Author: Jason Apuzzo

Jason Apuzzo is co-Editor of Libertas Film Magazine.

LFM Review: The Ten Commandments (1956) on Blu-ray, Available March 29th

By Jason Apuzzo. The new Ten Commandments Blu-ray comes out this Tuesday, March 29th (see the trailer for the Blu-ray at the bottom of this post). Paramount will be releasing a 2-disc Blu-ray set of the classic film, and also a Limited Edition 6-disc DVD/Blu-ray Combo set, that features both Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 and 1923 versions of the film – and a host of goodies, including a handsome archival booklet that may be worth the price of the set on its own.

The Ten Commandments is a special favorite of mine. Not only is the film one of Hollywood’s greatest epics of the 1950s, the film is also a timeless and enduring ode to human freedom – and one which seems to grow only more timely and urgent as the years go by. The Ten Commandments is a film that will always remain powerful and ‘relevant’ so long as there are souls yearning for freedom – even, as we’ve seen recently, in contemporary Egypt and North Africa where so much of The Ten Commandments was filmed.

We had the pleasure of showing what was then the best existing print of The Ten Commandments at our first Liberty Film Festival in 2004, when we invited cast member Lisa Mitchell to talk about her recollections of Mr. DeMille – and how influential he was in her life. Several years later Govindini and I spent time with Cecilia DeMille Presley, granddaughter of Cecil DeMille and a caretaker of his legacy – who shared some wonderful memories of her grandfather with us. Most special, however, was the opportunity Govindini and I had years ago to meet Charlton Heston himself at The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, when he introduced a special screening of The Ten Commandments. (We actually sat right behind him during the screening – and watched his reactions to the film, which he still seemed to take great delight in so many years later.) It was an extraordinary thrill to meet him; even late in life, he was still handsome and rugged, with a biting wit – but also a warm and generous spirit. He was the consummate gentleman.

Charlton Heston in "The Ten Commandments."

The Ten Commandments is without a doubt one of the best films Hollywood has ever produced, and a carrier of important ideas about freedom, so I thought we’d take a little look back at it today. It also happens to be a magnificent showpiece for the Blu-ray medium – with the film’s rich, saturated colors, beautiful costumes and production design, endless desert vistas, and iconic visual effects sequences. To put it mildly, The Ten Commandments is not only an emotional spectacle of the heart … it’s also an eyeful.

Interestingly,The Ten Commandments happens to be the fifth highest-grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation. When the film was released in 1956, theater tickets cost about 50 cents – and the film still grossed over $65 million. What this means is that at today’s ticket prices, The Ten Commandments would have grossed over $1 billion at the domestic box office. In the history of American moviemaking, only Gone With the Wind, Star Wars, The Sound of Music and E.T. have fared better at the box office than did DeMille’s extraordinary film.

I don’t mention The Ten Commandments‘ box office success because that denotes anything in particular about the film’s merits – success at the box office can always be misleading – but to suggest the kind of powerful bond this film has with the public. The Ten Commandments is, as it turns out, a beautifully written, directed, acted, photographed and scored film – a majestic and emotional voyage into one of the primary myths of Western religious life. It’s also the crowning achievement of one of America’s greatest moviemakers. At the same time, The Ten Commandments is something else: it’s a part of American popular mythology, as important to America’s filmic conversation about freedom and individual dignity as Casablanca, Gone With the Wind or On the Waterfront. Continue reading LFM Review: The Ten Commandments (1956) on Blu-ray, Available March 29th

LFM SPECIAL: Elizabeth Taylor, Our Time with Jane Russell & Why We Miss the Women of the 1950s

The late, very great Elizabeth Taylor.

By Jason Apuzzo. By some cosmic irony, yesterday was the day I’d finally worked up the fortitude to write about Jane Russell – the warm, glamorous and iconic 50s star whom Govindini and I had the pleasure of spending time with several years ago, before she passed away recently at her home in Santa Maria. I wanted to share with Libertas readers some of the things she’d told us about her life and career, although I would be doing so with a heavy heart as she is now no longer with us.

Then came news yesterday that Elizabeth Taylor had passed away.

