Monty Python

Monty Python

1969–1983   Monty Python also known as The Pythons were a British surreal comedy group who created their comedy sketch show Monty python's Flying Circus, that aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969.   In a 2005 UK poll to find the comedian three of the six Pythons members were voted by fellow comedians and comedy insiders to be among the top 50 greatest comedians ever: Cleese at #2, Idle at #21, and Palin at #30.   John Cleese   Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset,  England John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival fringe and as a script and a performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960's he co founded the Monty Pythons. In the mid 1970's he and his first wife Connie Booth, co wrote and starred in the faulty towers. Terry Gilliam (22 November 1940) He was an American born British screen, writer, film director, animator, actor, and member of the Monty Python group. He has directed 12 feature films throughout his life. He was the only python not born in Britain. Gilliam was a part of Monty Pythons Flying Circus from its outset, at first credited as an animator with his name was listed separately after the other five in the closing credits, later as a full member. His cartoons linked the show's sketches together, and defined the group's visual language in other media (such as LP and book covers, and the title sequences of their films). Gilliam's animations mix his own art, characterized by soft gradients and odd, bulbous shapes, with backgrounds and moving cut outs from antique photographs, mostly from the Victorian era. Graham Chapman (8 January 1941) Graham was an English comedian, writer, actor, and one of the six members of the surreal comedy group Monty Python. Both him and Cleese both worked for the BBC during the 1960's. He also contributed sketches to the radio series I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again and other television programmes. In 1969, Chapman and Cleese joined the other Pythons including Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin for their sketch comedy show Flying Circus. Eric Idle (29 March 1943) Idle started at Cambridge college only a year after Footlights President in 1965. his future Pythons fellows Graham Chapman and John Cleese. He became      http://www.thejohncleese.com/

 

Bruce Lacey.

Bruce Lacey

(born 1927) 

 

Is a British, artist and eccentric. He has been closely associated with The Albert's performance group and the Goon Show. He made a lot of the props himself and had an acting part in Richard Lester's Then Running The Jumping And The Standing Still Film. He has been said to be everywhere and nowhere. He's there only if you're prepared to dig deep enough. You could find his figure through every decade since the 1950's, in all important places doing all sorts of interesting things with different and interested people. Known for his irreverent humour and outspoken views, Lacey figured prominently on London’s counter-culture scene in the 1960s and, aged 87, he remains just as creative today.

 He also spent a lot of his time building robots like pathe.

He buildt robots
his robot was his best man at his wedding.
he lived with like a childs mind.
hes influenced people throught out the 1950s to the days of now.
he was very out going.

Interactive Media Report

Interactive Media Report

Mobile Networking

As part of the interactive media we were doing I was given the task of testing and finding out different stuff about mobile networking and the different ways it works and how networking is used, discussing the pros and cons of it. Not only will I be writing my report I will also be adding a short report on my other team members and what did, which was websites and dvd menus.

After testing out the Common phone or in this case the IPhone 4 I found that I still love the apple IPhone despite the things wrong with it like the Icloud security issues and the battery percentage which is just annoying how it says its on 18% but then will die is very annoying. Even after having other phones like Samsung, Nokia, LG, and Black Berry but the IPhone has by far the best user interface which I like very much as it’s a very detailed and the graphics make everything better.

A lot of the apps and games are very easy to download and play which is a really good thing, as you don’t want to be waiting ages to play a game. Not only are the games apps great for playing but you can also talk to other people and interact with numerous people from around the world all ready to talk to from just the reach of your fingertips. When wanting to play different games on the phones the category ranges from strategy, 8 bit pixels and adventure. So not only are they great for gaming but can also help with challenging the mind and can also help people become smarter.

After I was finished with testing the Mobile Networks I listed down below the results of my fellow team mates and their findings of other forms of interactive media like websites and DVD menus like the title screen and the many features.

Tristan’s Report

Tristan who was in charge of websites like YouTube and went on to say they’re easy to access and is very easy to search for different things like videos of any sort, blogs and music videos to even gaming. He also went on and explained about how its great for different age ratings just depending on what there into. After talking about different parts of websites he went on to explain about different features the internet has, like how there is a side bar with options like my channel, my subscriptions, history, watch later, playlists and tags that take you straight to your most favourite or preferred pages.

Chloe’s Report

As for Chloe who was the third member in our group she was in charge of DVD menus, which she choose to do her evaluation based on the Gladiator film and the user interface behind it. She basically went on to talk about testing dvd menus/title, observing text that was used, music, images, sound effects, selection of scenes, what kind of special effects that were used just in the title, does the text or images light up when selecting it. She then went on to talk about how it has short clips and a quick look from the movie put together as it leads into the title screen. The music on the title screen sounded like an orchestra playing and lasts for 34 seconds before repeating, sounding like it had been cut out from a longer song with the same roman theme as the movie. She went to describe the both pages of the title has a background with brown/discolouring filter over a still cropped image, the first one being the outside of an arena, the second being mountains and ruins. Though the free space around the arena image has a moving image of real clouds with a sped up effect so it catches the viewers eye and how its better than leaving it blank which makes it look better and it provides a more greater piece.

