Monty Python

What wonderful things you could have done with the space wasted on a totally unconvincing article about Adam Sandler's subtle genius ("Speak Softly and Carry a Big Shtick," by Paul Brownfield, Nov. 5). The fact that Sandler doesn't grant interviews and his associates clam up on his behalf may have bewitched Brownfield and led him to conclude that there's real substance to Sandler, but it doesn't prove the goof is deeper or more subversive as a comic. He's not. His movies are all the proof we need, anyway.

The ninth Mods & Rockers Film Festival opens June 26 in Hollywood with the world premiere of "The Seventh Python," a look at the life and music of longtime Monty Python associate, former Bonzo Dog Band member and Rutles singer and songwriter Neil Innes. The following night, Innes will play a solo concert in the American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre, where the festival's mix of new and classic music-centric films will be run. "The Seventh Python" references Innes' close working and personal relationship with the six members of the British comedy troupe.

Eric IDLE'S stiff-as-a-board leg is stretched out before him like an Arthurian battering ram barging its way toward the Holy Grail. He's wheelchair-bound after knee surgery, but his voice -- perhaps the only one in existence that combines the ease and snobbery of the Queen's English with the pugnacious provincialism of every besieged little man -- is going at full throttle.

John Cleese puts as much importance on the craft of selling in Hollywood as more artful aspects of film making. He must be good at it: Earlier this year, he got MGM to put up $7.3 million for his new movie, "A Fish Called Wanda," before ever submitting a script. And his own description of the comic love story sounds considerably low concept, if tantalizing.

Erin Cosgrove's pseudo-historical, multimedia epic "What Manner of Person Art Thou?" turns a sharp eye on matters of faith, revelation and the quasi-religious longings of secular society. By turns comic and bloody, silly and harrowing, the project, whose various incarnations span the UCLA Hammer Museum and the Carl Berg Gallery, is impressive in its breadth and astute in its satire. The story, told most directly in a 65-minute animated video at the Hammer, revolves around the figures of Elijah Yoder and Enoch Troyer, sole surviving members of an isolated Christian fundamentalist sect that's been decimated by a mysterious epidemic.

Britain's top fighter pilots have discovered something completely different to deal with the threat of Iraq's Scud missiles. On Friday, when they were told to expect an attack on their Saudi air base at any moment, they first donned gas masks and chemical suits. Then, they reached for a videotape, and suddenly "Monty Python's Flying Circus" was on the TV screen in their underground bunker.

At times, it seemed that officials from the Ministry of Earnest Questions were there just to ask a trio from the Ministry of Silly Walks the difference between British and American humor. But Eric Idle quickly put things in perspective. "American humor pays more," he explained. So things went here at a Museum of Broadcasting seminar that launched a 20th-anniversary celebration and display of the works of Monty Python's Flying Circus. This look back in humor is to run through Feb. 25.

Barry Took, the British stand-up comedian and comedy writer who helped produce such zany shows as "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and lent his talents to the much-loved American television classic "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," has died. He was 73. Took, often called one of the funniest men in Britain, died Sunday in a London nursing home of cancer. He had suffered a stroke nearly two years ago, which impaired his speech and his storied ability to write.