May I just say that I caught bits and pieces of the newest edition of that classic Passover tale, and I have a few questions and comments.
Why does everyone speak with a British accent?
Why was Moses wandering around in the desert without water, getting more and more haggard, and yet, staying mostly clean-shaven?
Don’t you think men look really stupid with shaved heads and lots of eyeliner? Oh, and the dresses don’t help much. I thought I was in Greenwich Village on Gay Pride Parade Day or something.
So, if it was God who parted the Red Sea (and we know it was really the Reed Sea, not the Red Sea, but let’s not go there for now, this is Hollywood), howcome Moses went “Argh!” and “Ugh!” when the sea was parting? Because, like, y’know, uh — he didn’t do anything but lift that staff. And come on, nobody is that out of shape.
Say, didn’t you just love that little pause for moralization when Moses’ Egyptian buddy came to him and complained that his son who was killed was innocent and didn’t deserve it? Because I don’t know about you, but that’s what I want to see when I’m watching the crappy remake of a hokey Biblical epic: Lectures on moralism. (At this point, I’d be perfectly content to see Victor Mature pushing down the pillars on the Philistines; hokey is fun! Or Edward G. Robinson trying not to talk like Edward G. Robinson. That was funny.)
Anyway. I’ll probably catch the second half, because I want to see the famous scene where Moses smashes the Commandments on the ground. Plus I want to see their version of the Golden Calf. Oh, and there’s the little cliffhanger ending from tonight, where Moses if facing down a spearman. Gee. Ya think he’ll survive and cross the Red Sea with the rest of the Hebrews, or what?
I’m so excited, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep for wondering!
It is not much different from the Hollywood movies where supposed Italians speak English with Italian accent, Germans speak English with German one, etc…
Actually, they all use a variety of Yiddish accent for all languages, since no one knows better…
I also saw only bits and pieces of the second half (it was up against 24 after all), but the first thing I took away is that I couldn’t help but compare the effects used in the remake to the deMille version. And the de Mille version holds up quite favorably. Sure, the fire and brimstone looks better in the modern version, but the sea splitting and even the angel of death scene were better in the original.
Heck, with Naveen Andrews involved, couldn’t they have borrowed the black cloud from Lost to be a suitable standin for the Angel of Death killing the firstborn?
Substantively, I was wondering when was it made clear that the slaves were actually Hebrews or Israelites? I didn’t hear any mention of that.
And don’t get me started on that moralizing or the possibility that Moses might not make it across the Red Sea because some Egyptian had him at spearpoint (even if it is Sayid).
I thought I recognized those eyes. Definitely bedroom eyes, but I’m still firmly on the Daniel Dae Kim side of things.
Well, at least they didn’t make him shave his head.
I don’t know, lawhawk. I didn’t watch the whole thing, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t trying to follow the original script from 2,500 years ago.
Just as an FYI, for the past four years, one of the exercises I’ve given my fourth-graders around Passover (this is religious school, calm down) is to create their own ten plagues.
The overwhelming majority concern bodily functions.
Which proves my contention that you can never go wrong telling fart jokes to nine-year-olds.
What a lame cliffhanger with Moses facing that spearman. As if everyone doesn’t know that Moses isn’t going to take him down in that newly added “fight” scene choreographed by Jackie Chan.
I missed that. I turned it on at 9:03, just in time to see the water collapsing around the Egyptians.
I was also in time to see Moses find Sayyid’s body and cry over it.
Wow, what a bunch of mealy-mouthed moralizing in this remake. I turned it back on again later, and saw that Moses was stoning his wife and friend, and turned it off in disgust.
Yeah, the laws are there. And so is the Talmud, creating a huge buffer between telling us to stone adulterers and, gee, actually doing it.
I’m going to watch the Chuck Heston version to get this bad taste out of my mind. At least his Moses wasn’t paralyzed by indecision and moral quandaries.