Advancing The Front

Here's another label I've been meaning to get onto this site for a while: Indicator/ Powerhouse.  They're a UK outfit that started up in the tail end of 2016, releasing some impressive special editions, often of titles Twilight Time had released as limited editions in the US.  And that certainly holds true with today's film, The Front, which Indicator put out via their own limited edition Blu-ray/ DVD combo pack early this year.  Or last year, I suppose.  It's 2018 now.

Update 1/1/18 - 8/17/26: It's 2026 now, and Sony has advanced The Front to 4k on their all new UHD; and it's not even an overly limited, hard to find steelbook.

The Front's a great, comic take on Hollywood's blacklist during the red scare of the 1950s, that still manages to level lose site of the real history's gravity.  Woody Allen, who stars but doesn't write or direct this time, plays a small time bookie with pretty low aspirations in life.  When an old friend of his, a successful television writer who's been blacklisted from the entertainment industry due to his affiliations with the United States Communist Party, comes to him for help, he agrees because he needs the money.  In short, his friend would continue to write screenplays, but in Allen's name, and they would split the payments.  Their plan becomes so successful, soon other blacklisted writers come to Allen, and everything's going great, until Allen winds up becoming so successful, fame and attention starts to fall on him, and he has to go to greater and greater lengths to hide the fact that he's actually a talentless fraud.

So it's an easy, affable comedy premise.  It sounds like a sitcom, and even sometimes looks like one, since it's all about writing classic television.  But it's also obviously making a genuine political statement, peppered with real life moments of tragedy taken from screenwriter Walter Bernstein, who was himself blacklisted during the McCarthy era.  Lives ruined by paranoia and zealotry, a major character commits suicide.  It's a funny movie, but it's not all fun and games.  Director Martin Ritt and several other members of the cast and crew had also went through the blacklist - the closing credits demarcate everyone on this film who was - so they bring a truth to film that gives it real weight.  Nowhere is this stronger felt than in the supporting role of Zero Mostel (The Producers), the real life black-listed comic actor who gives a heart-rending performance as a black-listed comic actor who succumbs to deep desperation as he's pushed out of the show Allen is pretending to write for.   And the rest of the supporting cast is great, too, including Andrea Marcovicci and Danny Aiello, both of The Stuff fame.  But it's really Mostel's picture at least as much as it is Allen's.

The Front debuted on DVD from Columbia Tri-Star in 2004.  It was a single-sided disc but featured both full and widescreen presentations.  Otherwise, it was essentially barebones, but us Woody Allen fans had grown used to that.  And anyway, that disc was all we had of this film until 2014, when Twilight Time licensed the title from Sony and released it on blu-ray with a new 4k scan, and some nice features, including an audio commentary and their usual isolated score track.  That was limited to their usual 3000 copies, and Sony wound up issuing that remaster themselves as a MOD DVDR in 2015, sans extras.  Then, in 2017, Indicator came out with their limited (also 3000 copies), all region, dual format edition with that same 4k master, Twilight Time's new extras, and even a little bit more. It was the go-to extra until this year, when Sony came back, this time releasing the film as a full-blown 4k Ultra HD.

1) 2004 Tri-Star US fullscreen DVD; 2) 2004 Tri-Star US widescreen DVD;
3) 2017 Indicator UK DVD; 4) 2017 Indicator UK BD; 5) 2026 Sony US UHD.

So, I left the black bars around the first set of comparisons to highlight the differences in aspect ratio.  I mean, you don't need them to see the obvious difference between the Columbia Tri-Star's fullscreen version, and the other three widescreen versions; but it is interesting to note how the original widescreen transfer, though anamorphically enhanced, was slightly windowboxed.  The later 1.85:1 editions naturally took care of that, which frankly would only be an issue on more modern televisions anyway.  In terms of on-screen content, the shift in ARs is minute.  Interestingly, though, the fullscreen version is mostly just an open matte transfer, revealing excessive vertical information including lots of wasteful head space, and slicing just a little off the sides.

