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Old salvaged drawer. It is most probably mahogany - very dry, light, yet planes beautifully. What a gorgeous wood.

Just had an enjoyable evening with the “Ten Commandments” blu-ray version that was issued around 2011~. The remixed sound is valiant effort, but not much could be salvaged from those 1956 recordings. The image, on the other hand, is jaw-dropping. The original resolution is a good place to start (35mm stock film running sideways instead of vertically), but the eye-popping colors are the real surprise here. This six-decades (!) movie is ripe for the 4K edition. As simple as that. Staggering.

About the movie itself - a fun pot-pouri of realistic (yes, realistic) scenes with thousands of extras, combined with awkward acting, especially from the female part. Those 50s’-style romance scenes just look odd, the last remenents of the transition from the stage to screen.

Modern movie making is much more concerned these days with inner struggles of the protagonists. That movie used an older way of portraying the inner struggle, using symbolic characters - like Mephistofeles. On one hand, it’s a bit funny to always SEE the representation of the inner struggle as an external character, but on the other hand, it is quite realistic. More often than not, the pivot that triggers the good or malicious action is an external, real person, the one that dares to shout the word that everyone else utters silently.