…a friend passed along a Cinecitta anecdote from no less a personage than Charlton Heston. Heston had told him “that the majority of shots were taken from a single side of the set, to simplify camera placements.” Oh, for God’s sake!

HE reply: “Be that as it may…okay, fine. But why in heaven’s name would William Wyler build a full-sized stadium and arena with a huge middle island with those four kneeling warrior sculptures…a massive, full-sized stadium and chariot racetrack with acres and acres of room on all sides…why build this massive outdoor set if the plan was to mainly use one side of the racetrack for filmimg?

“Common visual logic (i.e., the attached photos) tell us there were no physical obstructions or logistical advantages to emphasizing one side or the other…talk about an illogical scenario.

1st AD to Wyler: “Uhm, Willy, we’ve taken a hard look at things and the ample size and massive scale of this hugely expensive outdoor set notwithstanding, we’ve figured it’ll be simpler to mainly shoot on just one side of the arena.” Wyler to 1st AD: “You’re fired.”

BTW: This morning I re-watched the chariot race sequence from the 1926 version of Ben-Hur, and there’s a great shot around the 2.25 mark that Wyler’s 1959 version didn’t have. It was apparently taken from inside a dug-in hole in the track, and shows several chariots thundering directly overhead.

It’s common knowledge that William Wyler‘s Ben-Hur (’59) was shot in Camera 65, which when correctly projected (as well as scanned for DVD and Bluray) delivered an aspect ratio of 2.76:1. (Same a.r. with Ultra Panavision 70, which The Hateful Eight was shot and projected at.) All my adult life I’ve been looking to see the full-whack, 2.76:1 Ben-Hur in a first-rate theatrical venue.

My hopes were up when I attended last night’s 7:30 pm screening of Ben-Hur at the American Cinematheque Egyptian. I was encouraged by the fact that the AC was showing a DCP, or the same digitally remastered version that constitutes the current Bluray, which delivers the full 2.76:1. But they blew it all the same. The AC aspect ratio was, at most, 2.55:1, and it was probably closer to 2.4:1. And therefore each shot felt slightly cramped and wrong.

Robert Surtees‘ 2.76:1 images on the Ben-Hur Bluray are immaculate — the framings in each and every scene are exquisitely balanced. But whack those images down to 2.4:1 and everything looks fucked. If Surtees had been with me he would have been hooting and throwing soft-drink containers at the screen.

The same aspect ratio problems manifested when I caught Ben-Hur at the New York Film Festival in 2011, to wit:

Excerpt: “The fabled 2.76 to 1 aspect ratio was not delivered. It looked to me like we were seeing roughly a 2.55 to 1 image, at best. There’s a shot with Hugh Griffith and the four white horses when Heston enters from the left and says ‘What magnificent animals’ or words to that effect. I knew right away what I saw wasn’t right because Heston was slightly cropped off as he said this line — he didn’t have any breathing room — and you NEVER crop a star.”

Last night I caught an 8:10 pm 3D show of Timur Bekmambetov‘s Ben-Hur. Almost everything about it stinks of mediocrity — the tedious writing, the grayish color scheme, the C-grade cast delivering soap-opera performances, the low-budget vibe despite a reported $100 million having been spent. It’s like a 1987 Golan-Globus version of Ben-Hur starring Michael Dudikoff as Judah and Chuck Norris as Messala…it’s third-tier shit, shit, shit on almost every level.

Okay, the chariot-race sequence isn’t half-bad, I’ll admit. But I hate the way it was shot and cut and the sandy, desaturated color scheme. It doesn’t feel bracingly real-world and super-intense like the legendary 1959 version did — too many close-ups, too much CG, too many flying bodies and flying horses and a truly silly bit when Jack Huston‘s Judah Ben-Hur falls out of his chariot and is dragged by his horses for a good 45 seconds or so. But it delivers in a crazy, cranked-up way.

And I was impressed by an underwater sequence in which Huston is struggling to free himself from a chain looped through a leg iron around his ankle — not bad.

But otherwise, this is one of the lowest, cheesiest, scurviest, lemme-outta-here films made or distributed by a major U.S. studio, ever.

When I read about this thing being made two-plus years ago I knew right away it would be crap, and I was right. Ben-Hur is a rank embarassment, a miserable wipe-out that’s expected to reap a pathetic $12 million by Sunday night.

