Epic Weekend
Monday, March 24, 2008 at 08:41AM Hmmmm...sleepy Monday, that's what they should call the Monday after Easter Sunday. A busy week of services, people, food, and movies.
We have a local film festival that shows "Jesus" movies all week - in fact, we found out this year that it is the largest collection of Jesus films being shown at a festival. No matter your faith background, some of these movies are stellar examples of great film making. It is fascinating to watch the passion being portrayed from so many different angles and from different directors of varied ethnicity.
A highlight was the South African film, The Son of Man - the first independent film out of South Africa to debut at the Sundance festival. It was only the second showing in Canada, a big score for a fairly small festival. A fave for me this year was the quirky Book of Life. I am still trying to unwrap the story of Jesus coming back on the day of Y2K and deciding whether to start the apocalypse by opening the Book Of Life (which happens to be a Mac Laptop - you'd think they would have used a PC!).
But I still remain, since childhood, a lover of the Biblical epic - it doesn't get much better than Ben Hur, especially the early silent picture (1925), which even without words out "wows" the Chuck Heston version. This year the epic for me was Quo Vadis - a dark picture for the 1950's dealing with the Christians being thrown to the lions by a narcissistic and quite insane Nero, played by the incredible Peter Ustinov (an oscar winning performance.)
So I return to my regular week, strong coffee in hand, and see what miracles appear on my computer (mac) screen.
Reader Comments (1)
i saw Quo Vadis last year at the same festival and i finally got around to seeing The Last Temptation this year along with The Passion of the Christ. i think i just plain enjoy Life of Brian over them all.
i was blown away by Son of Man. the music was incredible if you're into that sort of stuff although i had too much trouble getting to like the Jesus character in the story. the movie wasn't so much about Jesus as it was about Mary et al and the ongoin struggle against oppression. definitely worth seeing several times over though.