Yesterday we saw Twiggy,who is being made a Dame this year. The announcement was made in the
New Year's Honours List. Today we're looking at another person, who is receiving a Knighthood this year. In honour of the announcement of Michael Palin's upcoming knighthood, today we're looking at Sir Micheal Palin as Sir Galahad.
This 'Sir Galahad' is from the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
These Holy Grail figures were made by Sideshow,which has made a lot of figures based on movie and TV characters.
The Sideshow figures were pretty good, but these days they are overshadowed by the amazingly realistic figures made by Hot Toys and others.
Galahad is 12" tall.
 |
| Oh look.He found that shrubbery he needed... |
He has 'over 20' points of articulation,which means 21.
He's jointed at the neck,(His head is on a swivel joint.),shoulders,upper arms,elbows,lower arms,wrists,(or,in this case,
gloves.),upper body, waist,hips,upper legs,knees,and ankles.
The upper arm and upper leg joints are kind of hard to use, especially through the slippery chain mail. There also isn't much posability with the gloves. The arms and legs have a lot of movement though.
The likeness to Micheal Palin is pretty good if you look at the sculpt.
The paint job could have been a lot better though, and the resemblance would have been more obvious.
The figure comes with a shield, which has an elastic strap and molded plastic hand grip on the back.
He has a gingham belt for some reason. It's not quite movie accurate. I wouldn't think gingham was popular in the middle ages.
He has a belt for his sword's sheath too,but it seems to have stretched out over time. It's way too long now.
The sword is nice,and really fits in the sheath.
His chain mail is scratchy nylon. In the movie it was made from knitted yarn,because real chain mail was too heavy. (Probably too expensive too. The whole movie cost less than 250,000 pounds.)
His hood can be put up or down.
The leggings have soles on the bottom.
He has elbow pads too.
There is some nice detail in the gloves.
The gloves are his actual hands,and not removable.
He even comes with the 'grail shaped beacon' from the Castle Anthrax.
The little door opens to reveal the candle inside.
There were quite a few Sideshow Monty Python figures. In the first series, which this doll comes from, there were all four knights, (Lancelot,Bedevere,Robin, and Galahad), King Arthur, and his 'faithful servant' Patsy.
There was also a series of muddy knights, which were basically the same figures with 'mud' covered clothes,as well as most of the other random characters in the film, including the Black Knight,the dead collector, the king of Swamp Castle and his son Prince Herbert,Tim the Enchanter,the French Taunter,and the bridge keeper.
Even the box is full of Pythonesque jokes,many based on jokes or lines from the movie.
Sir Michael Palin
KCMG,CBE,
FRGS
was born in Ranmoor,Sheffield, England in 1943.
He graduated from
Oxford University,and went on to a career as a writer and actor. After
achieving huge success with the Monty Python comedy troupe in the Tv series "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and the movies that followed, he went on to
appear in his own TV series,"Ripping Yarns,co-written with fellow Python
Terry Jones. Sir Michael also appeared in movies,including "American
Friends",which he wrote,based in his grandfather's journals, "A Fish
Called Wanda",(with fellow Python John Cleese),for which he won a BAFTA
for Best Supporting Actor,and "Time Bandits",which he co-wrote with it's
director,Terry Gilliam, also a fellow Python.
These days Sir Michael is
probably best known for his many travel programmes. His first was
"Around the World in 80 Days With Michael Palin" in 1989, and his most
recent was "Michael Palin in North Korea". He is receiving his knighthood for 'services to travel,culture, and geography'.
As you may have read here before, I love Monty Python. I visited their offices in London several times...
 |
| Monty Python office in 1986. |
...and I've shown you my prized possession in a previous post.
 |
| My signed photo, which I took in the Python office in 1985. It took months to get all the Pythons to sign it while it lingered in the office. I was panicked something would happen to it while it awaited the last signature,and when they mailed it to me after I went back to America. |
I'm pretty proud of Sir Michael.
Don't forget to check out tomorrow's doll.
