Watch John Cleese as Sherlock Holmes in The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It

in Comedy | August 20th, 2013

Here’s some­thing to light­en your day a lit­tle: Mon­ty Python’s John Cleese as Sher­lock Holmes in the 1977 British tele­vi­sion film The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It.

As the title sug­gests, it’s a very sil­ly film. Cleese plays Arthur Sher­lock Holmes, grand­son of the famous detec­tive. His side­kick, Dr. Wat­son, is sim­i­lar­ly descend­ed from a famil­iar char­ac­ter in the Arthur Conan Doyle sto­ries. Togeth­er they set out to foil a dia­bol­i­cal plot by their neme­sis, a descen­dent of Pro­fes­sor Mori­ar­ty. The mod­ern-day Holmes has some of the same man­ner­isms as his famous grand­fa­ther, but is decid­ed­ly less clever and likes to keep his cal­abash pipe filled with exot­ic vari­eties of cannabis.

Cleese co-wrote the script with Jack Hobbs and the film’s direc­tor, Joseph McGrath, who is best known for direct­ing the Peter Sell­ers movies Casi­no Royale and The Mag­ic Chris­t­ian. It was pro­duced for Lon­don Week­end Tele­vi­sion by Humphrey Bar­clay, who is gen­er­al­ly cred­it­ed with bring­ing togeth­er much of what even­tu­al­ly became the Mon­ty Python cast, includ­ing Amer­i­can ani­ma­tor Ter­ry Gilliam, in the sub­ver­sive late-1960s chil­dren’s show Do Not Adjust Your Set. Cleese’s wife at the time, Con­nie Booth, who was also col­lab­o­rat­ing with him on the TV series Fawl­ty Tow­ers, plays the detec­tive’s land­la­dy Mrs. Hud­son. And Arthur Lowe is very fun­ny as the dim-wit­ted Dr. Wat­son.

The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It is a low-bud­get affair — extreme­ly goofy — and not for every­one. But if you’re a fan of clas­sic British TV com­e­dy and you love out­landish gags, you should get a kick out of it. The fun­ni­est parts begin after the 13-minute mark, when Cleese arrives onscreen.

You can find The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

John Cleese Plays the Dev­il, Makes a Spe­cial Appeal for Hell, 1966

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

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Jurassic Park Tells You Everything You Need to Know About the Dangers of Global Capitalism

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Economics, Film, Philosophy | August 6th, 2013

For­get putting a bird on it. Put on a dinosaur on it for a sure­fire hit in our mar­ket-dri­ven econ­o­my. Direc­tor Stephen Spiel­berg cer­tain­ly did­n’t skimp on the “ter­ri­ble lizards” when adapt­ing Michael Crich­ton’s Juras­sic Park for the screen, and things turned out pret­ty well for him.

Mike Rugnetta, the fast-talk­ing host of PBS’s Idea Chan­nel, the­o­rizes that the 20-year-old film is a great, pos­si­bly inad­ver­tent com­men­tary on the dan­gers of glob­al mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism. His mer­ry spoil­er-packed video touch­es on such phe­nom­e­na as risky invest­ments, the sub­prime mort­gage cri­sis, and the hav­oc that can be wreaked by a dis­grun­tled employ­ee. He hales both Richard Atten­bor­ough’s park own­er char­ac­ter and Direc­tor Spiel­berg as ego­tis­ti­cal mad­men chas­ing mon­strous prof­its. His kitchen sink approach inevitably leads to appear­ances by both Bar­ney and Sloven­ian philoso­pher and cul­tur­al crit­ic Slavoj Žižek.

Rugnetta is quick (of course) to point out that he could come up with sim­i­lar hypothe­ses for such com­par­a­tive­ly fresh releas­es as World War Z (wage slav­ery), Iron Man (glo­ry be to the world-sav­ing entre­pre­neur), and Pacif­ic Rim (the glob­al mar­ket will unite us all)… but why, when Juras­sic Park’s got endur­ing, mar­ket-test­ed crowd-pleasers?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Does Math Objec­tive­ly Exist, or Is It a Human Cre­ation? A New PBS Video Explores a Time­less Ques­tion

Hen­ry Rollins: Edu­ca­tion is the Cure to “Dis­as­ter Cap­i­tal­ism”

Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels

Ayun Hal­l­i­day final­ly got around to see­ing this movie last spring. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday 

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Classic Monty Python: Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw Engage in a Hilarious Battle of Wits

in Comedy, Literature | July 31st, 2013

Have you ever won­dered what it would have been like to be present when Oscar Wilde was deliv­er­ing those daz­zling epi­grams of his? In this clas­sic sketch from Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, we’re pre­sent­ed with one hilar­i­ous pos­si­bil­i­ty.

