Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs (2007)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Director:

Keith Melton

Writer:

Arabella Cecil (writer)

Release Date:

25 May 2007 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | Biography | Drama | Family

Plot:

The grail is not the gold, nor the books of ancient wisdom, but the 3,000 year old DNA of the mummies, which may lead to a cure for malaria. |

Plot Keywords:

Gold | Egypt | Pharaoh | Deoxyribonucleic Acid | Mummy

Awards:

1 nomination

US Showtimes:

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Cast

Elana Drago	...	Nefertari
William Hope	...	Charles Wilbour
Nasser Memarzia	...	Ahmed Abd El Rassoul
Crispin Redman	...	Emil Brugsch
Daud Shah	...	Mohammed Abd El Rassoul
Boris Terral	...	Rameses
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Bob Brier	...	Himself
Brahim Choukri	...	Brugsch's Batman
Angelique Corthals	...	Herself
Zahi Hawass	...	Himself
Mohammed Kacha	...	Anubis Priest
Abdellah Kloul	...	Khaemwaset
Erragragui Lakbir	...	Scribe
Christopher Lee	...	Narrator
Driss Ouabi	...	European husband
Laafou Ouadii	...	Travelling Priest
Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni	...	Paser
Nasser Ouji	...	Heqa Nakht
Patricia Remler	...	European Lady
Fdila Tabounout	...	Omm Rassoul

Also Known As:

Mummies 3-D: Secrets of the Pharaohs (USA) (reissue title)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.44 : 1

Sound Mix:

Sonics-DDP

Certification:

Hong Kong:IIA

Filming Locations:

Abu Simbel, Egypt

Company:

Giant Screen Films

imax 3d

This was my first experience with IMAX, as well as with 3D. I'm a few years late, i know.

So, having the experience was the only reason why i went to see this. I was, and still am amazed at the possibilities of the medium. I couldn't know what to expect, though i thought about it several times. What fascinated me was not how "real" the experience is, but how "beyond real" it may become. Cinema lives on enhancing common sensations to degrees in which we react. In cinema, colours bust be highlighted, contrasts as well, well, even drama and narrative dynamics (like in theater). The 3D, associated with the super screen opens new windows to those possibilities, it's a technical possibility that creates a whole vast area of dark places for clever filmmakers to explore. How exciting is that? As a first experience, i recorded to aspects, which i think may be of great interest.

One is the power of a landscape, not because it is enlarged, not because it is "real", but because the right image, edited in the right sequence, can be of a higher impact. Imagine the explosions in Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, with all those points of view, enhanced to the point that they blow your head. I hope the market and film industry will turn to IMAX with enough strenght to make it usable for our "authors" to think specifically for it, to explore the depths of the medium, instead of the superficial effects i imagine have been used so far.

The other aspect is how this medium might revolutionize the relations between space and cinema. How we might rephrase the way we make a film become "spatial" through the way we move around space. I mean, even in a documentary with such mundane footage as this one i watched i felt the power of moving around. Of course here we have the depiction of Egyptian architecture, which lives on mystery, on moving around, and that is highly cinematic. And the film was also thought to produce certain effects associated to its format. But i kept thinking about the possibilities. What would the best filmmakers do with this? Can you imagine what would Orson Welles have done, if he ever had the possibility to shoot for IMAX? Or Hitchcock, or de Palma, who actually is around and still working, who knows.

The documentary in itself, is leveled after the History channel model, with off voices telling facts, footage of the remains of the old civilization, and stagings of old happenings. Mundane, except for the effects thought specially to work on the medium, which were new to me, but which i suspect will be vulgar, as soon as i repeat the experience enough times, with other films.

My opinion: 2/5 http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com