Anyway, Indicator's 4k scan is a huge improvement over the DVD, which was good for its time: anamorphic and no interlacing.  But it had some messy compression.  The film's always been a little on the soft side, but the DVD only made that worse, while the blu really zeros in on the detail, right down to the very natural, untampered with grain.  The general color timing is basically the same, but does have a more natural, authentic feel on the blu (or even Indicator's DVD).  And so yes, Indicator's disc was already a 4k master, but now Sony gives it to us a proper 4k disc with Dolby Vision HDR10.  The result is a similar transfer but a much stronger encode, making tiny detail and each fleck of film grain sharper and clearer.  I guess I should point out here that I've seen some online sources call this a triple layer disc, but it's just a 51.9 GB transfer on a dual layer disc.  But for a film this length, that's more than enough, and looks great.  Yes, it's an easily discernible improvement on the already strong transfer from Indicator.

Audio on all three discs (and indeed, every release of The Front) is just the original mono track in 2.0, but that's all any of us should want; and naturally all the HD discs rare in lossless LPCM.  The old DVD did include subtitles, in English, French, Japanese and Korean, while Indicator just boils it down to your basic English HoH.  Sony's UHD has 'em, too, and also brings back the French and Spanish.

So, again, the old Tri-Star DVD was barebones.  It just had a couple of bonus trailers.  But Twilight Time created a new audio commentary, with film historians Julie Kirgo and Nick Redman and actress Marcovicci, which Indicator has thankfully licensed for their release, because it's a great track.  Kirgo and Redman alternate between acting as moderators for a very lively discussion with Marcovicci and providing expert commentary for the rest of the film.  The also carried over the original theatrical trailer and the isolated score track from TT.  The only thing they missed was the small booklet with additional notes by Kirgo.

But then they took the extra steps of creating their own booklet, a heftier 36-pager with notes by Gabriel Miller, who wrote a book on Ritt's films, and archival interviews with Ritt, Bernstein and Allen.  Even more compelling, they've included a video interview with The Front's director of photography Michael Chapman.  It's short but very interesting - don't skip it.  Indicator has also included an image gallery of on-set and promo photos, and reversible artwork, which is basically the same artwork, but minus the ratings and Indicator logos.

Disappointingly, Sony hasn't added anything new (there's a vintage 'making of' featurette on Youtube featuring an interview with the director... why not include that?); and they dropped the Chapman interview.  Plus the booklet.  Fortunately, they at least kept the commentary, the trailer and the isolated score, but still.  One hopes for steps forwards, not backwards.  It does come in a slipcover. 

It makes sense that Sony gave this a reissue given that its last domestic release was from Twilight Time, who dropped off a long time ago.  Now it's back in print and better than ever.  And don't feel too bad about missing out on that Chapman interview.  It comes from, and can be found on, a website called webofstories.  I'd still prefer to have it on disc; but it's no reason to hold out on upgrading this film if you're otherwise inclined to.  And this film does deserve it.

Bowfinger Again, Why Not?

At the end of this summer, Paramount has upgraded a handful of back catalog titles to blu, including Problem Child, BASEketball, EDtv, For Love of the Game and my favorite of the bunch: Bowfinger.  At the moment, they're Best Buy exclusives.  It's just for a very limited time, though; they'll be available everywhere else later in October.  But for now, you can only get them from Best Buy.  And you can't argue with the price: $7.99.  So how does it look?

Update 9/26/17 - 8/12/26: Whoopsie!  Best Buy doesn't even sell physical media anymore.  Fortunately now, if you wanted something more than a budget blu-ray, Shout Factory's got you covered, with their new 4k Collector's Edition BD/ UHD combopack.

To a newcomer, I'd describe 1999's Bowfinger in four words: better than it looks.  Just based on the marketing, it just looks like another cartoonish, lame comedy, along the lines of stuff like All About Steve, Tammy, or even other Steve Martin flicks like Bringing Down the House.  But the difference is that this is actually written by Martin, so it's like a fun return to his crazier, earlier films with Carl Reiner, or even more so a return to material like LA Story.  So that's obviously not to say there's nothing cartoonish about this comedy; there's a lot of big, larger than life performances packed into this very goofy send-up of Hollywood.  Eddie Murphy plays dual roles, including one that makes Revenge of the Nerds look subtle.  But for this movie, it works.

Steve Martin is a struggling, independent filmmaker living in Hollywood, and Eddie Murphy is a major Tom Cruise-like movie star.  When Eddie's younger, charisma-less brother applies for a job with Martin's film company, Martin gets an idea for how he can get celebrity Murphy in one of his movies and make the big time.  He'll get his eccentric cast of starving artists to follow Murphy around and play out scenes around him while filming him without his knowledge.  Complicating things further, the movie Martin wants to make is a wacked out alien invasion movie.  It's not exactly a Whit Stillman flick, but it's smarter than you'd think, and is helped immensely by a terrific supporting cast including Heather Graham, Terrance Stamp, Robert Downey Jr., and the eternally underrated Christine Baranski.