The sketch is from Episode 39 of the Fly­ing Cir­cus, the last episode of sea­son three, which was record­ed on May 18, 1972 but not aired until Jan­u­ary 18, 1973. The scene takes place in 1895, in the draw­ing room of Wilde’s Lon­don home. Hold­ing court amid a room­ful of syco­phants, Wilde (played by Gra­ham Chap­man) com­petes with the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw (Michael Palin) and the Amer­i­can-born painter James McNeill Whistler (John Cleese) to impress Queen Vic­to­ri­a’s son Albert Edward (Ter­ry Jones), the Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII.

As for the his­tor­i­cal basis of the sketch, “There seems to be no evi­dence for the con­vivial tri­umvi­rate of Whistler, Wilde, and Shaw,” writes Darl Larsen in Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus: An Utter­ly Com­plete, Thor­ough­ly Unil­lus­trat­ed, Absolute­ly Unau­tho­rized Guide, “espe­cial­ly as late as 1895, when Whistler was car­ing for his ter­mi­nal­ly ill wife and Wilde was in the ear­ly stages of his fall from grace.” Wilde’s play The Impor­tance of Being Earnest opened in Feb­ru­ary of that year, and short­ly after­ward he became embroiled in a legal bat­tle with the Mar­quess of Queens­ber­ry that led even­tu­al­ly to his impris­on­ment for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Wilde was once a pro­tégé of Whistler, but their friend­ship had dete­ri­o­rat­ed by 1895. Whistler was appar­ent­ly jeal­ous of Wilde’s suc­cess, and believed he had stolen many of his famous lines. When Wilde report­ed­ly said “I wish I had said that” in response to a wit­ty remark by Whistler in about 1888, the painter famous­ly retort­ed, “You will, Oscar, you will.” Shaw worked as a Lon­don the­atre crit­ic in the 1890s, and the Prince of Wales was a patron of the arts.

In the Python sketch, Wilde kicks off a round of wit­ti­cisms with his famous line, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” But things go rapid­ly down­hill as the con­ver­sa­tion turns into an exer­cise in heap­ing abuse on the Prince of Wales and pin­ning the blame on a rival:

WILDE: Your Majesty is like a big jam dough­nut with cream on the top.

PRINCE: I beg your par­don?

WILDE: Um…It was one of Whistler’s.

WHISTLER: I nev­er said that.

WILDE: You did, James, you did.

WHISTLER: Well, Your High­ness, what I meant was that, like a dough­nut, um, your arrival gives us pleasure…and your depar­ture only makes us hun­gry for more. [The prince laughs and nods his head.] Your High­ness, you are also like a stream of bat’s piss.

PRINCE: What?

WHISTLER: It was one of Wilde’s. One of Wilde’s.

WILDE: It sod­ding was not! It was Shaw!

SHAW: I…I mere­ly meant, Your Majesty, that you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark.

PRINCE: Oh.

WILDE: Right. Your Majesty is like a dose of clap–

WHISTLER: –Before you arrive is plea­sure, and after is a pain in the dong.

PRINCE: What??

WHISTLER AND WILDE: One of Shaw’s, one of Shaw’s.

SHAW: You bas­tards.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

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Stephen Colbert Tries to Make Sense of MOOCs with the Head of edX

in Comedy, MIT, MOOCs | July 31st, 2013

Last week Anant Agar­w­al, Pres­i­dent of edX (the MOOC con­sor­tium launched by Har­vard and MIT), paid a vis­it to The Col­bert Report. And it did­n’t take long for the host, the one and only Stephen Col­bert, to ask fun­ny but unmis­tak­ably prob­ing ques­tions about the advent of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es. “I don’t under­stand. You’re in the knowl­edge busi­ness in a uni­ver­si­ty. Let’s say I had a shoe store, ok, and then I hired you to work at my shoe store. And you said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s give the shoes away for free.’ I would fire you and then prob­a­bly throw shoes at your head.” In oth­er words, why would uni­ver­si­ties dis­rupt them­selves and give edu­ca­tion away at no cost? Where’s the san­i­ty in that?  If you have five min­utes, you can watch Agar­wal’s response and get a few laughs along the way. And if you’re ready to take a MOOC, then dive into our col­lec­tion of 550 Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties. 120 new cours­es will be start­ing in August and Sep­tem­ber alone.

