The Ten Commandments is now available on Blu-Ray. This is one of my favorite films of all time. My memories of Easter as a child is basically made up of watching Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur. I am not especially religious but I love the sheer epic-ness of these films. What I love about the TC is despite the high poetic, stilted dialogue and some real ham acting the whole production nevertheless has an air of sanctity and respect towards portraying what they (okay He, as in DeMille) felt was an accurate depiction of what happened. There appears to be a great deal of effort made to have as authentic an environment as was possible (for the 50's anyway), and no expense was spared in production design. You can tell a lot of research was done on customs and behavior and rituals of different peoples from that time.
Oh, and it has Yul Brynner, who is pure awesomeness as Rameses. The only actor I can think of who could pull off the part the way he did with such pure presence and charisma is Chow-Yun-Fat. He handles the dialogue as though it were made for him and absolutely holds the film down. I think a sign of a truly great actor is one who can take that kind of dialogue and make it effortless. As the skeptic he also grounds the film from being getting too 'holy'. The guy just rocks and I think it's an Award-worthy performance.
But all that’s beside the point. The real reason to get this sucker on Blu-Ray of course is the
image quality. It is out-frickin-standing. THIS IS WHAT BLU-RAY IS ABOUT. If you have been holding off on blu-ray, you do not know what you are missing when it comes to many of these great films. Older films that were shot in higher resolution like TC will blow you away on BR because now you will see what the fuss was about at the time. I have seen this movie in every format except film print and this is the best it has ever looked. Many times I was amazed at how the scenes looked BRAND NEW. Like it was only shot a year ago. The level of detail is amazing and the true splendor of the production just can not be appreciated unless you see it in blu-ray. Even the rear-projection which many times is very obvious because of the outlines around the actors still comes off as impressive if dated.
I could care less about explosions and the latest crappy action flick on blu-ray, it’s the classics
that have me excited with this format. Up next: Excalibur…