There were maybe 15 people in the theatre, if that. I took two four-minute breaks, once for the bathroom and a second time to buy a hot dog. I didn’t care what I might miss. I knew when the chariot race would be arriving.

Stodgy and slow-moving as it was, William Wyler’s 1959 version was a big-budgety, A-team effort with first-rate, charismatic actors working with a stiffly phrased but well-honed screenplay. It didn’t feel like a genuine visit to ancient Judea and Rome but you didn’t care because it was a pricey, gleaming, well-spoken enterprise from every angle. The newbie has none of that sturdiness, that atmosphere, that panache, that “we know what you want and what we’re doing because we’re rich, classy guys” attitude. It’s from hunger, from Goodwill.

Deadline‘s Pete Hammond is one of the more gracious, turn-the-other-cheek columnists around. He doesn’t miss a trick but his natural wont is to be charitable or at least not backhand a film if it all possible. So his measured, less-than-cartwheely comments about Timur Bekmambetov‘s Ben-Hur (8.19) following yesterday’s Cinemacon presentation are instructive.

Referring to Paramount’s Las Vegas presentation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows, Star Trek Beyond and Ben-Hur, Hammond wrote that he’s “not sure [if] any of these is necessary for anything but Par’s bottom line, but the crowd seemed happy to see them all.”

Then he said that Ben-Hur‘s “dog days of August opening gives one pause, but perhaps Paramount has discovered a faith-based audience dying to see a biblical epic like this at the end of summer.”

He added that Ben-Hur star Jack Huston, who showed up yesterday, “is trying to fill Charlton Heston’s shoes, and might come close based on the footage.” “Trying”? “Might”?

Watch again the new Ben-Hur trailer and pay attention to the scene when Jack Huston‘s Judah Ben-Hur, unjustly accused by Messala of plotting to kill a Roman Judean governor, is told that his mother and sister may be crucified. Huston’s response is to scream “Nooo!!” Here’s an mp3 of that moment. I’m sorry but any time a movie character so bellows it’s almost always a tip-off that the film will be mediocre.

Face-punching is another indication of trouble in an ancient-period film. Nobody punched anyone in William Wyler’s 1959 version — lashings and crucifixions but no knuckle sandwiches. But there’s a whole lotta sluggin’ — jabs, right crosses, uppercuts — in Timur Bekmambetov’s film.

And lastly, please pay attention to the moment when Morgan Freeman‘s Sheik Ilderim asks Jack Huston‘s Judean prince for his name, and Huston answers “Ben-Hur.” Who self-announces or self-identifies by their last name? When Charlton Heston was asked the same question by Jack Hawkins in the ’59 version, he answered “Judah Ben-Hur.”

If TheWrap‘s Jeff Sneider had endured the same ordeal (i.e., washed up on a beach after escaping three years of servitude as an oar slave) and then was asked his name by Sheik Ilderim, would he answer “Sneider?” No, he would give his first and last name.

I’ll be happy to be proved wrong, but I’ve predicted time and again that Timur Bekmambetov‘s Christian-pandering Ben-Hur (Paramount, 8.12) will be a low-rent, CG-fortified blunt instrument — a Ben-Hur for fans of Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. But let’s be fair about this. The oar-slave and sea-battle sequences might be flagrantly CG-ish, but at least they’re more persuasive than the fake models-and-water tank footage used in William Wyler‘s 1959 classic of the same name.

You can sense that Jack Huston‘s performance as Judah Ben-Hur is going to be respectably sturdy; the trailer also suggests that Toby Kebbell‘s Messala will be a kind of moustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash thing — he seems to lack the studly gravitas that Stephen Boyd brought to the role in ’59. And they’ve got Morgan Freeman playing Sheik Ilderim, the role that Hugh Griffith played (and won an Oscar for) in the ’59 film. London is Falling, Evan Almighty, this…is there anything Freeman won’t do for a buck?

The new version, co-written by Keith R. Clarke and John Ridley, apparently adheres to the basic story bones of Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel, but — be warned! — it appears to have eliminated Quintus Arias, the Roman general played by Jack Hawkins — at least as far as the sea-battle scenes are concerned.