via The Har­vard Crim­son

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert Talks Sci­ence with Astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson

Stephen Col­bert Dish­es Out Wis­dom & Laughs at North­west­ern

Har­vard and MIT Cre­ate EDX to Offer Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es World­wide

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The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook: Philosopher Ponders Making Omelets in Long Lost Diary Entries

in Comedy, Philosophy | July 25th, 2013

sartre food

In 1987, Mar­ty Smith pub­lished a spoof called The Jean-Paul Sartre Cook­book in a Port­land, Ore­gon alter­na­tive news­pa­per called the Free Agent. Lat­er, in 1993, it was repub­lished in the Utne Read­er. And it starts with this premise:

We have been lucky to dis­cov­er sev­er­al pre­vi­ous­ly lost diaries of French philoso­pher Jean-Paul Sartre stuck in between the cush­ions of our office sofa. These diaries reveal a young Sartre obsessed not with the void, but with food. Appar­ent­ly Sartre, before dis­cov­er­ing phi­los­o­phy, had hoped to write “a cook­book that will put to rest all notions of fla­vor for­ev­er.” The diaries are excerpt­ed here for your perusal.

Now for a cou­ple of my favorite entries:

Octo­ber 3

Spoke with Camus today about my cook­book. Though he has nev­er actu­al­ly eat­en, he gave me much encour­age­ment. I rushed home imme­di­ate­ly to begin work. How excit­ed I am! I have begun my for­mu­la for a Den­ver omelet.

October 6

I have real­ized that the tra­di­tion­al omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bour­geois. Today I tried mak­ing one out of a cig­a­rette, some cof­fee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Mal­raux, who puked. I am encour­aged, but my jour­ney is still long.

November 23

Ran into some oppo­si­tion at the restau­rant. Some of the patrons com­plained that my break­fast spe­cial (a page out of Remem­brance of Things Past and a blow­torch with which to set it on fire) did not sat­is­fy their hunger. As if their hunger was of any con­se­quence! “But we’re starv­ing,” they say. So what? They’re going to die even­tu­al­ly any­way. They make me want to puke. I have quit the job. It is stu­pid for Jean-Paul Sartre to sling hash. I have enough mon­ey to con­tin­ue my work for a lit­tle while.

November 26

Today I made a Black For­est cake out of five pounds of cher­ries and a live beaver, chal­leng­ing the very def­i­n­i­tion of the word “cake.” I was very pleased. Mal­raux said he admired it great­ly, but could not stay for dessert. Still, I feel that this may be my most pro­found achieve­ment yet, and have resolved to enter it in the Bet­ty Crock­er Bake-Off.

The diary entries con­tin­ue here. And it just so hap­pens that The New York­er lat­er found Sartre’s long lost blog. You can read that online too.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean-Paul Sartre Breaks Down the Bad Faith of Intel­lec­tu­als

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Sartre, Hei­deg­ger, Niet­zsche: Three Philoso­phers in Three Hours

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The Way Too Philosophical Pop Song

in Comedy, Music, Philosophy | July 23rd, 2013

Sec­ond City has giv­en us many great improv com­e­dy sketch­es and come­di­ans over the decades … and now com­ic videos on YouTube too. From this video col­lec­tion comes the “Too Philo­soph­i­cal Pop Song,” whose open­ing lines resem­ble the hack­neyed lyrics of so many con­tem­po­rary pop tunes.

We’ve got to be young while we live, and live while we are young.
We’ve got to live for tonight because tomor­row won’t come.

We’ve all heard these exis­ten­tial clichés before, right? But then, the “Too Philo­soph­i­cal Pop Song” gets, well, too philo­soph­i­cal, swerv­ing dark­ly of course.

We have to par­ty like we’ll nev­er see tomor­row, there­by destroy­ing the intrin­sic val­ue of this moment and our­selves.
The cer­tain­ty of death inval­i­dates our actions tonight.
We’re thrown into this uni­verse with no pur­pose, com­pelled to fab­ri­cate mean­ing.
There is no good, there is no right, and our morals are craft­ed out of rea­son.

