Reviews for And Now for Something Completely Digital: A Complete Illustrated Guide to Monty Python CDs and DVDs

1. And Now For Something Completely Dreadful

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2007

   I bought this book to read on the bus one night and discovered all sorts of "facts" that I never knew about Python, after years of reading countless reference books on the team; like the "fact" that Ian MacNaughton co-directed "The Meaning Of Life". Apparently. Even though he didn't. And it was MacNaughton that accompanied Terry Jones to pick up the Jury Prize at Cannes and not john Goldstone.
   As a book that describes itself as being about the CDs and DVDs, I had assumed there'd be articles about the recording of albums, the sketches created specifically for audio, the extras on the DVDs and such like. Instead, it appeared to be a bunch of sloppily written synopses of the films by someone who might have watched them once a few years back given the number of inaccuracies, some screen grabs, screeds of info lifted from Wikipedia (plus several pages of legalese on how it was perfectly acceptable to use this material), interview quotes lifted from other people's books (even the quote from Eric Idle on the back cover is lifted from the back cover of someone else's book, David Morgan's far superior "Monty Python Speaks"). There are filler pages with the covers of the computer games (nothing about the contents or the making of the games, an area I'd love to know more about, like how much writing input did the Pythons have?), and a chapter that mentions the then forthcoming re-releases of the albums and hours of outtakes and previously unheard sketches without bothering to give any details on any of these until-now-missing Python moments, which wasn't remotely frustrating or anything!
   The last ten minutes of that twenty minute bus journey were spent looking out of the window, which was far more entertaining and informative than this book.