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Rated: G
Starring: Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, et al.
Director: William Wyler Review
This long-awaited release presents a glorious anamorphic print complete
with a remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack spread over both sides of a
double-sided disc. The music sounds fresher than ever, and both the
theatrical overture and entr'acte are included. There's an extensive and
enjoyable documentary tracing the history of the story by Lew Wallace
through stage productions to the first MGM version in 1925 and then to the
1959 production. Charlton Heston provides an intermittent commentary,
evidently enjoying the experience of watching the movie again, and his
comments are usefully indexed so you can skip to the next bit without
having to sit through chunks of silence. (During the chariot race he
voiced his concern to second-unit director Yakima Canutt that the stuntmen
were better drivers. Replied Canutt: "Chuck, just drive the damn chariot
and I guarantee that you'll win.") Also included are a couple of screen
tests, one with Leslie Nielsen in pre-Naked Gun days as Messala. A photo
gallery and theatrical trailers complete an epic DVD package. --Mark
Walker
------------ Ben-Hur scooped an
unprecedented 11 Academy Awards® in 1959 and, unlike some later rivals,
richly deserved every single one. This is epic filmmaking on a scale that
had not been seen before and is unlikely ever to be seen again. But it's
not just running time or a cast of thousands that makes an epic, it's the
subject matter, and here the subject--Prince Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton
Heston) and his estrangement from old Roman pal Messala (Stephen Boyd)--is
rich, detailed, and sensitively handled. Director William Wyler, who had
been a junior assistant on MGM's original silent version back in 1925,
never sacrifices the human focus of the story in favor of spectacle, and
is aided immeasurably by Miklos Rozsa's majestic musical score, arguably
the greatest ever written for a Hollywood picture. At four hours it's a
long haul (especially given some of the portentous dialogue), but all in
all, Ben-Hur is a great movie, best seen on the biggest screen possible.
--Mark Walker
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