Bowfinger came as a new release in the early days of DVD in 2000, and apart from being stuck inside a few budget combo packs like The Eddie Murphy Connection, hasn't been reissued since.  It's fortunate, then, since we never got any alternative choices, that it was a decent, widescreen special edition.  But now, finally in 2017, it's seeing its US HD debut (other countries have already gotten their blu-ray editions in the past year or so).  So is it a worthwhile upgrade?

1) 2000 Paramount DVD; 2) 2017 Paramount BD;
3) 2026 Shout BD; 4) 2026 Shout UHD.

So, right off the bat, even though it's pretty damn old, it's a fine DVD.  It's anamorphic, not interlaced, and has essentially the same transfer that they kept for the blu-ray.  So it's definitely not a "need to replace" title.  But on the other hand, Paramount's blu is a legitimate HD upgrade.  Click through to the fullscreen version of the first set of shots and you can see how much clearer the detail on his skin and glasses is, and how much cleaner all the edges are.  Even the leaves on the left... everything is so much softer and flatter on the DVD.  The DVD also has a strange pillar box on the left-hand side (I left the bars on the top set of comparison shots, so you can see for yourself).  Both discs are slightly letterboxed, but the bar on the right-hand side makes the DVD 1.83:1.  The BD removes that bar, revealing a sliver extra picture on the right, and correcting the aspect ratio to its proper 1.85:1.

Shout's new scan is also 1.85:1, though it reveals tiny slivers of additional picture along the edges.  More importantly, it now preserves the film grain - a little uneven on their BD, but perfect on their 4k UHD - with slightly more natural colors thanks to the Dolby Vision.  Most importantly, however, is that the funky edge enhancement on the old disc is gone.  See that weird haloing light running down the right side of his tie in that first set of shots on the Paramount discs?  Yeah, that should not be there... and now it isn't.  We can finally say goodbye to those hallmarks of an old master.

For the audio, the DVD offered both DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks, plus a French dub.  The Paramount BD trimmed the fat to just the DTS 5.1, but of course in DTS-HD.  It also adds optional English and French subtitles.  Shout drops the French dub, keeps the 5.1 and English subtitles, and also throws in a stereo track, also in DTS-HD.

Extras-wise, there's no difference between the two Paramount discs.  We didn't get anything new, but at least none of the 2000 special features were dropped.  Director Frank Oz provides a quality audio commentary.  It's a little dry if you're expecting laughs on the Bowfinger commentary, but there's almost no dead air, and he's full of great info for fans of this flick.  There's a fundamental 'making of' featurette, which was clearly made for television, but gives you some decent interview clips and peaks behind the scenes.  Finally, there are some very brief deleted scenes and outtakes, plus the trailer.  The old disc had a few bonus trailers, text bios and an insert, but everything that matters from the DVD is still here.

And on the Shout set, something has changed.  First of all, everything from the Paramount discs is still here: the commentary, deleted scenes, featurette, trailer and outtakes.  But now we also get a new on-camera interview with Oz.  And I'm happy to report it's not him repeating all the same things he said on the earlier stuff.  He does explain how they filmed the freeway scene, which he also did in the commentary and the featurette... but everything else is new.  Also, it's professionally shot in HD; it's not another webcam interview.  So I don't want to kick up too much of a celebration over this.  It's just over thirteen minutes and it's the only new feature.  But I gotta give credit where it's due, especially since so many labels lately have been cutting corners in this area lately.  Oh, and this edition also comes in a slipcover.

So we went from a solid DVD to a bare minimum blu-ray upgrade to a solid 4k edition.  It doesn't look like it's been getting much attention, but as a real fan of this film, I'm glad to see the previous release wasn't its last stop.  This might not be one for the showroom floor, but it really is a good improvement on what we had been given.

