You forgot the CED Release of The Ten Commandments. Released at the same time as the DiscoVision
1. DiscoVision was planned for 1978, but we don't even know if that disc dropped or not. I've never seen a copy.
2. CED as a whole was in the planning stages from 1964 to 1981, with the initial discs dropping in November or December of 1981. I honestly don't know if The Ten Commandments was one of them.
3. The first confirmed laserdisc was in either 1981 or 1982. I don't know whether it was mono or stereo, as I don't own it. I do know, however, that the 1978 picture transfer made for the DiscoVision laserdisc was in use until early 1990, when the 1990 home videos with the 1989 remaster went to print. I also know that the mono track for the 1978 laserdisc (again, we don't know where this track came from) was in use until the early 80s on laserdisc, VHS, and Beta. I don't know off-hand what the CED had, but experience with at least one other CED release (Gone With The Wind, 1985, presented in stereo) proves that the "blue for stereo, white for mono" thing isn't always true.
Weird question about home video releases in the 80s. I knew this, but forgot it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Shales
Big prestige productions like "Raintree County" were treated as movie events in the '50s, and so composers wrote overtures to be played before the picture started, and intermission music that served as a second-act overture. Recently Paramount reissued, in stereo, Cecil B. De Mille's "The Ten Commandments," restoring for the first time since its theatrical release De Mille's own prologue, which he delivers standing in front of a curtain. This is followed by an overture, but somebody at Paramount goofed, because the overture is not the one Elmer Bernstein wrote for the movie. It appears to be from some other film altogether.
Link, paywalled, and full article, with The Ten Commandments portions in bold:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Shales, The Washington Post
Gone With the Video
Reel Losses for "Raintree County" & Other Movies Cut for Cassettes
June 28, 1986
[Show spoiler]In 1957, when MGM released its big-budget Civil War epic "Raintree County," the studio expected the picture to become the "Gone With the Wind" of the 1950s. It didn't. It was nearly a disaster. And yet a mystique has grown up around the picture and something of a cult around that mystique.
The film's fans eagerly await its home video release on July 15, but they won't be getting the whole movie, only most of it. Some 20 minutes of dramatic footage will be left out. The reels are sitting in a vault, ripe for the transferring, but MGM/UA Home Entertainment, which is releasing the cassette version, doesn't want to go to the expense of retrieving them.
"It would cost at least $50,000 to restore that footage, and the studio did not think it worthwhile at this time," says Peter Anderson, vice president of technical operations for MGM/UA Home Entertainment in New York. "A decision was made. It came out of the California office. It's too bad. I would love to have been able to do it."
The fate of "Raintree County" is not unusual in the short new history of home video. There's little to no guarantee that the vintage movie bought or rented at a video store is the definitive, complete, director-approved version of the picture. Only fairly recently have home video operations even had access to original negatives stored in studio vaults; before that, they worked from whatever prints were available.
Hollywood has been a sloppy archivist. Footage from films cut during their theatrical runs, or cut for television when movies crossed the great divide into TV in the '50s, has in some cases been destroyed. For years, the TV version of "Knute Rockne -- All American" lacked its most famous scene, Ronald Reagan's "win one for the Gipper" speech, because the scene was thrown out when the film was sold to TV.
The home video version of "Knute Rockne" now available is complete, the missing scene having been located and restored.
In the case of "Raintree County," there's not much mystery as to the whereabouts of the missing footage. It was cut soon after the film's original release, reducing the running time from 187 to 166 minutes, and resides in a vault in Kansas City. But MGM/UA says the missing reels are on 65 mm film, and that to transfer them to tape requires first converting them, and the rest of the picture, to standard 35 mm film. This would cost not only money, Anderson maintains, but also time, postponing the movie's release date on home video by as much as a year.
Fans loyal to "Raintree County" say they are skeptical about Anderson's claims and that the real problem is a lack of concern; MGM/UA just doesn't care enough to bother. A major complaint among film buffs is that film buffs are not, for the most part, involved in the transferring process; it falls into the hands of technicians and merchandisers, and neither group, the film buffs say, worries enough about the integrity of the films involved.
Video store shelves are loaded with incomplete versions of Hollywood movies, classic and not-so-classic. Stanley Kramer's epic farce "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" was, like "Raintree County," reedited after its reserved-seat "roadshow" engagements in the '50s, and a complete version has never been shown on TV or been available on home video. Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," modern masterpiece or not, was severely trimmed following its Washington world premiere in 1968 and has never been the same since.
