{"id":2818,"date":"2005-05-12T12:03:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-12T12:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/05\/moses-rides-again\/"},"modified":"2005-05-12T12:03:00","modified_gmt":"2005-05-12T12:03:00","slug":"moses-rides-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/05\/moses-rides-again.html","title":{"rendered":"Moses rides again!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Speaking of biblical epics starring Omar Sharif<\/a>, it was announced two days ago that ABC is putting its Moses mini-series into production in Morocco in just a little under two weeks. The Ten Commandments<\/i> will star Mission Impossible 2<\/a><\/i>\u2018s Dougray Scott as Moses, Priest<\/a><\/i>\u2018s Linus Roache as his brother Aaron, and Sharif as his father-in-law Jethro, report the Hollywood Reporter<\/a><\/i>, ComingSoon.net<\/a> and various other sources.<\/span><\/p>\n

The choice of title is interesting. There have been several movies about Moses, but only two, I believe, that bore this specific title, both of which were produced by Cecil B. DeMille, one in 1923<\/a> and the other in 1956<\/a> (my review<\/a>). (Apparently there was also a stage musical<\/a> of this name starring Val Kilmer<\/a>, who had earlier provided the voice of Moses for The Prince of Egypt<\/a><\/i>; my review<\/a>.) Ten months ago, the Hollywood Reporter<\/i> said producer Mark Gordon and screenwriter Charles Randolph (who wrote the execrable Life of David Gale<\/a><\/i>) were pondering a \u201cserious, research-based<\/a>\u201d remake of DeMille\u2019s films. But it looks like that job has fallen to Robert Halmi Sr., whose Hallmark Entertainment has churned out many adaptations of classic stories \u2014 including an unbelievably campy version of Noah\u2019s Ark<\/a><\/i> (1999; my review<\/a>), starring Jon Voight as Noah and F. Murray Abraham as Lot (yes, that<\/i> Lot).<\/p>\n

Incidentally, it seems this new film may add a more \u201cmoderate\u201d Egyptian to the story. The English Patient<\/a><\/i>\u2018s Naveen Andrews has been hired to play Menerith, a step-brother of Moses\u2019 who is also \u201ca high official in Ramses\u2019 army,\u201d and who Moses implores \u201cto join him in a fight to reclaim his destiny as leader and liberator of the Hebrew people.\u201d So it probably won\u2019t be a simple case of good Hebrew over here versus bad Egyptian over there.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, I am not<\/i> expecting this production to surpass what might be my favorite Moses movie to date, namely the Bible Collection<\/a>\u2018s 1996 TV-movie Moses<\/a><\/i>, starring Ben Kingsley.<\/p>\n

FWIW, I wrote an article on Moses movies for the February 1999 issue of Bible Review<\/i>, but it has not been available online for some time; I really should put it up somewhere at some point. In the meantime, here are some of my other earlier blog posts that have dealt with Moses movies in some way or other:<\/p>\n

\u2018Tron City<\/i><\/a>,\u2019 April 1
\u2018One of the reasons I do love Cecil B. DeMille<\/a>,\u2019 April 9
\u2018Passover incomplete without Shavuot?<\/a>,\u2019 April 25
\u2018Two new items<\/a>,\u2019 April 29<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaking of biblical epics starring Omar Sharif, it was announced two days ago that ABC is putting its Moses mini-series into production in Morocco in just a little under two weeks. The Ten Commandments will star Mission Impossible 2\u2018s Dougray Scott as Moses, Priest\u2018s Linus Roache as his brother Aaron, and Sharif as his father-in-law […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nMoses rides again!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Speaking of biblical epics starring Omar Sharif, it was announced two days ago that ABC is putting its Moses mini-series into production in Morocco in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/05\/moses-rides-again.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Moses rides again!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Speaking of biblical epics starring Omar Sharif, it was announced two days ago that ABC is putting its Moses mini-series into production in Morocco in\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/05\/moses-rides-again.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-05-12T12:03:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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