Sony and Their Many Monty Python and the Holy Grails

Quick!  What's the difference between the Collector's Edition, Special Edition, 40th Anniversary Edition and Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition of Monty Python and the Holy Grail?  It's a comedy classic and, apparently, money in the bank for Sony, who seemingly re-release this film on home video every year in a new edition.  And I bet even the people who worked on them couldn't keep them all straight.  Is the new blu-ray different than the old blu-ray?  Did some newer editions lose special features that were on previous editions?  Does the framing and picture quality change dramatically between them?  Are some editions actually exactly the same discs as others, simply released in new, gimmicky packaging?  The answers to all these questions are: yes, yes, yes and yes! And I've decided to get to the bottom of it all.

Update 7/1/18 - 8/10/26: Would you believe Sony has re-issued this film again since I wrote it?  To quote Sally Struthers: "sure, we all would."  But this last one's a bit more justified than usual, as we're kicking it up to a whole new generation of disc.  Previously, Sony had already given us a 4k restoration of the film, but only on 1080p discs.  Now we've got a fancy, new edition (limited edition steelbook BD/ UHD combo pack) on a genuine 4k format, with more extras and what-not.

Is Holy Grail the best Monty Python film?  The Pythons themselves have said that The Life of Brian seems to be their most celebrated film in their home country, and Grail is the most popular in America.  For me it's hard to settle on a single best.  They're all so fragmented, and there are segments in each of their films that that stand out as favorites.  Grail might suffer a bit more than the others in that their are lines and moments that are so iconic than a younger viewer approaching the films today may well have heard half the jokes out of context before even seeing the movie, so it can feel like corny, old material even though this is where it originated.  But there are certainly elements that keep it fresh and ageless, including terrific production values dedicated to presenting an authentic and dung-ridden medieval period, a fantastically frustrated straight man in via the performance of Graham Chapman as King Arthur, and the stylish score and animation.  So even if the humor doesn't always do it for you, it's still an undeniably impressive little movie.

So let's get into answering our thesis question: what're all these varying editions all about?  Well, I've found you can boil it down to to five different discs, starting with the original, barebones DVD from back in 1999.  There are more than five releases, even just limiting it to DVDs and blu-rays put out in the USA market; but only five editions where the content of the actual discs change.  So, first, let's just briefly talk about where they don't change:

*The 2003 Collector's Edition is the same 2-disc set as the 2001 Special Edition, except in limited packaging with a hard copy of the script and a collectible film cell.

*The 2005 And Now For Something Completely Hilarious collection features the same disc first disc as the 2001 Special Edition (and single discs of the other films), but lacking the second disc of special features.

*The 2008 Monty Python's Holy Trinity set, happily, fixes that by including both discs from the 2001 Special Edition, which also came with a book and T-shirt (as well as 2-disc sets of the other films).

*The 2015 Limited Edition Castle Catapult Gift Set just includes the same 40th Anniversary blu-ray disc, but with a whole, wacky playset.

So, that was all the editions that stayed the same.  Now, let's look at the differing editions.  First, there's the 1999 barebones DVD.  It's widescreen, but non-anamorphic.  Then there's the 2001 Special Edition, a 2-disc set which is now anamorphic.  The 2006 Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition, which not only has new special features unique to this edition, but boasts an updated transfer with a new aspect ratio.  Fourth is the first blu-ray release, which of course gave the film its HD debut in 2012.  And then there's the 2015 40th Anniversary Edition, which added new, additional special features (and sometimes a catapult).  And now there's the limited edition 50th Anniversary BD/ UHD steelbook combopack, which has both stayed the same (the BD half is just the 40th Anniversary disc again) and changed with a brand new 4k restoration on a proper Ultra 4k HD disc.

1) 1999 DVD; 2) 2001 DVD; 3) 2006 DVD; 4) 2012 BD;
5) 2015 BD; 6) 2025 BD; 7) 2025 1080p UHD; 8) 2025 2160p UHD.

So, yeah, it's interesting to see how this film's come along over the years.  The original 1999 DVD is a non-anamorphic 1.76:1.  It's also a bit murkier, definitely softer, with detail smoothed away.  The 2001 special edition brightened the image - though they pushed it a bit red - made it anamorphic and definitely brought in more detail.  It's got a little dead space in the overscan issues, which it would've gotten away with in its time, presenting the film in the widest of all its aspect ratios: 1.81:1.  Don't be impressed by that, though, because it was accomplished by trimming the most off of all four sides, making it actually the most cropped edition.  The 2006 edition corrects that, bringing us to a taller 1.67:1 aspect ratio.  It doesn't add much more clarity, but does restore more picture around the edges, particularly vertically.  Coming to the HD blus, the aspect stops shifting around; it's 1.67:1 from 2006 'till 2025.  But the color palette is more natural (look at the historian's skin tones), and it's definitely clearer.  Even the best, 2006 DVD looks pretty soft.  It's pleasingly sharper now on the BDs, which are for all intents and purposes identical, with detail as clear as it's likely to ever be, and grain now highly visible and distinct.  Technically, the 2006 and 2014/ 2025 blus must be different encodes, but you can match each granular pixel between the two's screenshots.

