This is an all-time classic, that somehow has stood the test of time. It is one of the best money-making films of all time. Considering that the film was made in 1956, if one adjusts its earning for inflation, it’s current earnings would be in the range of around $ 840,000, making it one of the top five grossing films of all time. It is widely acknowledged as an epic, and one of the finest creation of Cecil B. DeMille. It stars Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, and John Derek in the pivotal roles.
The movie is based on the Ten Commandments, a list of religious imperatives necessary to be followed by humans, and form the basis for morality in Judaism and Christianity. For more about the 10 commandments, read this Wikipedia entry.
The movie follows the life story of Moses, a prophet of ancient, who led the children of Israel out of slavery under the pharaohs in Egypt and to the promised land, without himself setting foot in the promised land. Moses was found by the Egyptian princess, and raised as part of royalty. He is the favourite of the Pharaoh, and rival of the Pharoah’s son, Rameses II. Eventually Moses learns that he is the son of hebrew slaves, and this changes his life.
Brought before the pharoah, and accused of being the Hebrew ‘Deliverer’, Moses, even when faced with the removal of his status and persecution, does not recant from his belief in freedom for the Hebrew slaves. Stripped of his name and status, and losing the companionship of Nefretiri, the Princess, he is exiled to the desert.
While wandering among the desert in a desolate condition, he comes across his companions, and then in a life-turning moment, he comes across the Burning Bush on Mount Sinai and is charged by god with freeing the slaves. And thus starts the battle. He proclaims his mission in front of Rameses and brings a number of divine plagues to hit the land. After Rameses loses his child in a plague, he gives the slaves their freedom, resulting in a masterful scene of the slaves leaving Egypt.
However, Rameses recants and goes with his army to get the slaves back and kill Moses. And then the divine miracles start. First Rameses is held back at the Red Sea by a pillar of fire, and then the Sea parts for Moses, and drowns Rameses army when it tries to follow. So the slaves are now free. But when they do not see deliverance and Moses is away on top of the mountain, they lose faith and indulge in unpardonable activities. Moses, in the meantime, has been granted the Ten Commandments by God’s own hands. However, when he comes back down and sees the happenings, he condemns the perverted. After a period of 40 years wandering in the desert to show their loyalty to God, he hands over the Jews to Joshua.

This is another epic movie in the line of Ten Commandments. It is another movie starring Charlton Heston in the lead role, and he did a wonderful job of it. This is a bibical tale, set primarily in Jerusalem. The movie was a big hit when released in 1959, and won 11 Oscars (not beaten by another movie since); this includes the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Actor. It was a gamble for MGM (almost in bankruptcy), but it invested $15 million, and made $75 million, a vast sum at its time. The movie is a long movie, running almost 3-and-a-half hours.
The story is essentially a clash between 2 friends turned enemies, Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) and Roman Messala (Stephen Boyd). They are childhood friends in Jerusalem, but as they grew into adults, those were times of rebellion. Jerusalem was chafing under the rule of the Romans, and the Romans wanted to crush the rebellion. Messala returns as the commanding officer of the Roman legions, second only to the tribune. They meet as friends, but they have different agendas.
Judah Ben-Hur is all for independence of the Jews, while Messala believes in the power of Rome, and is responsible for crushing the rebellion. He wants Judah to identify the ring-leaders of the rebellion, and be his informer, something that Judah refuses to do, instead advising him to remove the Roman legions. They part no longer friends.
The next incident is the one which forms the basis of the movie. As the tribune is marching through Jerusalem, a tile accidentally falls from Judah’s house, and almost kills the tribune. Calling this an assassination attempt, Messala sends Judah to the galleys as a slave (even though he knows that this was an accident); trying to send a strong message to the natives of Jerusalem. As Judah arrives at Nazareth, he is being denied water, and is given water by the messiah (Jesus).
In a series of incidents on the water which could have killed a weaker man, Judah survives and saves the life of the Roman admiral Qunitus Arrius (Jack Hawkins). Quintus adopts Judah as his son and brings him to Rome as a rich and respected person. However, Judah wants to return to Judea (Jerusalem). He confronts Messala about his family; however, his mother and sister had contracted leprosy in the times they were in the dungeon and are moved to the lepers colony. They do not want Judea to know about their plight.
