Word: heros
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...questions in Zimbabwe is always, what is going on in "Uncle Bob's" mind. What do you make of him? Bob prompts two conflicting emotions. We want to regard him as a father figure, as a liberation hero. But he is also a ruthless tyrant and dictator who has brought economic decay. I think, now, that people will always remember this election. Bob has failed, and he is betraying the aspirations of the liberation struggle. His legacy is being affected...
...Judah Ben-Hur, Heston is still lean; he hasn't quite grown into the Greek physique he'd soon acquire. His thin face is dominated by a high, mile-wide brow, which made him a thinking-man hero - and, in his scenes with Stephen Boyd's Messala, Judah's boyhood friend and later deadly rival, startlingly intense. Gore Vidal, who worked on the script, said that the subtext was that the two men had once been lovers. Heston called that preposterous, but homoeroticism was potent in many epics of the time (oh, those Greeks; oh, them Romans!). Anyway, both actors...
...perfect jawline and a baritone voice bred for noble declarations, Heston was the ideal vessel for Hollywood grandeur. In the 1950s and 60s, the era of the movie epic - those three-hour extravaganzas with a cast of thousands and the passionate enunciation of high ideals - he was the epic hero; it's almost impossible to imagine the genre without him. To any of these films he added millions in revenue, plenty of muscle and 10 I.Q. points...
...neck muscles and speak in a sonorous growl that brought authority and menace to his speeches; he could make piety sound robust. But where Lancaster and Douglas were kinetic, bursting with restlessness, Heston was essentially static - not so much statuesque as a statue in some audio-animatronic hall of Heroes. He stood and he spoke. That's why screenwriters loved him as much as movie audiences did. He was a hero to them...
...excitement of that nine-minute horse race, Ben-Hur was long and logy. But with Heston now the go-to hero, it guaranteed that he'd be cast in his finest role: el Cid. In this Anthony Mann film, Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar is an 11th-century Spanish soldier who tempers force with wisdom, seeking a peace with the large local Islamic minority it is his job to subdue, and preaching moderation in the Court of King Ferdinand. Almost a pacifist warrior, he spends most of the film debating large issues with other beautiful people (Sophia Loren, John Fraser...