“In the minute before the theater lights are down, what a tension is in the house. One might as well be in the crowd just before an important fight commences. It is years since one has watched a movie begin with such anticipation. And the tension holds as the projection starts. We see Brando and Schneider pass each other in the street. Since we have all been informed — by Time no less — we know they are going to take carnal occupation of each other, and very soon. The audience watches with anxiety as if it is also going to be in the act with someone new, and the heart (and for some, the bowels) is in tremors between earthquake and expectation.

“Maria Schneider is so sexual a presence. None of the photographs has prepared anybody for this. Rare actresses, just a few, have flesh appeal. You feel as if you can touch them on the screen. Schneider has nose appeal — you can smell her. She is every eighteen-year-old in a mini-skirt and a maxi-coat who ever promenaded down Fifth Avenue in that inner arrogance which proclaims, ‘My cunt is my chariot.’

“We have no more than a few minutes to wait. She goes to look at an apartment for rent, Brando is already there. They have passed in the street, and by a telephone booth; now they are in an empty room. Abruptly Brando cashes the check Stanley Kowalski wrote for us twenty-five years ago — he fucks the heroine standing up. It solves the old snicker of how do you do it in a telephone booth? — he rips her panties open.

Invitations went out this morning for NY and LA press screenings of Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight. Reviews are embargoed until 12.21. All screenings will present the slightly longer Ultra Panavision 70 version, which will run 175 minutes with a 12-minute intermission for a grand total of 187 minutes. I’ll be expecting, of course, an overture and an entr’acte musical passage between the two parts.

I’ve written a couple of times about the currently filming remake of Ben-Hur (Paramount, 2.26.16), which is being directed by Russian low-life Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter). In a recently posted chat with Immersed in Movies’ Bill Desowitz, Bekmambetov indicates that in some respects Ben-Hur “will be just as edgy and cutting edge as Unfriended,” which Bekmambetov produced. The Russian helmer makes it especially clear that his version of the chariot-race sequence will be markedly different than William Wyler’s.

Jack Huston (Judah Ben-Hur) and Nazanin Boniadi (Esther) during filming of Timur Bekmambetov’s Christian-pandering Ben-Hur.

“I’m using more of YouTube videos to find ideas and style for the camera work and how people behave,” the director said. “The chariot race today is like Formula 1. It’s a different technique, with a lot of whip pans and zooming [and VFX by Mr. X].” Desowitz mentions that “there’s an assortment of digital cameras being used on the movie — Red, Alexa, GoPro.”

Paramount and MGM’s Christian-friendly remake of Ben-Hur, now in pre-production, is reportedly slated for a 2.26.16 opening. Think about that for four or five seconds. Unveiling a new version of the biggest and most Oscar-honored Biblical epic of all time in late February confirms that this Mark Burnett and Roma Downey production, a downmarket pitch to none-too-sharp Christians, is a metaphor for the general degradation of film culture. Deciding on a February release is an obvious admission that the film won’t be good enough to compete in the summer or post-Labor Day award season. The producers might as well take out a trade ad that says “we’re going low-rent here, guys….forget the upscale, blue-chip William Wyler signature of yore…we’ve hired a low-class Russian ape named Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Abraham Lincoln — Vampire Hunter) to re-shape this tale so it will simultaneously have lots of gratuitous action while appealing to hinterland dimwits.” Consider the guys who’ve been hired to play Judah Ben-Hur and Messala — Jack Huston and Toby Kebbell. Compare their faces and auras to Charlton Heston‘s and Stephen Boyd‘s…sad. Huston was okay in American Hustle but he has small Twee-male shoulders and the face of a blackjack dealer in Atlantic City. Kebbell (Koba in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) appears doomed to play bad guys for the rest of his life. I’m sure that the chariot race will be CG-fortified but the cool aspect of the ’59 version is that it was shot raw and real. Ben-Hur for Christians is going to look so substandard compared to the ’59 version it won’t be funny.

Jack Huston, the new Judah Ben-Hur.

Toby Kebbell, the new Messala. (Note: I hate that his last name is spelled with two “b”s and two “l”s.)

