Monty Python’s Personal Best
This six-DVD set collects yet again the work of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the ground-breaking TV show the team of charmed British lunatics put together between 1969 and 1974. What’s new about this package is that it’s organised by focusing on the favourite sketches of each member, and each is given a new framing device: John Cleese pretending to be senile and retired, for instance, or Terry Jones (the Python one often forgets) in a lavish hotel room telling us how he was in fact the genius behind them all. Except Graeme Chapman, that is – being dead, it wouldn’t have been possible to shoot new footage with him. So the Chapman disc turns into a sort of documentary on him, with the other Pythons reliving their memories of the turbulent, troublesome, brilliant, gay and alcoholic Chapman. And very interesting it is too; one almost wishes all the discs had this format. Terry Gilliam’s disc is, delightfully, a compilation of all the bizarre little collage-cartoons he created to go between the live-action segments performed by the others. Many of the sketches given in this set are truncated; on one particular disc there may be only part of, say, the dead-parrot sketch, or the “I’d like to have an argument” sketch, with another bit somewhere else. This seems a bit of a pity, and in many ways the Pythons’ humour has dated and faded, but there are still some moments of utterly hilarious genius to be found among their Personal Best. – Shaun de Waal
ong for a Raggy Boy
After fighting for the communists in the Spanish Civil War, and haunted by the execution of his wife by Franco’s fascists, schoolteacher William Franklin (Aiden Quinn) returns to Ireland and takes a post at a reform school. In the bleak confines of St Jude’s, he soon realises that the “raggy boys”, as the town’s residents call the inmates, are dehumanised by being known only by a number. They also suffer the constant threat of sexual and physical abuse from some of the priests. Franklin is a decent man, and treats the boys under his care with a tough kindness. He calls them by name, lends them books and encourages them to express themselves. Not surprisingly, the boys slowly begin to blossom in response to his treatment. But his enlightened approach soon brings him into direct conflict with Father John (a chilling performance by Iain Glen). This harrowing film is not easy to watch, but it is beautifully crafted, with fine performances all round, a must-see for anyone with an interest in Ireland’s recent social history and, in that regard, Song for a Raggy Boy could be a companion piece to The Magdalene Sisters. Sensitive viewers must be warned that it contains scenes of explicit violence, but despite this, those with the stomach for it will be well rewarded. – Maureen Brady
arah Brightman: Diva: The Video Collection (EMI)
Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s onetime muse wafts through a series of video dreamscapes in a collection covering her entire recorded career. This diachronic perspective allows the viewer to trace Sarah Brightman’s progressive loss of bodily weight (and what is possibly the surgery-enhanced narrowing of her face) a view made unavoidable by her increasing tendency to disrobe. One certainly isn’t going to be distracted by the singing or the music, which is banal. Her duets with the two operatic Josés, Carreras and Cura, demonstrate her vocal limitations in an embarrassing way. (And the Josés aren’t even mentioned on the packaging.) – SdW
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