Scenes from Kubrick's earlier epic, "Spartacus," that raised censors' hackles when the film was released in 1960 (one included implicitly homosexual dialogue between Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis) were cut then and cannot be found today, despite the best efforts of MCA Home Video to locate them. Even so, the "Spartacus" recently released on cassette has been restored to a point not seen since the original release a quarter century ago.
Cine'astes say the home video boom could also be a boon to film culture; movies that have long played television and theaters in abridged or mangled versions could now be put back together and preserved for the ages -- or at least until the next home video format turns everything on its head again. But studio bookkeepers sometimes stand in the way even when the footage can be found.
Tom Bodley, head of postproduction at Samuel Goldwyn in Hollywood and a technician who is also a dedicated film historian, says "Raintree County" deserves better than a perfunctory video release that literally comes up short.
"It's a very final thing, this transferring to home video," says Bodley. "These things should be corrected. Granted, the film is not a classic. But it's one of those pictures that have remained in people's minds. It's a highly professionally tuned film, beautifully photographed. Even MGM has something to gain by putting it back together."
The mystique surrounding "Raintree County" has its dark side. During production of the film, Montgomery Clift, who plays an idealistic young scholar in 1860s Indiana, was seriously injured in an auto accident and required plastic surgery before he could finish the film. Thus his appearance changes from scene to scene. The movie is based on a novel by Ross Lockridge Jr., a brilliant young talent who committed suicide in 1948, after MGM had bought the rights but long before the movie was made.
But there's a positive side to the movie's reputation as well. It marked a turning point in the career of Elizabeth Taylor, a graduation to more serious, substantial roles. Her performance is fascinating to watch, that's for sure, and she is said to be very fond of the movie. Attempts to reach Taylor for comment on the truncated version proved futile, however. A phalanx of representatives said she was making a film and entirely too busy to think about anything else.
What most distinguishes "Raintree County" is its score, a glistening, melodious landmark in the annals of movie music by Johnny Green, who was head of the MGM music department at the time, and whose other hits include the evergreen "Body and Soul." Film historian Ronald Haver, head of the film department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, calls Green's score "one of the most beautiful sound tracks ever created for a film."
Green is among those most pained that the home video version will be incomplete.
"Cinematic ruthless mayhem" is the way he describes what is happening to films like "Raintree County." From his home in Beverly Hills, Green says he could get no audience for his complaints when he contacted MGM/UA. Instead he was offered a free copy of the cassette by a secretary. Green even tried to reach Ted Turner, who still owns the MGM film library (having divested himself of the MGM studios), but there was no response.
"Through calls and plaints and pleas to MGM, we have accomplished something," says Green. "They've reinstated the overture and the entr'acte I wrote for the film. But 20 minutes of cinema, story and pictures are lying around somewhere, and nobody seems disposed to go looking for them."
Big prestige productions like "Raintree County" were treated as movie events in the '50s, and so composers wrote overtures to be played before the picture started, and intermission music that served as a second-act overture. Recently Paramount reissued, in stereo, Cecil B. De Mille's "The Ten Commandments," restoring for the first time since its theatrical release De Mille's own prologue, which he delivers standing in front of a curtain. This is followed by an overture, but somebody at Paramount goofed, because the overture is not the one Elmer Bernstein wrote for the movie. It appears to be from some other film altogether.
CBS/Fox Home Video was given a definitively complete version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific" to release in stereo, but to fit the picture on a single cassette, CBS/Fox lopped off the overture, the intermission music and the closing "playout music" that follows the closing credits. These omissions may sound minor, but the film won an Oscar for its sound recording, the great Alfred Newman did the arrangements, and all three musical sections are lustrous enhancements to the finished picture.
Trimming of intermissions has been a persistent form of movie mauling as big studio features from the '50s are transferred to home video. Composer Bernstein builds toward a massive crescendo as the first act of "Ten Commandments" nears its end (after Charlton Heston comes down from the mountaintop where he talked with the Burning Bush) but the crescendo never comes, because the intermission and shots leading up to it have been thrown out.
It seems absurd to have omitted the intermission, since the lengthy movie had to be broken up into two cassettes anyway. Thus there is an intermission, but there is not the intermission.
