"On second thought let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place."

Gosh, I've not posted anything in a while, have I? I'm terribly sorry.

One of my new favourite things to do in my soon-to-be-old city is to visit the Institut Lumière, a museum and independent theatre on the property of the father of the Lumière brothers, who invented the first cinématographe, and therefore the first moving picture in 1895. The house and gardens are gorgeous, and the museum itself is fascinating. One often forgets how much science is involved in cinema, and the beautiful way in which science and art intertwine to make film.

The attached cinema has one theatre, and devotes its screenings to some of the most worthwhile films in history. The Institut Lumière chooses to honour particular filmmakers every now and again, those who have made, in their opinion, a particularly interesting contribution to cinema. From October until the end of this month, they are honouring Terry Gilliam, who just released his new film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. This meant that the cinema would be showing all the Monty Python movies, and being my father's daughter, I jumped at the chance to go and see them on the big screen, starting with The Holy Grail.

Obviously I had seen the films before. But seeing them in a movie theatre totally changed the experience. Jokes that were familiar and even too old to be funny were rejuvenated and therefore hilarious, and there were several times where I was embarrassing myself and Kat quite severely, giggling hysterically with tears rolling down my face (never so much as the scenes with the French soldiers, which the almost completely French audience didn't seem to appreciate as much... see below for clips).

It's odd that these screenings should come at such a time, because it feels like Monty Python and similar creations (I'm thinking Fawlty Towers) have had a little bit of a revival. Thanks to YouTube and the free section on iTunes (best idea ever?) I've been catching up on lots of my favourite old clips and, well, laughing my ass off. It's brill-o pads.









Much love. x