Saturday, April 08, 2006

Semana Santa movies


If you're a certain age, you may remember this. The days when in Good Friday all movie theaters in San Juan would stop showing regular movies and would show religious films. Even the porno houses would stop showing their hard core fare for a day. I am not kidding. "Inside Seka" one day...a religious epic the next.
In those days people would go to Mass during the morning and then it was off to the movies. The films would be the same every year: "Ben Hur", "The Robe". "The Ten Commandments", "The Greatest Story Ever Told", "King of Kings". I liked "Ben Hur" because there was plenty of action. I did like "The Ten Commandments" but mainly for the parting of the Red Sea scene which was very cool. "The Robe" was ok. ""The Greatest Story Ever Told" was kind of long but it was full of movie actors doing cameo roles so it was a sort of "Spot the Star" thing.
Those days are long gone. Although for purely nostalgic reasons I did buy "Ben Hur" on DVD. And I will play it and recall a time that will never come again.

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