The same thing happened with "Raintree County," aborting one of the film's most poignant, potent sequences. Elizabeth Taylor has gone mad and run off to the South, and Montgomery Clift vows to go and find her; Eva Marie Saint, as the good girl who really loves him, bids him a tearfully dramatic goodbye at the train station. The dialogue remains, but the dramatic parting has largely parted.
For Green, the sour experience with "Raintree County" isn't his first grievance against home video. He says that on the new stereo edition of "Oliver!," of which he was conductor and arranger and for which he composed original music to supplement the Lionel Bart score, a precredit overture he wrote has instead been affixed to the credit sequence. It runs short, leaving a gaping silence before the credits end.
"They butchered my score, the best I ever did," Green says. "I wrote to Sir John Woolf, the British producer of 'Oliver!,' and sent him a copy of the cassette. He told me he thought the video quality and color registration were awful. And he said he was outraged at what was done to the music. He went to Columbia but got nowhere."
A spokesman for RCA/Columbia Home Video, which released "Oliver!," did not respond to phone inquiries last week.
Transferring films to home video is still a new art and a new science. Major technological improvements have been made since the industry got its start in the 1970s. Anderson says MGM used to run some films through a time compression machine (among them, studio pride and joy "An American in Paris") to save tape, but that this is not done any more. Consumers are becoming more aware of picture and sound quality as VCRs become fancier and more sophisticated, and as high-resolution TV monitors become more common.
Film historian Haver says, however, that there's a long way to go. Films that have fallen into the public domain, or whose home video rights have been bought by smaller, less sophisticated firms, often appear on home video via miserably mushy and jumpy prints. "The thing that irritates me most is that on wide-screen films, they don't go full frame when they make the transfer," Haver says. "What you get is about half the image that was originally there."
Haver says that in Japan, wide-screen films are released in the so-called "letter-box" format, which means the full width of the wide-screen frame is on the screen, masked top and bottom with black. The only film in the United States to enjoy this treatment is Woody Allen's "Manhattan," on MGM/UA Home Video, because it was in Allen's contract that the film could be televised only that way, in order to sustain the original compositions of the cinematographer.
Anderson says it would actually be cheaper to release wide-screen films in the full-frame format, rather than via the traditional "pan and scan" approach, but there is little consumer demand for it. With pan-and-scan, each shot is scanned during transfer so that the center of action is on the screen.
"If they really cared about preserving these films, they'd do it right," says Haver, who presided over the landmark restoration of George Cukor's "A Star Is Born" with Judy Garland, locating and restoring scenes long thought destroyed. The film, probably the most nearly complete version that will ever be available, is on Warner Home Video. "If they really cared about preserving these films, they'd do it right," Haver says. "They care up to a point. As long as it's a marketing point."
Mike Fitzgerald, technical director for MCA Home Video, says one problem faced in transferring films is deciding precisely what the definitive version is. Unlike some other studios, Fitzgerald says, Universal tended to save the complete, 70 mm versions of "roadshow" films after the shorter, 35 mm versions went out in release, so this hasn't been a problem.
"Where Universal gets in trouble is in those cases where they've altered a film dramatically from the theatrical version to the television version," says Fitzgerald. These are films that were not cut for TV but instead were "stretched out" for TV -- movies like "Diary of a Mad Housewife," which, when its nudity and strong language were removed, was too short to fill a two-hour time slot. So NBC and Universal, with the director's permission, went back to footage shot but not used in the theatrical version and put it back in.
People who buy the home video version -- the original theatrical release -- write to MCA and ask what happened to the scenes they saw when the movie was shown on TV, Fitzgerald says. The same thing has happened with such TV-stretched films as "Midway," "King Kong" and "Earthquake."
Fitzgerald supervised the "Spartacus" reconstruction. He regrets the film is still not back to its original roadshow running time. Among the missing scenes found, he says, is a long, dramatic tracking shot of a battlefield strewn with corpses. Among those not found was a scene in which an arm was lopped off on camera, considered shockingly violent in 1960. "We tried to find it, but never could," says Fitzgerald. He means the scene, not the arm.
In that same vein, Fitzgerald says MCA Home Video will release a new complete version of James Whale's classic "Frankenstein" later this year, a version that will include, for the first time in 50 years, the scene in which the monster throws the little girl into the pond and drowns her. It, and other scenes considered too gruesome at the time, have been found and restored to the film. "We just put all the pieces together," says Fitzgerald, deadpan once more.