This is very sad news, indeed. Although Taylor had been in failing health for some time, and word of her passing was not altogether surprising, I must confess to still being stunned by the news. Elizabeth Taylor had overcome so many crises and health scares in her life that she seemed utterly indomitable – and I had assumed that her recent health scare would, like so many others, pass away into legend as another one of her epic brushes with misfortune. Alas, her many health problems have apparently taken their toll over the years, and so mortality has now folded even over Elizabeth Taylor, the great survivor.

Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Russell both deserve their own posts and remembrances, frankly. Both of them loom large as entertainment personalities of the 20th century, and as people for whom – for different reasons – I’ve developed an affection over the years. At the same time, many of the the things I’d intended to say about Jane can also and should also be said about Liz – and more generally about the women of their generation. We’re all missing these women terribly right now, and missing what they represented. Everything I’m seeing written about Liz at the moment resembles what was said about Jane just a few weeks ago: that women of their sort are no longer with us, and that the women who’ve replaced them in the intervening decades since their heyday haven’t made up for the loss. Fundamentally, we all know this to be true but are so often restricted for various reasons from saying it.

Now is not the time for such restrictions, however. Now is the time to be emotional and passionate about the women on our big screen. So I have a few thoughts today about Elizabeth Taylor – arguably the greatest female star of all time – and also about Jane Russell, the girl-next-door who became an icon of her era. And you’ll forgive me, but I will be wearing my heart way out on my sleeve. These women deserve that. Continue reading LFM SPECIAL: Elizabeth Taylor, Our Time with Jane Russell & Why We Miss the Women of the 1950s

Provocative New Trailer for The Kennedys; Series Debuts April 3rd

By Jason Apuzzo. A very provocative new trailer is out for The Kennedys, the new eight-part miniseries from 24‘s Joel Surnow that will be appearing on the ReelzChannel beginning April 3rd. I would normally wait to put this trailer in a Cold War Update!, but since I just did one of those on Friday I didn’t want you folks to have to wait.

From "The Kennedys."

The series looks like a lot of frothy fun, and I’m looking forward to it. I’m also understanding why the major networks were so aghast by this series; this is most certainly not the sort of depiction of the Kennedy family we’re accustomed to seeing on TV. Besides potentially out-sexing Mad Men, the series also seems to make Joe Kennedy look like Chancellor Palpatine.

Joel did an interview recently with the LA Times in which he talked about the pressures he thinks the series was under from higher-ups at The History Channel, the series’ original home. We all know what those pressure were, don’t we? Thou Shalt Not Offend the Kennedys, liberalism’s Holy Family. Frankly, you’d think the Kennedys would be glad anyone even remembers them, at this point. Decades of Teddy in the Senate took a lot of lustre off that family’s image, and memories of Camelot are growing old, indeed.

My sense is that the ReelzChannel got themselves a bargain with this series – which may end up putting that channel on the map. I would also expect this series to do excellent DVD business, and potentially revive pill box hats.

Posted on March 21st, 2011 at 11:15am.

Cold War Update: More on Red Dawn, X-Men, Apollo 18 & The Kennedys!

The Cold War freezes over in "X-Men: First Class."

By Jason Apuzzo. • Libertas made news yesterday with our exclusive first look at the ‘uncensored’ version of MGM’s new Red Dawn remake. It’s conceivable that our review will be the only look at that film anybody’s going to get – which would be astonishing, but there it is. You can thank MGM’s new masters for that.

However, I wanted to follow up today by noting that MGM’s decision to alter the film – and digitally remake the villains into North Koreans – has been received poorly just about everywhere. The reason for this is obvious: there is absolutely no narrative reason to re-cut the film along such lines except to satisfy China’s market gatekeepers. There is certainly no real-world reason to depict such an invasion as being spearheaded by an impoverished prison-state like North Korea, particularly when the basic premise of the film is supposed to be our financial ‘indebtedness’ to the invaders. The last time I checked, we’re not indebted to North Korea.

The current spin we’re hearing behind the scenes is that the film is being re-cut to now depict the invading force as a ‘communist coalition,’ an undefined ‘red menace’ of nations, with the North Koreans featured prominently. What nobody seems to be asking is what such a coalition would be worth without the sponsorship of China. Or are they expecting Transnistria to do the heavy lifting here? Or maybe Vietnam?