Then the 11 minute scene that is the highlight of the movie. The chariot race, with a challenge between Judea and Messala begins, and is a brutal race. There are no rules in this race, and one can see people getting thrown from their chariot and getting crushed under chariots. In a climatic moment, Messala is dragged from his chariot, and then pulled under other chariots and seriously injured. On his deathbed, he calls for Judea and to claim his final victory, informs Judea that his mother and sister are not dead, but lepers, living their life in the lepers colony.
Judea confronts his childhood love Esther, who admits that she has been giving them food, but she does not allow him to meet them. Judea still has hate in his mind, although he is being told about the new messiah who promises love. In this hate, he rejects the offer of Roman citizenship, and is proclaimed as an enemy by Pontius Pilate, the new Roman Governor.
In the final episode of the movie, after Jesus is condemned to death by crucification, and is marching his painful march carrying the crucifix, he is offered water by Judea who recognizes Jesus as the person who offered him water when he was being lead to the slave gallery. As Jesus is being crucified, Judea leads his dying sister and mother to near the site where Jesus is being crucified. As the heavens open up over the crucification, the blessed rain and seeping blood cure the leprosy and free them of all their diseases. The motto is that Jesus took all the evils of the world on his shoulder.

I had read numerous thrillers from Ken Follett, and then came across the book, ‘The Pillars of the Earth’. This seemed a bit boring, after all this was a novel about the goings-on in the 12the century, and seemed to do with the fights between the claimants to the throne, as well as the trials and tribulations of some other people involved. But then I decided to start reading the book, and was left spell-bound. Once I finished reading the book, it seemed like an epic, integrating the lives of various claimants to power, a common but intelligent prior, penniless children of a dispossessed former earl, the current earl who is a cruel and ruthless person, and some members of the church who are as political as anybody else. Throw in the closing fight between the king and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and you have a novel set over a period of 60 years, and very gripping. The novel also covers the change in architectural styles, with the tall, sweeping, big-windowed Gothic style churches coming into prominence.
It has a number of characters, many of them with many strong characteristics, and yet none of them are perfect. All of them have their own weaknesses, and even the historical character of Thomas Becket has his own political game to play in his fight for political supremacy over the King. This is a fight that goes onto this day, where the clergy fights for political supremacy over the people’s representatives, with the most profound example being Iran where a theocratic council (representing God) have supremacy over the elected people.
The novel is about a period called The Anarchy in England’s history where there was a contest for the throne between Empress Maud and King Stephen, being supported by their own sets of Earls and other noblemen (all due to the sinking of the White Ship which carried the Crown Prince and other noblemen in an attempt to kill the crown prince). The sinking left a survivor, who is one of the subtle points of this movie, since a plot to get him executed for theft suborned a high Church official, a prior and an earl, a story revealed much later in a trial.
The novel starts with the story of a stonemason and builder, Tom Builder who is now without a job due to the breakup of the engagement between the Lady Aliena and the cruel and cold William Hamleigh (whom Lady Aliena turned down). Tom wanders around the forest with his son Alfred and daughter Martha. and his pregnant wife. His wife dies after giving birth, but since he cannot bring up the child, he leaves the child on his wife’s grave (where the child is found by the main hero of the book, the prior Philip and brought up as Jonathan). He later meets and accepts Ellen along with her son, the red-haired Jack and settles down in Kingsbridge where Philips wants to build a cathedral. Now building a cathedral takes a large sum of money, and has a side effect of attracting a market which in turn generates revenue for the whole area, but the building of a cathedral also needs permission.
And now comes bad times for Lady Aliena and her brother Richard. They have supported Empress Maud and are considered disloyal to King Stephen, and William Hamleigh attacks the castle, arrests the earl, and rapes Aliena by threatening Richard. They are penniless, but Aliena over a period of time shows business instincts by starting to buy and sell wool, and teams up with Prior Philip to set up a market, and also falls in love with the odd Jack.