Obviously, home video can be a godsend to film preservation, but one of those mixed godsends with plenty of discouraging aspects. Haver says, "Home video is the best thing to happen to film preservation since television, which made people realize how good old movies were, and showed them to be marketable as well as valuable."
A Canadian film buff eager to see "Raintree County" in its full and original state, but also eager to remain anonymous on the issue, says, "Remastering these films for video is the final, last-ditch possibility for us to see the films the way they were meant to be." Says Bodley, "It is the last chance, I think. Nobody's ever going to drag out 'Raintree County' again and do any work on it, that's for sure."
As "Raintree County" begins, Nat King Cole sings its title tune, music by Green, lyrics by Paul Francis Webster: "They say in Raintree County, There's a tree bright with blossoms of gold. But you will find, the raintree's a state of the mind, Or a dream, to unfold . . . " The film in its entirety apparently will remain as elusive as the mythical raintree it celebrates -- a dream that will never unfold completely because it is locked in a vault in Kansas City.
Can we either prove or disprove this? All I know about the older releases is...
-1979 tape begins with the Paramount logo right after the warning, unknown how Tape One ends and Tape Two begins, unsure how Part One ends and Part Two begins, Tape Two ends with "So it was written. So it shall be done."
-Of the four dead formats, you had equal chances of them opening "overture, intro, credits", "intro, overture, credits", or "just credits". The correct order, "overture, intro, credits", is preserved on all DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K releases.
-The 1982 laserdisc opens with the overture and introduction by DeMille, but I forget their order, and the video is no longer available.
-The 1990 Beta and VHS are identical, and play as follows:
Tape One:
1. Black
2. Paramount/Feature Presentation/Warning (rare opening with light blue background and A Gulf+Western Company byline)
3. Introduction by Cecil B. DeMille
4. Overture (over black)
5. Opening credits (they look open matte to me, but I don't know whether it's the full 1.46 of VistaVision or whether its the full 1.37 of standard 35mm film with the credits being done normally as opposed to the rest of the feature, which was done in VistaVision)
6. Movie ("And God said...'Let there be light!'...and there was light..." to Sephora telling Moses, "...but I won't be jealous of a memory." (I believe my VCR counter was either at 1:56 or 1:58 when this scene ended.)
7. Fade to black (clearly a video effect)
8. Black
(Some copies have a white screen of death, some have a brief black screen of death (and sometimes it's silent on the HiFi tracks and only audible on the normal tracks), some cut to blank, and some go from black to rewinding. Other cut to rewinding during the WSOD/BSOD, while other cut to blank after the WSOD/BSOD, and then rewind.)
10. End of tape
Tape Two:
1. Black
2. Fade-in (clearly a video effect)
3. Jethro's daughters prepare to dance for Moses and the Sheikhs
4. Movie continues for 13 minutes (I think?)
5. "It is not by the sword that He shall deliver His people...but by the staff of a shepherd."
6. Intermission card (goes away within two seconds of the cue ending, original card)
7. Entr'acte (over black screen, less than two seconds after the Intermission card and music go away)
8. "And the Lord said...'Go...return to Egypt'..."
9. Movie continues for another 90+ minutes
10. "Go! Proclaim liberty throughout all the lands! Unto all the inhabitants thereof!"
11. "So it was written. So it shall be done."
12. Exit Music starts over the then-current Paramount logo, but I forget whether it had the "A Gulf+Western Company byline or the A Paramount Communications Company byline; the logo disappears after at most five seconds, and the rest of the exis music plays over black
13. Black
(Some copies have a white screen of death, some have a brief black screen of death (and sometimes it's silent on the HiFi tracks and only audible on the normal tracks), some cut to blank, and some go from black to rewinding. Other cut to rewinding during the WSOD/BSOD, while other cut to blank after the WSOD/BSOD, and then rewind.)
15. End of tape
-The 1993 reprint of the 1990 VHS plays the exact same. I forget when it was pressed exactly, but both tapes were done by Rank, likely in the same day or short period of time.
-Another reprint I have, with 1998 label dates, weird looking labels, no Paramount watermarks on the labels, no sticker seals on the box or tapes, but Technicolor print dates from either 1998 or 1999, is almost the same, except the overture is completely missing from the tape. Otherwise, the same.
