March 22, 2016

Ben-Hur: A Remake On The Way


                                                                



This seems to be the third attempt at filming General Lew Wallace's novel.
It was first filmed in 1925 - a silent movie then.

In 1959 it was remade by William Wyler. Charlton Heston was the star.More here.

Heston played an amazing amount of real life people such as Michelangelo, El Cid and Moses,just to mention a few.

Heston's version was an epic movie and won 11 Academy Awards, outdoing "Gone With The Wind".

Although the title of the book is  "Ben-Hur - A Tale of The Christ" , written in 1880, it is not strictly speaking a Biblical story but a novel set in Biblical times.

I hope it is better than the recent Biblical epics we have had to deal with like "Exodus, Gods and Kings", and "Noah". I thought both of them were quite dreadful!
On the other hand I thought "Son of God" was quite good.

Hollywood can churn out Biblical epics, or should I say their versions of the Bible, as much as they like - they don't have to pay any money for securing the rights to the book as is often the case.

The 1959 version used many special effects of course, but now we have CGI which makes things a lot easier.

As well as the spectacular scenes like the sea battle and the chariot race it also gave us the phrase 'bigger than Ben-Hur".

The chariot race is quite epic:
                                                               
 More from You Tube:

BEN-HUR is the epic story of Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston), a prince falsely accused of treason by his adopted brother Messala (Toby Kebbell), an officer in the Roman army. Stripped of his title, separated from his family and the woman he loves (Nazanin Boniadi), Judah is forced into slavery. After years at sea, Judah returns to his homeland to seek revenge, but finds redemption. Based on Lew Wallace’s timeless novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Also starring Morgan Freeman and Rodrigo Santoro.

Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Cast: Jack Huston, Toby Kebbell, Morgan Freeman, Rodrigo Santoro, Nazanin Boniadi, Ayelet Zurer, and Sofia Black D’Elia

Here is Trailers From Hell's take:

                                                                
I will watch the new version, just to see how it turns out but will have to wait till August this year. I have heard it is really good!

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And some others:
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