When things were starting to look up, William again turns criminal, burning the wool market, and the poor-again Aliena agrees to marry Alfred. The marriage however could not succeed, since Ellen turns up and curses the marriage. Philip’s plans for the cathedral collapse when Alfred puts a stone roof instead of a wooden roof and the building collapses. Also, Aliena gives birth to a red-haired son, obviously Jack’s son; and obviously Alfred turns her out. When Ellen gets to hear of this, she seeks Aliena out and tells her to go look for Jack in Europe.
Jack is in the continent, and learns how to build the wide, sweeping churches of the new style, and this is where Aliena meets him with her son. Unfortunately, Philip cannot marry them since she is still married to Alfred. After a period of time, things again change when the Philip-hater and extremely ambitious Bishop Waleran Bigod teams up with the Hamleighs to cause the downfall of the Kingsbridge market so that they can build the dream cathedral of the Hamleighs at Shiring that they had to stop because of lack of money. Aliena had taken the help of William’s wife to take the castle for Richard from within. Alfred tries to rape Aliena, but is killed by Richard; however, since legally Alfred was married to Aliena, this is treated as a murder, and Richard is only safe with Philip (Richard is being chased by Willian Hamleigh who had been appointed as the sheriff). In a compromise, Richard agrees to go for the crusade, and going for a holy war will absolve him of the murder.
Things go on, while Jack has built an extremely fabulous cathedral in the new style, new to England that seems light and airy. And then one of the most important historical sequences happens, where King Henry, tired of his never-ending struggle for ultimate supremacy England instigates his knights to get rid of Becket. William joins them, and in a pretty accurate portrayal, Thomas is killed. Philips seizes the moment, and converts the confused crowd into a crowd obsessed with the ‘martyring’ of Becket, and into a mass movement that the king cannot even think of controlling. In one of the most important moments (closing moments), Henry atones for his crime of having contributed to the death of Thomas Becket by getting a ritual caning from the monks – an ultimate supremacy of the spiritual over the royalty.

This is a classic tome from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. For Sherlock Holme’s lovers and for the lovers of detective novels, it is a must-read. Set in the moors of England, you can get a feel for the desolation of the place and for the suspense hanging. It is considered to be one of the best works for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and was released in 1902 in book form.
What is the story about? Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are in their Baker Street lodgings when they receive a visit from Dr. James Mortimer, who is due to receive the last heir of the Baskerville Mansion, who is returning from abroad. He is very apprehensive about taking Sir Henry Baskerville to Baskerville estate in Broadmoor; when pressed, he reveals that this is due to the circumstances of the death of the last lord of Baskerville Hall, who died in his garden with a sign of acute terror on his face. Examination did not show any apparent physical reason for this death.
There is apparently a family legend about a huge and terrible hound that killed one of the previous owners of the Hall, Sir Hugo Baskerville, a couple of centuries back. Holmes is not exactly a believer of the supersititious, but does not dismiss anything outright. Dr. James Mortimer is more likely to believe it because of the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. In addition, near the body he had found the footmarks of a giant dog.
What begins is a cat and mouse game between Holmes and his unseen adversary. Things start happening before Sir Henry Baskerville even leaves London, with his shoes being stolen. Holmes sends Watson to Baskerville Hall, but refuses to come himself. Watson does his end of the investigation, and finds a few things, such as a convict being loose on the moors, and being related to the house-keeper who sends food to him. Sir Henry becomes acquainted by the brother-sister pair of Stapletons who are naturalists, and starts developing an affection for the sister. All attempts are made to keep him away from the moor, so that even if they do not believe in a giant dog, still no reason to put him in harm’s way.
When things start heating up, Watson pursues a figure in the moor, who turns out to be Sherlock Holmes, who has been living on the moor. He had learnt a lot of things, but in order to get proof, Holmes needs to offer Sir Henry Baskerville as a bait to the hound, and when a sudden mist arrives on the scene, can they prevent the bait from being accepted? It is a suspenseful climax, but well worth the reading.