-Not saying they don't exist, but I know of no tapes that have Part One all on one tape. This encompasses all known Betas from 1979 to 1990, and all known VHS tapes from 1979 to 1998.
-And most importantly, of the copies that have an overture, they're all the roughly 1:3? overture that's on all DVDs, all Blu-rays, and all 4Ks.
If you're agnostic or an atheist, there's a possibility this movie may convert you into a firm believer but regardless, it's a fantastic movie.
Having accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, I sincerely hope it does.
Does the main 4K feature come on a double-sided disc with 100 gigabytes of data on each side, or are there two single-sided discs with 100 gigabytes of data for each half of the film?
Either way, this four-hour epic film is an excellent argument for expanding the capacity of optical discs, so you can see this movie uninterrupted without having to change or flip the disc.
If you are an atheist or an agnostic, Star Wars might make you believe in the Force. Especially if you have accepted Ahsoka Tano as your lord and mistress.
If you are an atheist or an agnostic, Batteries Not Included might make you.......
I did watch this masterpiece recently, and I am still an atheist. If there is a deity then I am screwed, as I definitely did not follow any of the Ten Commandments
On a slight tangent. A friend of mine once claimed that the reason he's not crazy about The Exorcist and doesn't get it is that he has no background in Catholicism.
1982: Stereo laserdisc arrives. There's many possibilities for the sound:
1. Six-track mix downmixed to 2.0 stereo.
2. Three-track mix somehow mixed to 2.0 stereo.
3. Perspecta mix somehow mixed to 2.0 stereo.
4. 1956 mono track upmixed to stereo.
5. A mono downmix of one of the three stereo tracks was up mixed to 2.0 stereo.
198?: Stereo Beta and VHS tapes arrive. I'm 99% sure it's the same stereo track as the laserdisc, but there's at least one case (Casablanca) where day-and-date tapes and discs had different tracks. Also, because some Beta and VHS releases had different sound specs, I wouldn't rule out the VHS and Beta having different release dates, since at least one other Paramount release (Looking For Mr. Goodbar) had a normal beta and a HiFi VHS in print at the same time, and at least one film from another studio (Star Wars) had a normal stereo VHS and a normal mono Beta in print at the same time.
1989: Released in Dolby Stereo 70mm Six Track (the same pre-DD 5.1 setup that Apocalypse Now had) on 70mm prints, and 4/2/4 Dolby Stereo on 35mm prints. When this mix was created, they based it on either the LCR mix or the Perspecta mix, both from 1956. The left and right tracks were isolated to the left and right channels, the center track was matrixed between the left and right tracks, and the back surround track was left blank. (Of note, and there's caps out there of this, the 70mm prints were "Super VistaVision", and presented The Ten Commandments at 2.20:1. People were furious. Along with the review of the Gone With The Wind Blu-ray, which includes the reviewer's memory of that film's 70mm rerelease, they make a good case for why aspect ratio butchery should be avoided at all costs.)
1990: Rereleased on Beta and VHS with the 1989 restoration. (For some reason I remember a 1989 laserdisc, but I can't find it anywhere online.) The Dolby Surround track is the 4/2/4 Dolby Stereo track from the 1989 run, which itself is a recreation of one of two three-track mixes the film had. I noticed a lot of hard switching when I played my tape the last time, and I remember the right side was so active and the left so inactive that I genuinely questioned whether the tape or my setup was somehow defective.
This is the 2.0 stereo surround track on all 1989-onward tapes, all stereo tracks on laserdiscs, all stereo tracks on the DVDs, and the stereo track on the Blu-ray.
1998: 5.1 track drops on the laserdisc. I don't have this disc, so I can't comment on the track or its fate.
1999: The Ten Commandments drops on DVD with a 5.1 and 2.0 tracks. Since we've established the 2.0 track has been the same since 1990, I'll now move to the 5.1 track. I know of at least one other release (Gone With The Wind, 1998) where the 5.1 track on the laserdisc was different from the 5.1 track on the DVD. As such, I can't confirm that the 5.1 track on the 1999 DVD of The Ten Commandments is the same as the one on the laserdisc.
2004: New discs, with arguably a new master, are released. Again, a 5.1 track and a 2.0 track are included.
