discussion. If one can think of some other extra, that'd be neat.

Now how's that for a suggestion? A 2-disk for Brian. Although not nearly as mouthful as Holy Grail and Meaning of Life, it will still be very interesting, as it will also feature the UK transfer, which is great, and the extras on another disk.

And I do talk about region free DVD... For all people around!

What do you all say? What do you think?
My life is really... Complex!

Batman Returns
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That would probably be better. Also one could add the original mix from the criterion disc, and pitch correct it after matching it to the UK set.

Are you sure, that the UK disc has a better picture? I took a look at dvdbeaver, and it seems that they're equal in sharpness, the only difference is the colour tone.
Terry Jones supervised the transfer with Maria Palazzola, so we can assume that the criterion disc has the intended colour scheme...
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I don't know, it feels to me that the other two Python films had a much better work done on them, picture and sound wise.

And the picture in UK is indeed better.

Now if one could find those extras to add, it'd be nice, very nice indeed.
My life is really... Complex!

Batman Returns
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Speaking as your resident Python expert (trust me on that), this is a dumb idea. The Criterion Life of Brian is great.

PAL transfers of feature films will be sped up, and won't look as good on an NTSC system anyway, but the Criterion transfer is quite good, certainly acceptable to anyone, and any attempt to improve on it is, well, silly.


That said, again as your resident Python expert, here's some Life of Brian stuff you won't see on the official DVD, that I happen to have.

Well, first there's the wonderful soundtrack album, which features Graham Chapman and Eric Idle babbling on about nothing. There's also an hourlong CD with the Pythons (bootleg) where they talk about the Life of Brian controversy.

Clips from the heated discussion the Pythons had with religious leaders on TV appear in many documentaries, such as the recent Python "comedy connections."

Two audio-only sketches deleted from Life of Brian appear on the bootleg Python CD, Hastily Cobbled Together For a Quick Buck .... which is usually downloadable from my PythoNET.org site.

The sketches are "Otto's Suicide Squad" - a specially remixed version of the cut scene from the film, with exaggerated album-like sound effects, strange to hear .... it's followed by a much longer version of the Suicide Squad song.

Second sketch - "Psychopath." Rewritten to appear in modern day, this was actually a Life of Brian deleted sketch.

During the time of the Python 30th anniversary celebration on the BBC, the annoying Jonathan Ross hosted a documentary about the deleted scenes from Life of Brian, interviewing Terry Jones, who provides live commentary on the cut scenes. Got this on VHS somewhere. I believe it's from the Paramount Comedy Channel.

The various documentaries on Python have focused a segment on Life of Brian .... in the 30th anniversary celebration on BBC2, we got a discussion of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, which Eric Idle extended for the VHS/DVD release with a clip of him performing the song on "Top of the Pops."

The entire Top of the Pops clip, which is embarrassing as all hell, in that cheesy modern-day-Eric-Idle way, used to be on my website somewhere, as an RM file I believe. I still have the file, but never had it on VHS or anything.

There was also a "music video" of Bright Side of Life edited to clips from the Flying Circus, which I probably had as a file at some point, probably have the file somewhere.


The Life of Brian script book, which I don't have, has been reprinted and can be scanned. It's got a lot of strange material in it besides the film script.


As a ridiculously minor point, I have a copy of the Suicide Squad deleted scene somewhere which is a second longer than you see on the DVD. You hear Judith say "Brian?" and Brian turns to look at her, linking into what we see in the final film. Very bad quality. I had these deleted scenes for years before they ever turned up on a DVD.



OH!

Most important thing. There's a travelogue film narrated by John Cleese called Away From It All. It aired before Life of Brian in many theaters, and was never released after that. I get letters about it all the time. I had it as a file at my website (and still have it somewhere), but I've lost my actual VHS copy of it somehow ....

It's very funny - it's all stock footage, and has John Cleese becoming slowly but surely more annoyed and frustrated as he narrates the travelogue. Particularly when talking about Venice. "More fucking gondolas." A "slow burn" so to speak.




Trying to think of anything else.

I've got the deleted "Satan Animation" from a Flying Circus episode - deleted with the help of John Cleese due to its controversial nature, this might fit with Life of Brian.

Anyway.


As yer resident Python expert I am annoyed beyond belief that people obsess over the Python films yet don't seem to care about tracking down lost/unreleased episodes of At Last the 1948 Show (I have three unreleased ones), or all of Rutland Weekend Television (14 episodes. Followup to Flying Circus by Eric Idle. It's classic. Better than his Python work. You haven't seen it).

Or the little deleted scenes from Flying Circus for that matter.

There's good Python you haven't seen, folks. Just letting you know.

What about the lyrical beauty of Terry Jones' The Wind in the Willows (US title Mr. Toad's Wild Ride)? Or the equally lyrical beauty of Neil Innes' The Innes Book of Records?

Yes Python fans, isn't it time you discovered the Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah) Band?

Are you excited about the CD release of Hastily Cobbled Together For a Fast Buck? Had you heard the album already? Had you heard 1948 Show sketches which now only exist as audio? Have you heard the albums in general?