And all that brings us to the 2026 UHD.  It actually has two versions on it.  Their new 4k restoration and the "Near-Theatrical Version Of the Film," which is the theatrical cut minus the "Get On With It" deleted scene removed.  The latter is only in 1080p, but it is the new 4k restoration.  If you compare it to the 40th Anniversary edition, you can see, for example, the highlights in the Black Knight scene filled in now, where they were blown out before.  The framing is 1.66:1, just a pixel or two's worth of difference from the older blus.  The color timing, brightness levels are essentially unchanged.  But if you compare the 4k remaster to any other version, even the 1080p version on the same disc, it's evident how much better rendered detail and film grain is.  What looks like a big pixelated line running up the historian's forehead, for example, is now properly displayed as rounded grain.  In short, it's not a huge revelation - both because the previous transfers were well done and the fact that the original film is already a bit rough and not always perfectly in focus - but it is this film finally displayed in proper 4k HDR with Dolby Vision.

Audio-wise, the original DVD just had the mono track in Dolby 2.0 with optional English, Spanish and French subtitles.  The 2001 special edition introduced a new 5.1 mix as well as a French mono dub to those options, plus joke subs "For People Who Don't Like The Film," which just plays text from Shakespeare's Henry IV pt 2.  The 2006 Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition keeps all of that, and adds additional language options, specifically a Portuguese 5.1 mix and Chinese, Portuguese and Thai subtitles.  Then both of the blu-rays bumps the audio to lossless DTS-HD and adds even more audio options: a Japanese 5.1 mix as well as Japanese, Korean and Mandarin subtitles.

This new edition really goes all out in the audio department.  It still has the 5.1 mix in DTS-HD, plus French, German, Italian and Spanish 5.1 dubs, also in DTS-HD.  But it also has a new remixed Dolby Atmos track and, for us purists, the original mono in 2.0, also lossless.  And yes, it has a slew of foreign subtitle options, plus optional English ones, both HoH and pure.  And it still has the Henry IV ones.  Though this is for the theatrical cut.  The "Near-Theatrical" cut only has the English 5.1 in DTS-HD and optional subtitles.  And the blu-ray version, of course, is unchanged, as it's the same 40th Anniversary disc as before.

Now let's really dive deep and take a look at the special features.  We start off easy: the 1999 DVD only has a handful of bonus trailers, not even the Holy Grail trailer.   Then the 2001 Special Edition comes with almost all of the extras that have been on any and every subsequent edition: two audio commentaries, one by directors Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, and one by the remaining Pythons: John Cleese, Michael Palin and Eric Idle.  Both of these maybe get a little cheesy at times, but are mostly both informative and entertaining, and I doubt any Python fan would want to skip them.  There's a really fun documentary called Quest for the Holy Grail Locations, where Palin and Jones tour the old filming locations, and there's a nice, 13-minute behind-the-scenes featurette made for British television.  There's a couple trailers, stills galleries, a trivia track and weblink kinda stuff... and then, if you thought those Henry IV subtitles were a bit silly, buckle in.  Sony has packed all these DVD and blu-ray editions with a plethora of silly, gag extras, that do little to add to the film experience, but are just jokes in and of themselves.