2011: Blu-ray drops. In the six-disc box set, the same three discs from 2004/2006 are included on DVD. The Blu-ray contains a DTS-HDMA 5.1 track and the same Dolby Digital 2.0 track as before. Many claim this 5.1 track is a six-track mix in a 5.1 container, but they don't make clear whether it was the "five in front, one in back" mix from the 50s and 60s, or the 5.1 mix created for the 1989 reissue. Also, with the 1998, 1999, and 2004 releases, that makes it even more confusing. It's a good track, so I can't honestly complain, but it would be nice to know where it came from. And well over 90% of it is in the front anyway, with minimal spillover for some music, some effects, and some dialogue.
Have you tried Douglas Pratt's Laserdisc newsletter or contacting him, he reviewed most of the Laserdiscs. He usually compared or commented on the new discs' picture, sound tracks and features vs the older ones.
I do remember an article somewhere on the publications at the time talking about how this time or that time they had gotten a low contrast print for the image specifically made for TV scanning and remixing the sound cues (to Stereo) from untouched masters and getting more (or some or all) that had never been used before, and at one point I wrote down a few notes either on real paper (or in a computer textie!) about what releases I had to buy in the future to have all potential mixes. (No br.com in those days 30 years ago to let it be written let it be preserved)
About Ramses, I always see The Egyptian (Amenhotep IV/Akenathen) as the sequel .
Martoto, about The Exorcist, may be a common thing, cus I too likewise have a friend and is not impressed by the movie, or it's reaction.
Martoto, about The Exorcist, may be a common thing, cus I too likewise have a friend and is not impressed by the movie, or it's reaction.
I totally get that some people might not be impressed with it. It's just the reasoning that makes no sense to me. The Exorcist was a smash hit. Biggest movie of its time, just before Jaws. Did all those people have the requisite background in Catholicism in order to get it?
I totally get that some people might not be impressed with it. It's just the reasoning that makes no sense to me. The Exorcist was a smash hit. Biggest movie of its time, just before Jaws. Did all those people have the requisite background in Catholicism in order to get it?
I didn't get Jaws because I have no background in fishing.
So basically, nobody knows which mix on which format is the most accurate? All I know is that the Dolby Surround mix on the 35th anniversary laserdisc was supposedly created using original elements and production notes, and was intended to be as close as possible to the original mix. There was a later laserdisc with a remixed AC3 5.1 track which we can assume was the basis for all subsequent 5.1 tracks, which supposedly added new sound effects, especially during the parting of the Red Sea.
They're reissuing the steelbook in November.. I got the first print from the UK... now the second print is reissuing in November.. has been turned to the new one? It's confusing because I do not have the reissue. Why wasn't a new addition to the database made?
Call it OCD I just know my copy is from 2021, I hate to see it in my ''owned'' like I bought it in November
I totally get that some people might not be impressed with it. It's just the reasoning that makes no sense to me. The Exorcist was a smash hit. Biggest movie of its time, just before Jaws. Did all those people have the requisite background in Catholicism in order to get it?
Makes perfect sense to me. I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I say I find neither The Excorcist nor The Ten Commandments compelling because I wasn’t raised a Christian, what I’m implying is, by my criteria, they are not compelling movies on their own. You’d have to be brought up to think that the dilemmas and history they present are important, because the movies themselves do not sufficiently motivate this viewer to care. I’m sure there are some not brought up as Christians who do find these movies compelling. It does not require everybody who bought a ticket to have determined the movie stands on its own two feet for one person to find that it doesn’t.
By contrast I find The Witch highly compelling despite not having been brought up either a Puritan or Wiccan. Because the storytelling is good on its own, and it does resonate with what I have learned about early Massachusetts history.
I don’t mean to be facetious but I involuntarily smirk every time he says “the power of Christ compels you”. I think, “okay, maybe I can suspend disbelief to the point of accepting that the demon in the movie is compelled by Christ, but I am not so…” and then I check my phone. They try a similar exorcism in The Witch with the crucial difference that not only is it ambiguous whether it has any effect, but it’s ambiguous whether or not the struggle between Christianity and the Devil in that movie is all just a figment of the characters’ imagination. Which for someone not raised in Christianity is infinitely more compelling than showing a possessed person crawling on the ceiling.
You’d have to be brought up to think that the dilemmas and history they present are important, because the movies themselves do not sufficiently motivate this viewer to care. .