Spike Milligan.

Spike Milligan.

(16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002)

He was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor of Irish and English parents with Irish nationality. His early life was spent in India where he was born. The majority of his working life was spent in the United Kingdom. He disliked his first name and began to call himself "Spike" after hearing a band on Radio Luxembourg called Spike Jones and the City Slickers. Through his performances on radio, television, poems, memoirs and often just by being himself, he was on the BBC in 1999 and voted  "the funniest person of the last 1,000 year" In the second world war spike often organised music and comedy shows for his fellow troops giving them a rest from the war and a place to kind of relax. As well as writing serious poems when he was ill, he also revelled in funny poems which were influenced by many artists like Edward Lear. On the Ning Nang Nong was one of spikes poems which was voted as the UK's favourite comic poem.

On the Ning Nang Nong

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
And the Monkeys all say Boo!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang!
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So it's Ning Nang Nong!
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning!
Trees go Ping!
Nong Ning Nang!
The mice go Clang!

What a noisy place to belong,
Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

Spike Milligan in Silly verse for kids, 1968Drawing by the author.

 

This poem was also created and made into an animation and posted online. Ning Nang Nong Animation.

Milligan made several forays into television as a writer-performer, in addition to his many guest appearances on interview, variety and sketch comedy series from the 1950s to the 2000s. Stephen fry as "absolutely immortal, greatly in the tradition of Lear". While depressed, Milligan wrote serious poetry and a novel called Puckoon 

which was parodying the style of Dylan Thomas and a very successful series of war memories in cluding Adolf Hitler in My Part In His Downfall.

Death

Even late in life, Milligan's black humour had not deserted him and sadly died from liver disease, at the age of 83, on February 2002, at his home in Rye, East Sussex. On the day of his funeral, 8 March 2002, his coffin was carried to St Thomas's Church in Winchelsea, Sussex, and was draped in the flag of the Republic of Ireland. He had once quipped that he wanted his headstone to bear the words "I told you I was ill." He was buried at St Thomas's Church cemetery in Winchelsea, East Sussex, but the Chichester Diocese refused to allow this epitaph. A compromise was reached with the Irish translation, "Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite", and additionally in English, "Love, light, peace".

Charlie Chaplin.

Charlie Chaplin.

 (16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002)

 

Sir Charles Spencer or more commonly known as Charlie Chaplin was an English comic actor, comedian and a film maker who rose to fame in the silent film era. Chaplin become a famous world wide icon through his screen persona The Tramp and is considered one of the most important figures of the film industry. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977.

 

In 1919, Chaplin co-founded the distribution company United Artists, which gave him complete control over his films like His first feature-length The Kid in 1921 followed by A Woman of Paris (1923), The Gold Rush (1925), and The Circus (1928).He refused to move to sound films in the 1930s, instead producing City lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936) without dialogue. Chaplin became increasingly political and his next film, The Great Dictator (1940), satirised Adolf Hitler. The 1940s were a decade marked with controversy for Chaplin and his popularity declined rapidly. He was accused of communist sympathies, while his involvement in a paternity suit and marriages to much younger women caused scandal. An FBI investigation was opened, and Chaplin was forced to leave the United States and settle in Switzerland.

 For the music that went along with his films he was the one who wrote, directed, produced, edited, starred in, and composed the music for most of his films. He was a perfectionist, and his financial independence enabled him to spend years on the development and production of a picture. In 1972, as part of a renewed appreciation for his work, Chaplin received an Honorary Academy Award for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century".

Spike Milligan

Spike Milligan.

 

Harold Lloyd

Harold Lloyd

(April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971)

 

Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. (April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971) was an American actor, comedian, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer who is most famous for his silent comedy films.

 

Harold Lloyd ranks along side other famous performers like Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Spike Milligan which at the time of the silent film era they were some of the best creators. His films frequently contained "thrill sequences" of extended chase scenes of heart rating emotions and daredevil physical feats and stunts for which he is best remembered today. Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street in Safety Last a 1923 film which is one of the most enduring images in all of cinema. Lloyd did many of these dangerous stunts himself, despite having injured himself in August 1919 while doing publicity pictures for the Roach studio. An accident with a bomb mistaken as a prop resulted in the loss of the thumb and index finger of his right hand.Although Lloyd's individual films were not as commercially successful as Chaplin's on average, he was far more prolific, releasing twelve feature films in the 1920s while Chaplin released just four.

Buster Keaton pt.2.

