Wednesday, June 16, 2004
TODAY'S MOVIE
BEN HUR* (1959); NYTimes1176BestFilm. First half. I am at Intermission. And I am highly motivated to see the rest of it. William Wyler. Heston is a lot better than I remember. He won an Oscar. And I am very fond of Jack Hawkins and Hugh Griffith who play significant parts in the very long story. I would go to any film if either of these great actors were in it; well, almost any.
It is all so good enough that I am not even bothered by the religious stuff; it is mostly spiritual anyway; JC is just a vehicle for enlightenment. I have a premonition that there are going to be some miracles though. We will see.
We have gotten through the loss of property (it turns out that Sam Jaffey has saved and hidden all the money so it is not toooooo bad); into and out of the galleys, into formal adoption as the son of a Roman Consul (Hawkins) and the discovery that Mom and Sis have leprosy. Stephen Boyd's demise is now the primary goal. More later. *The photo is from an earlier Ben Hur; the one with Francis X. Bushman. I didn't see that one. I am watchin' the real EPIC Ben Hur. 222 minutes of it.