That applies to any movie. Historical or otherwise.
They're reissuing the steelbook in November.. I got the first print from the UK... now the second print is reissuing in November.. has been turned to the new one? It's confusing because I do not have the reissue. Why wasn't a new addition to the database made?
Call it OCD I just know my copy is from 2021, I hate to see it in my ''owned'' like I bought it in November
It has the same EAN/Barcode as the 2021 release, 5056453202411, and you're only allowed one database entry per code. Even the Amazon and Zavvi links are the same.
Makes perfect sense to me. I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I say I find neither The Excorcist nor The Ten Commandments compelling because I wasn’t raised a Christian, what I’m implying is, by my criteria, they are not compelling movies on their own. You’d have to be brought up to think that the dilemmas and history they present are important, because the movies themselves do not sufficiently motivate this viewer to care. I’m sure there are some not brought up as Christians who do find these movies compelling. It does not require everybody who bought a ticket to have determined the movie stands on its own two feet for one person to find that it doesn’t.
By contrast I find The Witch highly compelling despite not having been brought up either a Puritan or Wiccan. Because the storytelling is good on its own, and it does resonate with what I have learned about early Massachusetts history.
I don’t mean to be facetious but I involuntarily smirk every time he says “the power of Christ compels you”. I think, “okay, maybe I can suspend disbelief to the point of accepting that the demon in the movie is compelled by Christ, but I am not so…” and then I check my phone. They try a similar exorcism in The Witch with the crucial difference that not only is it ambiguous whether it has any effect, but it’s ambiguous whether or not the struggle between Christianity and the Devil in that movie is all just a figment of the characters’ imagination. Which for someone not raised in Christianity is infinitely more compelling than showing a possessed person crawling on the ceiling.
Let me guess, you're also bored and you check your phone when watching Star Wars because you're not a Jedi nor a Wookie?
I like both movies, and yet the only time I step into a church is for a wedding or a funeral. Weird. It's as if the movies are about faith at their core, and the focus on organisised religion as being a pre-requisite to enjoying/understanding them is completely missing the mark.
That applies to any movie. Historical or otherwise.
Exactly. For many moviegoers, a movie needs to either motivate its characters and their actions or else relies on what the viewer brings to the table for it to be compelling. Different people bring different experiences and viewpoints to their viewing of a movie, and some of them find some movies more compelling because of what they bring to the table.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Admiral
Let me guess, you're also bored and you check your phone when watching Star Wars because you're not a Jedi nor a Wookie?
Since you're asking my opinion, I think Star Wars does a better job of motivating the characters and their actions than The Exorcist does. Star Wars contains an explanation of what the Force is and to some extent how it works and how the characters use it. But you're right that I hold Star Wars to the same criteria, and to the extent that it leaves its supernatural elements undermotivated, I don't think Star Wars is particularly compelling either.
Why should a person raised in a non-Christian society be inherently interested in a story about dispossessing a child? Or that a man came down from a mountain with ten rules for how Jews should live their lives? Can you maybe see how a Buddhist or Hindu would not be interested in that subject matter? And that they would need the movie itself to make them interested in such topics?
And that some of them may draw the conclusion that maybe the difference between them not finding a movie compelling while others do might be because the movie assumes its viewers have a belief system they do not share?
If a Christian background is not the reason for the different appraisals of these obviously Christian-subject movies, what do you propose is? That some other background difference is the reason? And note that I'm not saying a Christian background is a probable explanation for different appraisals of The Exorcist or The Ten Commandments, only that it is a reasonable opinion to think that it is.
If a Christian background is not the reason for the different appraisals of these obviously Christian-subject movies, what do you propose is?
I'm sorry but, as hard as I'm trying, I just can't make sense of what you're saying. I'm not Jewish, I'm not a woman, and I found Disobedience to be a really good, moving movie with brilliant actors. The film is 99% about being a (lesbian!) woman in the context of orthodox Judaism. It's just a good movie, mate, I don't need any background knowledge or any cultural connection to its core themes to enjoy it. I never checked my phone once thinking "Man, that woman is rebelling against orthodox conventions because she's a free spirit and she loves a girl! I don't care about those conventions, I'm not Jewish and I'm not a gay chick... hey, I think I'm going to check my phone now."
I'm not at all criticising or having a go at you, Juan, we're just having a chat about different perceptions and viewpoints, that's all
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