Thursday, July 05, 2007

Ben Hur

Recently (Easter) one of my roommates introduced me to his tradition of watching the movie Ben Hur every Easter. I had never seen Ben Hur before this and I knew very little about it except Charlton Heston was in it. The movie is set during the times of Christ and Spans Israel, The Caspian Sea, and Rome. Charlton Heston plays Judas Ben-Hur, a wealthy landowner in Jerusalem. The movie is 214 minutes long and it would be futile for me to recount the whole movie to you, but it is very deserving of the 11 Academy Awards it received (Which is the most a movie has ever won, tied with Titanic and The Return of the King), and it is one of the most uplifting movies I have ever seen come out of Hollywood. I recommend it to anyone as one of the greatest films of all time, and perhaps one of my favorites.

Interesting to note that the famous Chariot Scene in the movie was obviously copied by George Lucas for his Podrace scene (and in George Lucas’s original script for the Race almost exactly the same with some sci-fi elements)

A word of warning: Make sure you have the time to watch a 3 hour and 34 minute film because it is just as long as The Lord of The Rings.

3 comments:

John said...

Adding it to my Blockbuster queue... and promoting it!

Don and Amy Bennion said...

Never watched Ben-Hur, but after Joe's highest recommendation we'll have to set aside 3+ hours and do it.

DB

Richard Bennion said...

Ben-Hur was one of the great movies of my youth. They showed the film in Cinemascope, which was a special theater with a curved screen that was ultrawide for the time. It really is an epic film and well worth the watch. You will miss something (dizziness and nausea) by not sitting on the front row of a Cinemascope theater, but it truly is a great movie and an excellent way to commemorate Easter. Excellent suggestion!