Makes it a lit­tle hard to get your groove on … unless you’re a UVA grad stu­dent or one of those heady guys at Par­tial­lyEx­am­inedLife. Don’t miss their pod­cast.

via Leit­er Reports

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Rap­ping About Sci­ence: Watch High School Senior Jabari John­son Talk Physics with Poet­ic Lyrics

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

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Watch Out For the Flying Folding Chairs, It’s The Noam Chomsky Show!

in Comedy, Philosophy | July 18th, 2013

The word “philoso­pher” tends to con­jure up the arche­typ­al image of an ascetic fig­ure stand­ing above the fol­lies of every­day life, absorbed in thought. Per­haps that’s why so many peo­ple have found it fas­ci­nat­ing to hear of the dis­agree­ments between Noam Chom­sky and Slavoj Žižek.

Sev­er­al weeks ago we post­ed an excerpt from an inter­view in which Chom­sky accus­es Žižek, along with Jacques Lacan and Jacques Der­ri­da, of emp­ty “pos­tur­ing.” Yes­ter­day we post­ed Žižek’s response to Chom­sky: “I don’t think I know a guy who was so often empir­i­cal­ly wrong.” Some of the respons­es have been amus­ing. “The gloves are off!” wrote one read­er on Twit­ter. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” said anoth­er.

Of course, we should bear in mind that the two celebri­ty intel­lec­tu­als are not real­ly at each oth­er’s throats. Chom­sky gave his brief assess­ment of Žižek and the oth­ers in response to a ques­tion dur­ing a long inter­view back in Decem­ber. Žižek’s remarks were a small part of a two-hour pan­el dis­cus­sion on var­i­ous top­ics. It’s hard to imag­ine either man seething over what the oth­er has said.

Still, the bois­ter­ous­ness of many of the respons­es remind­ed us of the stu­dio audi­ence in this 2009 sketch (above) from The Chaser’s War on Every­thing, an Aus­tralian com­e­dy show. The sketch is a par­o­dy of The Jer­ry Springer Show and the oth­er tabloid TV talk shows that mul­ti­plied like weeds in the 1990s. It’s extreme­ly sil­ly, but good for a laugh.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’

Slavoj Žižek Responds to Noam Chom­sky: ‘I Don’t Know a Guy Who Was So Often Empir­i­cal­ly Wrong’

Noam Chom­sky Calls Post­mod­ern Cri­tiques of Sci­ence Over-Inflat­ed “Poly­syl­lab­ic Tru­isms”

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

 

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World-Renowned Graphic Designer Milton Glaser Has a Laugh on Old Jews Telling Jokes

in Comedy | July 15th, 2013

Old Jews Telling Jokes: as Youtube series go, this one has a cer­tain con­cep­tu­al puri­ty. That its videos have become very pop­u­lar indeed won’t come as a sur­prise to any­one who grew up in a large Jew­ish fam­i­ly; you want a joke told right, you go to the top of the fam­i­ly tree. We’ve seen jokes told by den­tists, busi­ness­men and even the likes of lawyer and polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Alan Der­showitz and for­mer New York City may­or Ed Koch. Above you’ll see “I Want to Have a Mon­key,” one of the series’ jokes told by graph­ic design­er and New York mag­a­zine co-founder Mil­ton Glaser, cre­ator of logos for DC Comics, the Brook­lyn Brew­ery, and of course, in the form of the uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­nized I ♥ NY, his city. You can learn more about his 60-year design career in the short doc­u­men­tary by Hill­man Cur­tis just below:

Unlike most of the videos’ stars, who stand in front of a stan­dard white back­ground, Glaser tells his jokes in a more inter­est­ing set­ting: his long­time office, of which you’ll see more in Cur­tis’ doc­u­men­tary. When the Old Jews Telling Jokes crew turned up, they found in this force of graph­ic design a ver­i­ta­ble fount of punch­lines. He demon­strates his comedic acu­men in eight oth­er episodes: “The Res­ur­rect­ing Rab­bi,” “Magi­cian and a Sledge­ham­mer,” “Two Gar­men­tos,” “Edward R. Mur­row,” “Am I Thirsty,” “Ele­phant and Croc­o­dile,” “I’d Like to Be Cas­trat­ed,” and “The Par­rot.” Here we have anoth­er les­son to take from our elders, or at least from this spe­cif­ic elder: you can’t just rise to and remain for decades at the very top of your exot­ic and chal­leng­ing field. You’ve also got to have good tim­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Most “Intel­lec­tu­al Jokes”: Our Favorite Open Cul­ture Read­er Sub­mis­sions

Sketch­es of Artists by the Late New Media Design­er Hill­man Cur­tis

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Lost Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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