Movie review - "The Brothers Grimm" (2005) **1/2

 Quite fun. Great central idea. Gorgeous locations and sets. Matt Damon and Heath Ledger don't really play characters. They look different but what are there character types? What is their relationship?

Monica Belluci is wonderful. Lena Headley struggles in a stock role, feisty village girl who needs to be rescued. In hindsight, Terry Gilliam's judgement this was a hybrid feels right. They should have let him go all the way.

Peter Stomare and Jonathan Pryce are fun.

Book review - "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" by Eric Idle

My friends and I were Monty Python fanatics growing up - Eric Idle was always among everyone's top three of the group, along with Michael Palin and John Cleese (everyone recognised Terry Gilliam's directing skill and Graham Chapman's ability as a leading man but they weren't favourites and no one really was into Terry Jones). Idle was instantly likeable with his cockney (?) voice ("say no more, nudge nudge") and instantly funny face - he was a real strength in a group with few weaknesses. His specialty was song writing and he came up with classics notably "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".

Python was something of a pop group - complete with adoring fans, break ups, constant pressures to reunite - and Idle was the most pop star like of them: paying his guitar, having numerous famous friends (notably George Harrison and Lorne Michaels but also Robin Williams, Steve Martin, Billy Connolly, Mike Nichols), jetting around the world on various exotic trips (down the Nile on John Cleese's yacht with Peter Cook, Stephen Fry and William Goldman among others, attending the Tour de France with Williams and Michael J Fox), swapping Python quotes with Elvis Presley. It's fun to be a celebrity.

Idle's life began with great tragedy - his RAF father was killed hitchiking in an accident on leave, sending his mother to a nervous breakdown; she shunted Idle off to a boarding school for RAF orphans which he hated (I can imagine what it was like) but he was smart, and got a scholarship to Cambridge. He fell in love with writing and performing and in what seems alarming rapidity started writing for TV shows for David Frost and the like, eventually being part of Monty Python. Idle was something of a lone hand in the group - Graham Chapman and John Cleese were one writing team, Terry Jones and Michael Palin the other - but he still fitted in brilliantly and became one of their most recogniseable faces, helped by the singing.

It was Idle who went "American" biggest and most of all, who seemed the least temperamental, who was most keen to get the band back together - Cleese and Jones were more temperamental, Chapman's life was more chaotic, Palin more seemingly focused on England while Gilliam was focused on movies. Idle moved to the US first of all and seems to have the most US credits (though Cleese may match him by now) - mostly small/supporting roles, though he had the lead in The Rutles which has become a major cult, starred in Nuns on the Run, and made a studio comedy, Splitting Heirs, and had a role in Suddenly Susan he doesn't write about here. He regained a bit of status with the huge success of Spamalot - I'm surprised he wasn't used for more musicals because his songs are very catchy. No doubt he tried. For the last twenty years his main gig seems to have been touring and performing.

This is a highly entertaining book packed full of fun stories - hanging out with Harrison and the light  that makes it seem to be fun to be famous. Idle quotes a lot from his speeches rather than his sketches and songs - speeches about John Cleese and so on. There's probably too much about concerts and different productions of Spamalot - they were successful, we get it. I would have liked to have read more about the less successful ventures like Splitting Heirs. Still a great romp.

Book review - "Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon - Arnon Milchan" by Meir Dolman and Joseph Gelman (2011)

Arnon Milchan's name is well known to film fans as producer or executive producer on a large number of successful films; buffs got to know him well in the 80s and 90s as a financier and supporter of maverick directors: he helped fund Once Upon a Time in America, almost financed The Big Brass Ring for Orson Welles (something not addressed in this book, interestingly), supported Terry Gilliam in the Brazil battle.

His cinematic CV is very impressive: Fight Club, Gone Girl, Pretty Woman. Obviously as smart as a whip I had heard he was independently wealthy but didn't realise he was a billionaire. More than that he was a spy for Israel, using his business contacts to secure Israeli weapons, including the bomb.

Milchan wasn't a born and bred filmmaker - he is Israeli born (not a refugee, though descended from some), who inherited his father's fertilizer company. He expanded it and used it as a launching pad for other operations, which included helping provide weapons for Israel. It was a patriotic act for him but he also took a commission, and diversified into a bunch of other businesses and activities - including helping provide weapons for apartheid era South Africa.

In the 1970s he got involved in financing films, via Elliott Kastner, the producer who is connected with a lot of people at the early stage of their careers, and became successful at that too.

Not surprisingly, he was a successful womaniser, with various mistresses (usually Swedish) stashed in various parts of the world

This is a sympathetic biography, though I couldn't help feeling a sense of unease with Milchan helping Israel stock up on warheads and supporting the Afrikaaners. I also wished there was more on the movies - the authors seemed more interested in Israeli politics. Still, I learned a hell of a lot and it is a fascinating story.

Movie review - "Cry of the Banshee" (1971) **1/2

This early 70s AIP horror flick, part of their second Poe cycle, has gotten a bad wrap from the fans and even the people who worked on it. I didn't mind it so much though I wish it had been less of a rip off of Witchfinder General, with Vincent Price once again in period clothes tormenting the peasants and accusing them of being witches, and Hilary Dwyer on hand screaming and screaming and screaming.

The actual story isn't bad - Price is a rich lord who is mean to everyone and delights in trying to stomp out witches (more for his own pleasure than legal reasons); he runs into trouble when he tracks down a real life coven of witches, led by Elisabeth Bergner, star of the 30s stage and screen, and they take out a curse on him and his family.

There are lots of subplots going on here, so there's plenty of light and shade and characters with some complexity - Price's daughter Dwyer is in love with a nice servant and gets rogered by him fairly often (Dwyer was good as these English roses with a taste for naughtiness), only for the servant to get possessed; his son has a nasty side; his wife is tormented and spaced out; his step son is sadistic. There's also a drunken gravedigger, the head witch, and a nice priest.

At times it was a bit confusing as to what was going on in part because I wasn't that familiar with many of the supporting actors and had trouble keeping track of who was who. Also it's really nihilistic - the witches are kind of nice but turn to violence very quickly, the nice son has little trouble killing, the nice daughter is killed, the nice servant is possessed and turns into a murderer. Of course there are rape/molestation sequences, which early 70s cinema seemed unable to do without. Also there are places where it's down right laughable - the witches rituals, Dwyer's screaming, and, if I'm honest, Terry Gilliam's opening credit sequence.

But at least its ambitious and was no way near as bad as I thought it would be.