Paramount Home Video will release a two-disc Bluray of Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Ten Commandments on 3.29. This is hardly an important event from any kind of classic-film standpoint. Almost everything about Commandments is labored or hammy or campy. Much of it groans. But Commandments, shot almost entirely on sound stages, has the potential to look extra cool on Bluray. It’s a large-format VistaVision ’50s film, of course, shot on Kodak 5248. So I’m expecting something richly colored and highly detailed and….shiny?

I mentioned the “s” word because apparently there’s a monk concern that Paramount’s Bluray might appear be “overly DNR’ed” – i.e., given the Spartacus/Patton digital noise reduction treatment to some degree. Maybe. But that’s almost good news for people who get it but don’t it — peons with 42-inch plasmas like myself. My brain understands and agrees that a Bluray should look like “film”, but my heart wants what it wants when I see something crisp and luminous and sharper than before. Put me in jail.