One Week 1920

 

Surrealism Moments

*House spinning around.

*Rotating hidden door in kitchen.

*Door in upstairs bathroom leading to outside.

*Tools kept in trousers.

*The house moving.

*House not letting him back in side.

*Pulling the roof down.

*Catapulting a man into the roof.

*Man carrying a piano like its nothing.

*How badly the house was made and formed.

*House with a mind of its own.

*Was fast paced at times.

 

Things Within The Movie

*Comedy,

*Romance,

*Pain.

*Strength.

*Power.

*freak storms.

*Supernatural house.

*Nudity.

*Extremeness.

*Stunts.

*Gags.

*Skits.

*Actors both male and female.

*Danger.

 

My Thoughts

 

My thoughts on the film One Week in my opinion was very boring and dull. Although it was very slow paced there was times when the pace and the mood of the film was up lifted and was speed up which was better. Even though I didn't like the film I acknowledge and appreciate the art and style behind and the extremes and effort that went into making the film. 





Buster Keaton

Buster Keaton

(October 4th, 1895 - February 1st, 1996)

 

Buster Keaton or by his real name Joseph frank "buster" Keaton was originally born in Kansas and grew up to be an American Actor, comedian, stunt performer, writer and filmmaker who was best  known for his silent films and his work with surrealism.

During his first meeting with Arbuckle, he asked to borrow one of the cameras to get a feel for how it worked. After dismantling and reassembling it he began to roughly understand the mechanics and how it worked. With this rough understanding of the mechanics of the moving pictures, he returned the next day, camera in hand, asking for work and was hired as a co-star and gag man making his first appearance in The Butcher Boy a 1917 American short comedy working along side Roscoe Arbuckle. Later on in 1920 The Saphead was released, in which Keaton had his first starring role in a full-length feature.

*Nudity.

 



My Automatic Story.

One a upon a time there was frog boy named tony and he had mad skills and could grow wings and fly. One day he grew some wings and flew of into the distance where he found a castle and a dragon siting on the roof. Upon entering the castles doors he discovered that it was made out of rainbow drops and pixy sticks. Tony knocks on the doors and yells. "sup bitchs". "who's there"yells Miley. Replying in low rumbling voice Tony said " it is I your one true love who will have you at once". Still hiding behind the castle doors Miley yells " go away you creep". "But I love you and I want to make sweat sweat love to you" says Tony. "plz no" Miley cry's. Tony once again grows some wings and fly's away from the doors and around the castles perimeter to find a window of sorts. While gradually flying along side the castles walls he hears this strange rumbling noise and what sounds like a large beast. Tony starts to feel warmer as he ascends closer to the sky's, and then suddenly he gets whips in the face by some random item. Tony falls to the ground yelling "noooooooooooo". In balance to the winds he regains his balance and shoots back up to the top of the castles roof to find out what that strange thing was and why his face felt like he got hit by large cactus and why it tasted like cold strawberry's. Upon landing on the roof Tony was faced with what can only be a Dragon of some sorts. But this was no ordinary dragon with a face like Mozart and a long horny and spikey body like an albino African wild cat, tony was striken with fear and a sense of doom. As the dragon chargers at Tony he spits red hot flaming fire and Tony is forced to draw his sword that he pulled out of his mouth. Dodging and weaving the dragon Tony finaly attacks the dragon and stabbs him in the face. With Tonys sword stuck in the dragons face, the dragon jumps high in the air and lands on the roof causing it to crash and bring the castle down. Laying in the ruins of pixy sticks and rainbow drops both the dragon and Tony were shocked to see they survived. "What the hell" yelled Miley. Rumedging in all the dust Tony struggles to find his sword as the Dragon regains his strength to finaly kill the intrueder. But with all the dust and powder all over the place the dragon takes one last large inhale to breath a deadly fire ball but instead breaths in to much dust and suddenly explodes. With blood, guts and dragon skin every where Miley screams in an ab normal high pitch blood curdaling scream and boils Tony blood untill it comes pouring out if his ears, eyes, and mouth leaving him dead on the floor. Miley soon after gets hungry and walks out into the garden and eats a raw sheep and transforms into it and takes the sheeps place to rule the sheep world and be the queen sheep.

Automatic Drawing.

  Automatic drawings was developed by the surrealists, as a means of expressing's the subconscious. Basically the hand is allowed to move across the paper in any movement or directed as if with out control. Some instances of this can be to do it with out taking the paint brush or pencil of the paper. Usually in drawings styles like this there are many accidents and chances that could lead to either something great or horridly bad and messy. Many people and artist drew like this many whom of which were quite famous, some of these artist were André Masson, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Jean Arp and André Breton whom of which also worked in surrealism. Automatic writing is also a form of art which is just basically the same as drawing but written gl. Even though it is classed as art I find that it is very messy and it makes reading that much harder to read.