From Greg Ellwood‘s Hitfix report about yesterday’s viewing of Exodus footage plus a q & a with Christian Bale: “While I was still trying to wrap my head around it I went and rented The Life of Brian, which is a favorite film of mine,” said Bal. “The point being that not only do I enjoy that film a great deal, but anything you are approaching from a very earnest point of view can unintentionally be the Life of Brian very quickly. It was sort of a guiding light for me. And I must confess that ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ is always humming in the back of my head.

“And then immediately after that I rented Mel Brooks‘ History of the World, Pt. 1 because you have to get that out of your system. You have to understand, ‘What is it we could make funny?’ You have to have humor. With something that is as earnest as this. And this heavyweight as this you have to have an element of comedy in your every-day shooting or it just becomes exhausting.”

Ellwood begins the piece as follows: “Ladies and gentleman, Ridley Scott has returned to the Ancient world and it ain’t Gladiator or Kingdom of Heaven.

“20th Century Fox provided an early look at Scott’s latest opus, Exodus: Gods and Kings, [last] night in Century City for a notable number of LA media. The studio’s new tentpole is just that, a very big, Hollywood movie re-telling the story of Moses discovering his Hebrew heritage and leading his people out of Egypt. And, again, the 20 minutes or so of the film screened clearly sold a big studio movie. Lots of action. Lots of CG plagues ravaging Egypt and lots of dramatic grandstanding by Edgerton and Bale. Well, perhaps that will be less obvious in the complete picture, but for now: think big.

Pic stars Bale as Moses, Joel Edgerton as Rhamses, Ben Kingsley as Hebrew elder Nun, Aaron ‘tennis-ball head’ Paul as Joshua, John Turturro as King Seti (Rhamses father) and a wee bit of Sigourney Weaver as Queen Tuya (Rhamses mother).