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Rating:  -
Thank you for the CD, it was shipped to me fast and looked new. Thanks again...
Rating:  -
I don't usually review DVDs by focussing on the extras or presentation but it's unavoidable here. Yes, the film is a camp-mongers delight, replete with over-the-top hambone performances, a pious-yet-salacious "love triangle", some of the worst dialogue ever to be heard in a major film and set-'em-and-forget-'em camera angles as only the anachronistic C. B. de Mille could do it. Charlton Heston is at his grandiose, wooden best. Yul Brynner earned the many imitations that have dogged his overbaked performance ever since it appeared in 1956. And Anne Baxter...well, there's no telling what on earth she thinks she's doing here, but it certainly submarined her film career from then on.
The film can be enjoyed on a "camp" basis due to de mille's obliviousness to sound film conventions and his inability to direct actors to do anything but posture and pose. We all know that everyone watches this film for the pay-off scenes, i.e. the raising of the pilon, the various plagues, the pillar of fire, the carving of the Ten Commandments and, of course, the parting of the Red Sea. These scenes pay-off big time, which explains its popularity 54 years hence. Still, it's a film of a very old fashion that was past its day in 1956.
This DVD edition suffers from all of those flaws and even adds a few. The remastering is pedestrian and adds nothing to prior remasterings, even on video. The inclusion of the 1923 version of the film only emphasizes the poor quality of that film's transfer and the lack of quality sources available. All of the featurettes have appeared on other additions as well. Then there is the commentary by Katharine Orrison, who has supposedly written a book on this film. Okay, but by what authority. This isn't a commentary, it's a highfallutin' Bible lesson drawn out over 5 hours (her commentary covers both the 1923 and 1956 versions). She narrates scenes literally, with step-by-step observations of what the scenes portray according to "God" and "religion" rather than cinema. In fact, she repeatedly gets cinematic facts reprehensibly wrong, often to serve her pious religious ends. One quote: "there is a God, there is a faith, thanks be to God". Huh?! This nut might be helpful in Sunday school but as a commentarian she's a washout. What was Paramount / Viacom thinking? Oh wait, I know: "Let's get the Bible-thumping crowd to buy the DVD. Next time, we'll hit the atheists." Pure trash.
Rating: -
Its interesting to note that dvd transfers from origional master copies to dts and or hd dvds digitally remastered that a movie like this, that is 53 years old, could be remastered into an astonishing clear, sharp image and outstanding deep, luscious colors and yet newer movies that are digitally remastered are a huge dissappointment and there is absolutely no reason for the poor copies done in this age of technology.One does not realize this until a movie is purchased that it is grainy, fuzzy and poor color saturation.I have hd dvds that arent as sharp as reg dvds and i have a thirteen foot diagonal wall screen with a ceiling projector so i especially need a really good remastered dvd which unfortunately is hard to come by.Even if you dont care for this type of movie, " The Ten Commandments", produced in 1956, you should buy it as its not only a great epic but so beautifully remastered in every way---it shows that the companies that remaster five, ten, twenty etc year old movies have no excuse for such poor quality when compaired to a fifty three year old movie so beautifully remastered.My digitally remastered, collectors edition of "Ben Hur" is terrible--poor color, lacks crispness, etc, is just not there.I have an old VHS copy of " Ben Hur" that puts the remastered one to shame--very big dissappointment---we all need to contact the diff companies to get with the program and start producing the quality of the extremely poor, sub grade digitally remastered joke of the lack of quality we are subjected to when we wait with baited breath to receive our treasured copy of our favourite movies only to be submitted to such disasters of the so-called re-remastered junk on the market today.
Rating:  -
This movie did not have the sharpest picture that I usually expect in a high definition movie but it did have a comparably full screen picture for being billed as "Wide Screen". But, I don't see on the cover any reference to what the aspect ratio is and it is my complaint that, why is it that all movies can't be reproduced in "full screen" with an aspect ratio of 185:1 or less. I do not like to rent or buy any movie that is in the Widescreen or Litterbox format.
Rating: -
The appearance of the bald little man from between the blue curtains right before the film is really as ridiculous as the picture, it has meaning. Indeed scenes with grandiose sights shot on a minimum 3d senario at first plan have big landscape paintings at long distance, quite surrealistic. Anyway it's the first time I seen that Moses saw the burning bush there.
Do you remember Mount Sinai wiht a cloud on top which doesnt move? Or Mount Sinai erupting with a frozen red stain on top?
For the rest, the movie doesn't follow the bible, so we watch the thread of the script like cheap romance of bad taste.
Well after all I should not criticize the movie for that reason, given that the bible is fiction as well.
Consider that the Bible is 100% fiction, and the movie is 80% fiction as well regarding the bible.
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