In my 4.23 story about the forthcoming Paramount-MGM remake of Ben-Hur (“William Wyler Turns In His Grave“), I used all my gunpowder trashing the hiring of the vulgar, sloth-like Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Abraham Lincoln – Vampire Hunter) to direct. In so doing I overlooked Paramount’s signing of rightwing Christian producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey (The Bible miniseries, Son of God) to guide the production. This is even more sickening. The idea of selling Ben-Hur to “faith-driven consumers” is just as phony a sales pitch as the one used when the original Ben-Hur author, General Lew Wallace, called his book “A Tale of the Christ.” As screenwriter Gore Vidal explained in a “Making of” documentary about the 1959 version, Ben-Hur is the story of unrequited love, betrayal and revenge between a Jewish boy and a Roman boy. Rage and bitterness are washed clean at the finale by Christ’s blood trickling into a stream, fine…but Ben-Hur never would have never been made into a film if the character of Judah Ben-Hur had followed the Nazarene’s teachings. If Judah (Charlton Heston) had returned from Jack Hawkins’ villa in Rome and decided to turn the other cheek and forgive Messala (Stephen Boyd) after learning that his boyhood friend had condemned his mother and sister to prison and the scourge of leprosy (instead of doing what he does in the film, which is to challenge and then defeat Messala in the chariot race, which results in Messala being trampled to death by horses), Ben-Hur never would have gotten the go-ahead. So don’t give me any of this religious thematic crap because Ben-Hur is about having your cake (i.e., sweet revenge) and eating it too (i.e., being re-born at the finale).

Whoever was hired to screen the digitally restored Ben-Hur this morning at a New York Film Festival screening messed up big-time. It wasn’t the fault of the Warner Home Video guys, who have reportedly produced a stunningly exquisite Bluray. (Every Bluray reviewer has said this.) But I do know the following:

(a) The sound this morning was ridiculously out of synch, and it got worse and worse until someone finally found the projectionist (who had left the booth and was out having coffee or something) and told him to stop the film and re-synch it. It was obvious to me after ten or fifteen minutes that the sound was “late”, but nobody did anything about it for the longest time. The bottom line is that we were shown an out-of-synch film for about 90 minutes, or until Charlton Heston and Jack Hawkins are floating on the raft after the sea battle.

(b) The detail didn’t seem all that sharp to me. It was fine but not that great, and for a film shot in Camera 65, I expected great. Every now and then you’d notice a handsome shot and go “oh, that’s striking” or you’d notice how blue Heston’s eyes were, but I was never blown away by it. It looked to me like they were showing a perfectly fine, very clean 35mm print. Okay, maybe a bit better than that, but it never looked drop-your-pants magnificent. And I have a pretty good eye for these things.

(c) To me the colors seemed a teeny bit brownish, and the overall color scheme was on the slightly under-nourished, fine-but-no-cigar side. The bright red Roman capes and tunics were okay as far as they went, but they didn’t melt me down and my eyes didn’t pop out of my sockets.

(d) The house of Hur scenes shot in shadow and/or relative darkness seemed overly murky and lacking in intrigue. You just couldn’t see very much during these scenes, and that told me something was off.

(e) The fabled 2.76 to 1 aspect ratio was not delivered. It looked to me like we were seeing roughly a 2.55 to 1 image, at best. I’ve seen the 2.76 to 1 version on DVD two or three times on an unmasked monitor, and I know we didn’t see that kind of super-duper width this morning. There’s a shot with Hugh Griffiths and the four white horses when Heston enters from the left and says “What magnificent animals” or words to that effect. I knew right away what I saw wasn’t right because Heston was slightly cropped off as he said this line — he didn’t have any breathing room — and you NEVER crop a star. And I don’t want to hear any arguments because I know my friggin’ widescreen aspect ratios. I know what 70mm Vittorio Storaro 2.21 to 1 looks like. I know what 2.35 or 2.39 looks like. And I know what 2.55 to 1 (i.e., mid ’50s FoxScope) looks like. The image I saw today might have been a tad wider than 2.55 but only by a nose hair.

I’m sorry but comically flawed sound synch, decent but not exactly mind-blowing sharpness, slightly brownish colors, a murky feeling in scenes intended to shadowy or nocturnal, and an image that wasn’t a full 2.76 to 1 adds up to “projection fail.”

I’m sure the Ben-Hur Bluray will be fine. I’ll catch it when I return to LA on 10.8.

Video caption: Director Fraser Heston (son of Chuck) and producer Catherine Wyler (daughter of William) offer remarks prior to this morning’s screening.