Sensing how badly this is all going over, one of Red Dawn‘s producers, Tripp Vinson, gave a somewhat peculiar interview to Aint It Cool News yesterday. Here’s part of what Vinson said: Continue reading Cold War Update: More on Red Dawn, X-Men, Apollo 18 & The Kennedys!

EXCLUSIVE: Libertas Sees the ‘Uncensored’ Version of MGM’s New Red Dawn

Poster by George Joseph, RedDawn2011.com

By Jason Apuzzo. Last August, Libertas was the first and only media outlet invited to see MGM’s new version of Red Dawn, a remake of the original 1984 film written and directed by John Milius. We were invited to see the film by MGM executives due to our ongoing coverage here at Libertas of pro-freedom films – and of our coverage of the many recent films specifically dealing with the subject of communism (Salt, Mao’s Last Dancer, Farewell, Peter Weir’s recent The Way Back). Red Dawn screenwriter Carl Ellsworth was in attendance at our screening.

We postponed commenting on Red Dawn until this time due to the complex and delicate situation at MGM, and also due to the fact that the film as yet has no release date. MGM is under new management, however, and recently the LA Times broke the story that the film – which features the communist Chinese invading the mainland U.S. – is currently being re-edited and digitally altered by MGM’s new management team in order to make North Korea into the primary invading force.  References to the Chinese military are, according to the LA Times, being minimized wherever possible.  The film has apparently become a political hot potato, with MGM looking to sell the film – or  perhaps not release it at all.

We had been aware since last August that this was a possibility, in so far as the Chinese market represents a highly lucrative one to American film distributors – and that China would likely penalize any company distributing this new Red Dawn. It now appears that the fears expressed to us at the time by several MGM executives are becoming a reality, and that the film is, in effect, being politically censored due to pressures coming from potential distributors.

Needless to say, we find this kind of political re-editing of a film appalling – as well as unprecedented. In the case of Red Dawn, it’s also perversely ironic, in so far as the basic premise of the film involves the Chinese invading American in order to ‘collect’ on an economic debt America owes to them – a debt that in the real world, as it turns out, China will now be ‘collecting’ by MGM’s film simply being re-edited.

The cast of the new "Red Dawn."

As a further note, there is a certain racist crudeness in equating Chinese with Koreans (i.e., ‘Asians all the look the same’) of which MGM seems unmindful.

Here at Libertas we are committed to positively promoting films that celebrate freedom, democracy, and the dignity of the individual. Of late, for example, we’ve promoted a whole range of dissident, ‘D-Generation’ Chinese documentaries such as Disorder, Petition and Crime and Punishment that depict the full brutality and authoritarianism of China’s current regime.

We had hoped and intended to promote Red Dawn in the same light, because the original, ‘uncensored’ cut of the film we saw in August was one we liked – and we suspect American audiences would’ve liked it, as well.  (Chinese dissidents would’ve loved it – watching it on pirated copies.)  It was a rousing and patriotic film that in some respects resembled Battle: Los Angeles, currently in theaters, in terms of depicting a plucky and outnumbered group of Americans (teenagers, in this case) gamely taking on a vastly superior and oppressive invading force. Continue reading EXCLUSIVE: Libertas Sees the ‘Uncensored’ Version of MGM’s New Red Dawn

Send in The Marines! LFM Reviews Battle: Los Angeles

Aaron Eckhart as Marine Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz.

By Jason Apuzzo. While watching Battle: Los Angeles, which is an intense, stirring and highly patriotic ode to America’s fighting men and women – and in particular to the Marines – I was reminded of that great line from Casablanca, in which café owner Humphrey Bogart drily informs Nazi Conrad Veidt: “There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.”

As a long time resident of Los Angeles, I can similarly assert with conviction that there are certain areas of Los Angeles that I wouldn’t advise any foreign power to invade – not even aliens – especially if those areas happen to be held by Marines. Battle: Los Angeles explains why.

Those of you who read Libertas regularly, or who are familiar with our regular Invasion Alerts! here, know that we’ve been following this massive new wave of ‘alien invasion’ movie projects for some time now. There was even some major news on the ‘alien invasion’ front today, because the first full trailer for J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 was just released (it’s great) – and that trailer is apparently running in front of Battle: Los Angeles in theaters. Continue reading Send in The Marines! LFM Reviews Battle: Los Angeles