When Amnesty International needed to raise money and their profile, John Cleese called up his buddies (which included the members of Monty Python, Beyond the Fringe and The Goodies) to help put on fundraiser. The rest is history. Shout! Factory’s three-disc set The Secret Policeman’s Balls collects the five concert films shot of these benefits. The first of these, Pleasure At Her Majesty’s, is a straight behind-the-scenes documentary for the first half and a rather clumsily-shot performance film (with behind-the-scenes pieces interspersed between the stage skits) for the second. No matter, it’s a treat to see these comedy teams swap stories and comic philosophies and, at times, even members: Peter Cook joins in a Python sketch, Terry Jones takes a spot with the Beyond the Fringe crew and then everyone joins in on the finale: “The Lumberjack Song.” (Watch Michael Palin miss his cue!) Three years later, the benefit adopted the name The Secret Policeman’s Ball, brought in Pete Townsend and classical guitarist John Williams for musical interludes and added Rowan Atkinson and Billy Connolly to the cast.

Alan Bennett, Peter Cook. John Cleese and Graham Chapman

Musical guests became more prominent in “The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball” (1981), including Sting, Bob Geldof, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, and downright dominate “The Secret Policeman’s Third Ball” (1987), but the skit comedy focus returns in the final benefit film. “The Secret Policeman’s Biggest Ball” (1989) opens with Michael Palin and John Cleese doing “Pet Shop” (with a twist punch line), and features Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (in their first live appearance together in years), Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, and Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. The first four shows were filmed in 16 mm in a manner more like a news event than a performance film – they look pretty primitive and the sound is less than stellar – and they are presented in anamorphic wide screen.

Read the review on MSN here.

Also new this week is the second and final season of the original alien invasion conspiracy series: The Invaders. David Vincent (Roy Thinnes) is still doggedly on the trail of the alien invasion of Earth but this season he’s starting to convince others. Just a few souls at first and then, with the mid-season episode “The Believers,” millionaire Edgar Scoville (Kent Smith) and a small group that slowly grows through end of the series. Created by Larry Cohen for Quinn Martin production, it borrows the structure from the company’s own “The Fugitive” – the man searching for the truth while on the run – and throws in a UFO conspiracy and a paranoid sensibility out of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. You see, they really are out to get him and a lot of his fellow believers are sacrificed to the cause. For all the sixties conventions and slow storytelling, it has held up nicely and, at its best, still strikes an eerie tone of alienation.
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An animated robot love story with an environmental theme and a slapstick delivery, WALL•E is a charmer of a film and a delightful piece of storytelling. Directed by Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo) with the animation wizards at Pixar, it takes on the challenge of delivering an animated feature that is predominantly wordless (and even some of those used are closer to sound effects than dialogue) and succeeds with both creative humor and visual grace.

WALL•E is a little mobile trash compactor who putters around a junked and abandoned Earth, sharing his days with a skittering cockroach and finding his pleasures in the little treasures he scavenges from his loads.

The nervous little guy has evolved a personality over the centuries, which makes his isolation all the more poignant as he pines for someone (something?) to hold hands (or whatever you call his clamp-like digits) with. And so he falls in love with a sleek, specimen-gathering pod named Eve and follows her back to her ship, becoming one of those unlikely heroes whose pluck and perseverance overcome impossible odds.

With its long, wordless scenes and mix of slapstick gags and delicate mechanical dances, it doesn’t look or feel like your usual animated feature by Pixar or anyone else, at least until WALL•E finds himself with the physically inert future of the human race. It’s almost like two movies cut together, one with the robots and a somewhat more obvious and less magical one with the fat and complacent mankind willingly bound to a luxury liner spaceship.

The mechanical heroes are more expressive and more engaging than the tubby humans, solely through the mechanics of robot eyes and body language and a symphony of beeps and whistles. If it reminds you of a certain little iconic robot from a hit space opera epic, it’s no coincidence. Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt not only does the audio honors here, he’s credited as the voice of WALL•E.

Adults will pick up on a social satire in the portrait of a sedentary population lulled to distraction by a non-stop stream of media signals and small talk while the kids won’t miss the message of ecological responsibility, but the bright gags and childlike expressions of robot affection are so joyous that you can be completely charmed without even noticing the themes.

The DVD release includes two bonus animated shorts – the hilarious Presto (a daffy battle of wits between a stage magician and the rabbit which played before the film in theaters) and the new BURN*E (which takes place in the margins of  WALL•E’s odyssey) – but if you want to want to learn why Pixar creates such magic, explore the supplements: the commentary by director Andrew Staunton, the superb “Animation Sound Design: Building Worlds from The Sound Up” (a journey through the technical wizardry and artistic creativity behind the magnificent sound design hosted by Oscar winner Ben Burtt) and the deleted scenes with Staunton explaining the hows and whys. There’s much more on the “Special Edition” releases…

Read the rest of it at my DVD column on MSN here.

Also new and notable this week: The Complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus Collector’s Edition. And now for something completely different: all 45 episodes of the perhaps the most influential, and almost certainly the funniest, sketch comedy show in the history of TV. A bearded and bedraggled Michael Palin croaks the famous “It’s…,” the “Liberty Bell March” chimes in with the theme song, and for thirty minutes five overeducated British comics (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin) and an American illustrator (Terry Gilliam) deliver the strangest, most absurd collection of skits to ever emanate from a TV tube. Monty Python rewrote the rules of television comedy and provided some of the most loved comic bits of all time: the Dead Parrot sketch, the Funniest Joke in the World, Nudge Nudge, the classic sing-a-long The Lumberjack Song, The Spanish Inquisition, Argument Clinic, The Cheese Shop, Olympic Hide and Seek Final, and the ever-popular Robin Hood-turned social economist Dennis Moore (“This redistribution of the wealth is trickier than I thought”).

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