'Ben-Hur' 2016 with Jack Huston: Chariot race to the death. 'Ben-Hur' 2016 trailer: 'Gladiator' meets 'Fast Seven' meets 'Star Wars' meets… Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer have released the trailer for their 2016 Ben-Hur remake (or reboot or readaptation) – a.k.a. Fast and Furious A.D., as one wag called it in an online comment. Instead of grandiose spectacle featuring at its core a “human” story with Christian overtones, this chariot-and-sandals epic is being sold as Gladiator meets Fast Seven meets Spartacus: Blood and Sand meets Star Wars – with Morgan Freeman's Sheik Ilderim as the Roman Empire's dreadlocked version of Alec Guinness' Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi. Say what you will, the trailer-makers sure know their target audience. And that's not the same crowd that would go check out what's usually referred to in the U.S. media as “faith” (i.e., Christian) movies. One assumes that particular audience segment will be getting...
- 3/18/2016
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ramon Novarro: 'Ben-Hur' 1925 star. 'Ben-Hur' on TCM: Ramon Novarro in most satisfying version of the semi-biblical epic Christmas 2015 is just around the corner. That's surely the reason Turner Classic Movies presented Fred Niblo's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ last night, Dec. 20, '15, featuring Carl Davis' magnificent score. Starring Ramon Novarro, the 1925 version of Ben-Hur became not only the most expensive movie production,[1] but also the biggest worldwide box office hit up to that time.[2] Equally important, that was probably the first instance when the international market came to the rescue of a Hollywood mega-production,[3] saving not only Ben-Hur from a fate worse than getting trampled by a runaway chariot, but also the newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which could have been financially strangled at birth had the epic based on Gen. Lew Wallace's bestseller been a commercial bomb. The convoluted making of 'Ben-Hur,' as described...
- 12/21/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ramon Novarro and Greta Garbo in ‘Mata Hari’: The wrath of the censors (See previous post: "Ramon Novarro in One of the Best Silent Movies.") George Fitzmaurice’s romantic spy melodrama Mata Hari (1931) was well received by critics and enthusiastically embraced by moviegoers. The Greta Garbo / Ramon Novarro combo — the first time Novarro took second billing since becoming a star — turned Mata Hari into a major worldwide blockbuster, with $2.22 million in worldwide rentals. The film became Garbo’s biggest international success to date, and Novarro’s highest-grossing picture after Ben-Hur. (Photo: Ramon Novarro and Greta Garbo in Mata Hari.) Among MGM’s 1932 releases — Mata Hari opened on December 31, 1931 — only W.S. Van Dyke’s Tarzan, the Ape Man, featuring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan, and Edmund Goulding’s all-star Best Picture Academy Award winner Grand Hotel (also with Garbo, in addition to Joan Crawford, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, and...
- 8/9/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Innocence of Muslims / 'Desert Warrior' director Alan Roberts best-known for '70s soft-core porn The polemical anti-Islam "film" (actually, a cheap, grade Z amateur video), now has not only a producer, but also a director. The "Israeli entrepreneur Sam Bacile" has been exposed as the Egyptian Coptic Christian Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who allegedly misled all (or most) involved in the production. And Gawker has reported that Alan Roberts aka Robert Brownell, the director of a handful of softcore porn movies in the '70s and early '80s, helmed "Desert Warrior," a cheesy Arabian adventure that was to become -- following some sloppy overdubbing -- Innocence of Muslims. Besides the now infamous Islamophobic YouTube sensation, which has been blamed for riots in several Muslim countries from Tunisia to Pakistan, Alan Roberts' movie credits include several now long forgotten titles. (Please scroll down for more details.) Alan Roberts also produced several little-known movies,...
- 9/16/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Innocence of Muslims: Cast and crew repudiate rabidly anti-Islam 'film' An amateurish, rabidly anti-Islam 'film' -- actually, more like a homemade video made three decades ago -- whose Arabic-dubbed version was initially blamed for this week's attacks by Muslim fanatics against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Muslims was initially called "Desert Warrior." (Photo: Actor purportedly as Islam's prophet Mohammad.) According to 80 cast and crew members of the film, they thought "Desert Warrior" was going to be an adventure flick set in Biblical times. Indeed, the movie's casting notice on Backstage calls it a "historical Arabian Desert adventure film." Below is the statement submitted to CNN on behalf of those who worked on what eventually became Innocence of Muslims. (Please scroll down to check out: Innocence of Muslims creator: Coptic Christian involved in meth manufacture, bank fraud.) "The entire cast and crew...
- 9/15/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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