Iconic books are texts revered as objects of power rather than just as words of instruction, information, or insight. In religious and secular rituals around the globe, people carry, show, wave, touch and kiss books and other texts, as well as read them. This blog chronicles such events and activities. (For more about iconic books, see the links to the Iconic Books Project at left.)

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Ten Commandments (movie) Commemorative Gift Box

Paramount Home Entertainment is marketing its 55th anniversary gift set edition of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments in iconic style. As the New York Times reports:
It’s all packaged inside a dictionary-size box with a lenticular 3-D image of the Red Sea on the front; when the sea is “parted” on a built-in hinge, a plastic reproduction of DeMille’s sacred tablets rises majestically into view. The tablets themselves split open to reveal the six discs, which contain both DeMille’s famous 1956 version of the story starring Charlton Heston and his 1923 silent feature with Richard Dix that was his first pass at the material.
But the article complains of "tacky" execution: "And what’s worse, the tablets don’t work: the clasps holding the discs in place easily come loose, allowing the discs slip and slide against each other." But then, the complaint that the Ten Commandments don't work is hardly new ...

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