Are you excited that they've found a copy of Out of the Trees?

Had you heard of any of this stuff?


Yeah, years ago I was a Python internet guy. People sent me stuff, a lot of stuff, that I was amazed I hadn't heard of before. My experience of Python became different from most people's .... I was a fan of all the more obscure stuff, not the obvious films and TV series.




British comedy in general - when you're an American, it takes some effort to actually be up on what's going on over there. Most British comedy, even the really popular stuff, doesn't get released over here, so generally, even though I try to keep up, I have to randomly get packages from British friends to see ANYTHING.

If you read your average brain-dead entertainment magazine (like, say Entertainment Weekly), their knowledge of Britcom seems to jump from Python to Blackadder (or AbFab) to The Office.

We need so much more, we need our Young Ones and Bottom, our Day Today, Brass Eye and Jam, our Knowing Me Knowing You and I'm Alan Partridge, our Red Dwarf of course (and even The Strangerers), our Spaced, our Big Train, our Look Around You ... Darkplace and Nighty Night (series 1 at least), People Like Us, The Smoking Room, Peep Show ....

I dig my Britcom.
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Well Garett, with all that stuff you could put together a nice little torrent of extras for Life of Brian. I say torrent as the quality of those files/tapes would most likely make it not worth converting to DVD format. Still, some of that stuff sounds like it would be interesting to check out.

To contact me outside the forum, for trades and such my email address is my OT.com username @gmail.com

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Originally posted by: ocpmovie

We need so much more, we need our Young Ones and Bottom, our Day Today, Brass Eye and Jam, our Knowing Me Knowing You and I'm Alan Partridge, our Red Dwarf of course (and even The Strangerers), our Spaced, our Big Train, our Look Around You ... Darkplace and Nighty Night (series 1 at least), People Like Us, The Smoking Room, Peep Show ....

I dig my Britcom.


Good! I have to say, Whilst in the Virgin Megastore in Times Square (I know, not the best) I had a jolly good scan of the comely titles on offer from the UK, just out of curiosity.. And ... there was hardly anything at all, other than "The League Of Gentlemen".


If you can find it.. check out the BBC series "Bruiser" All the stars of "Peep Show", "the Smoking Room" and "Darkplace" started out in it.


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ocpmovie, I do not have region 1, I live in a region 2 era - Greece! And as such I have read almost everywhere that the picture and sound quality of Life of Brian in UK is much, much better than Criterion - which has the ultimate extras (two commentaries).

However, since you have all those extras on Life of Brian, why don't you make a DVD out of them, put that "Pythons" BBC special in there too, and thus create a second disk for LoB. Then you can take the UK version of the film, and insert just the two commentaries.

And there you would have it. A 2-disk fan made DVD version of Monty Python's "Life of Brian".

What does everyone think?

PS: Do you have any extras on Idle's Splitting Heirs, by any chance?
My life is really... Complex!

Batman Returns
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You're apparently new here, so I'll not be as annoyed as I ought to be.


What you're suggesting is bootlegging - taking what's on two easily-bought commercially-released DVDs, and adding nothing, just copying the commercially-released material.


This is not a bootlegging forum. This is a preservation forum. People are supposed to be making THEIR OWN EDITS of material, their OWN DVDs, and preserving things that are NOT COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE.



Think about what you're doing and saying.

The mods have all rights to close this thread.
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Originally posted by: ocpmovie[/b
The mods have all rights to close this thread.


Before they do, OCP, I just want to add that you're totally right about extending out the Python material. I got into a lot of it via Python--Fawlty Towers remains my favorite, because I love to hate Basil--but so much of what the Pythons did outside of Python is simply spectacular. (Maybe not Yellowbeard.)

I just finished Michael Palin's novel, "Hemingway's Chair," and it was fantastic. I'm glad so much more of the BBC television material is becoming available on DVD here in the States, although in nowhere near the quantity it should.

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If you want to create you own custom DVD by combining elements from two commercially available products, then that's fine by us.

If you want to talk about it on the forum (why you did it, how you did it, etc.) then that's fine, too.

But if you talk about uploading, torrenting or otherwise sharing such a creation, then your thread will be closed faster than you can say "meanie beenie fo-feenie".

Guidelines for post content and general behaviour: read announcement here

Max. allowable image sizes in signatures: reminder here

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Originally posted by: Moth3r

But if you talk about uploading, torrenting or otherwise sharing such a creation, then your thread will be closed faster than you can say "meanie beenie fo-feenie".

I am fluent in over six million forms of procrastination.
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Man, I feel so bad now, because I really don't like the flying circus. I'm just a python movie fan.
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I'm sorry if I sounded rude or anything else. Really sorry.

Originally posted by: iRantanplan
Man, I feel so bad now, because I really don't like the flying circus. I'm just a python movie fan.

How can you like the movies but not the series? Its the same style of humor - its Python! Chapman, Cleese, Idle, Palin, Gilliam, Jones... All those guys being silly... "Very silly, indeed."

You remind me of the Colonel!
My life is really... Complex!

Batman Returns