The film starts with a bluff, fake educational short called Dentists On the Job, as if you got the wrong disc or something, which plays for about two minutes before the real movie begins.  Michael Palin also does a spoof educational short on how to use coconuts as horse hoof sounds like they do in the movie.  There's a fake location scouting film where Gilliam and Palin narrate some old travelogue footage as if it was their real experiences.  There's a few short clips of the Japanese dub presented as extracts, clips from the musical numbers presented as sing-a-longs, and a pretty amusing Lego rendition of the Camelot scene.  It's more fun than the big budget Lego movies they release theatrically now, if you ask me, because except for the animated faces and fire effects, it's all real stop-motion photography of actual Lego pieces, not CGI cartoons in the Lego style.

a featurette only available on the 2006 Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition DVD

So then we come to the Extraordinarily Deluxe Edition.  Now, in 2006, the main reason to upgrade to this version would've been the updated transfer with the corrected aspect ratio.  But that can be tough to sell to the general public, so they had to spice things up with some new features.  But they also didn't have a whole lot to add, so there are a few new things here, but they're pretty thin.  First of all, everything from the previous special edition is carried over.  And it came packaged with a third disc - a CD of the soundtrack album.  But in terms of new, on-disc content there's: a new trailer, that starts out very serious and dramatically before revealing that it's for this silly movie, a little trivia question game and most substantially, a seven minute featurette called A Taste of Spamalot.  Obviously promoting the Broadway show, it features clips of songs from the films (not the full songs) set to Gilliam inspired cut-out animation.  Interestingly, these exclusives remained exclusive to this release, and were not included on subsequent releases, i.e. the blu-rays.

The 2012 blu-ray did include all the other special edition stuff, however, and added two decidedly better extras to the mix.  There's almost twenty minutes of extended scenes and outtakes with an intro by Terry Jones, and then about thirteen minutes of animation outtakes and unused clips, with an introduction and narration by Terry Gilliam.  Also, disappointingly, they lost the original trailer, which sucks because it had some unique jokes that are only in the trailer.  ANd the film no longer has the Dentists On the Job fake-out clip.  Oh, and it touts another big exclusive called "The Holy Book of Days Second Screen."  It's a direct connection to a website full of behind-the-scenes videos or something, but it doesn't seem to actually function.  If you go to the website, it directs you to a link in the App Store; but the app isn't actually in the App Store, despite their claim.  Their help page says the option to sync it up to the blu-ray is no longer available (I'm not convinced it ever really was), but the whole thing seems to no longer exist in any capacity, except for a false promising landing page.  So it boils down to being just a dead, useless weblink.

And now we come to the latest release, the 40th Anniversary Edition.  They've done away with "The Holy Book of Days Second Screen," naturally, but this disc includes an insert directing you to that same landing page with a link to the non-existent app.  Oh well.  Stupid tease.  Anyway, it includes all the content from the 2012 blu except for that, and adds a bit more.  First of all, they brought the trailer back, which is nice.  I assume the 2012's dropping of it was an oversight.  But really what the 40th Anniversary Edition brings to the table, what justifies its existence since it's otherwise the same transfer and same collection of features, is a new half-hour featurette.  It gives us two festival Q&As with the Pythons from Holy Grail screenings, one of which is hosted by John Oliver.  It's okay.  They tell a lot of the same anecdotes they tell in the commentaries and other extras, and they clown around a bit, but nothing especially funny.  It's certainly worth the watch if you've got the disc, but not worth double-dipping for.

this man likes the movie...

Speaking of special features not worth double-dipping for, we come to the 50th Anniversary edition.  First of all, it duplicates everything from the 40th disc (remember, it actually has the exact 40th Anniversary disc as part of the set), and still no Holy Book of Days Second Screen.  They've basically added one new featurette to the 4k disc, called 'Tis But a Tribute, which is exactly what it sounds like.  A bunch of celebrities (including David Cross, Paul Feig and a surprising number of people I didn't recognize even when they put their names on screen) offer brief testimonials to how much they like this movie and quote some favorite lines.  It's about fifteen minutes long and all shot on webcams.  I'm not really disappointed, because the existing documentaries and commentaries are already all this movie needs.  This is just one quick little extra thing you can watch if you get the new release, but nothing to go out of your way to buy the set just to watch.

So this new 50th Anniversary edition is a pretty satisfying, essentially definitive release.  The only content you're missing out on across all the past editions, really, is that little Spamalot featurette and Dentists On the Job.  It would be nice to see all that mysterious "Holy Book of Days" content put on a bonus disc so we can actually just watch like regular people, without trying to sync our blu-ray players up to our ipads or whatever other ridiculous broken idea they had.  And maybe a new featurette with more legit Spamalot content, like a little footage of the Broadway show and interviews with the cast.  They could even go back and recover that little animated featurette...  I mean, a 60th Anniversary is coming.

But in the meantime, we now have all the Python films in 4k; and.this 50th Anniversary Edition steelbook is really all any fan could need.