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Animal Mutha 
"Who would've thunk it?"
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benj clews 
"...."
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 Posted - 11/01/2007 : 22:49:57
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Judging by how this film is being marketed, I'm inclined to think there's one- or should that be two, big reasons people will be wanting to see this film in 3D  |
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Animal Mutha
"Who would've thunk it?"
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Posted - 11/01/2007 : 22:56:25
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3DD  |
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Downtown 
"Welcome back, Billy Buck"
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Posted - 11/02/2007 : 13:36:27
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| I don't understand the appeal of animation that's so realistic that they look like real people...why not just use real people then? I didn't get it and wasn't impressed when I saw Final Fantasy, and it doesn't impress me now, either. |
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Demisemicenturian 
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 11/02/2007 : 14:06:30
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| Haven't read the posts (as not yet seen it, and won't be seeing it in 3D as I don't have binocular vision), but just wanted to note that the trailer seems to bear almost no relationship to the poem. I couldn't tell whether it was masquerading as being the same story or just had a character with the same name. |
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benj clews
"...."
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Posted - 11/02/2007 : 18:37:23
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quote:
Originally posted by New England Cobra Kai
I don't understand the appeal of animation that's so realistic that they look like real people...why not just use real people then? I didn't get it and wasn't impressed when I saw Final Fantasy, and it doesn't impress me now, either.
I can appreciate the artform of recreating the world using something other than a camera in much the same way I admire artists who can paint almost photo-realistic.
However, in Hollywood terms, it's a lot cheaper to make an epic CGI film than an epic real film. It's also a lot easier to incorporate special effects when they're generated in the same medium as the actors. Oh... and you presumably only have to pay actors on voice-over rates. |
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Sean 
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 11/02/2007 : 21:46:07
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quote:
Originally posted by 8enj clews
However, in Hollywood terms, it's a lot cheaper to make an epic CGI film than an epic real film. It's also a lot easier to incorporate special effects when they're generated in the same medium as the actors. Oh... and you presumably only have to pay actors on voice-over rates.
Yep, I think the day will come when it becomes standard practice to CGI epics and stop using real sets/actors for these reasons. |
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ChocolateLady
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 11/03/2007 : 13:25:53
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| Hm... that could put a whole lot of actors out of business. |
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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 11/03/2007 : 14:03:49
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quote:
Originally posted by Chocol8 Lady
Hm... that could put a whole lot of actors out of business.
Well not quite - I could be wrong but I believe this method of rendering depends on using the actual actors to plot the coordinates [not to mention doing the voices]. It also means no actor is put into any danger in filming risky action scenes, etc. So, it prob'ly will have more effect on stunt performers.
benj is right, of course ... it's a money thang!
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benj clews
"...."
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Posted - 11/03/2007 : 14:06:54
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quote:
Originally posted by Chocol8 Lady
Hm... that could put a whole lot of actors out of business.
Not really- most stuff's motion capture these days (although I think Pixar claim not to at least), plus computers can't do voices very well.
And when you consider other advancing artforms like computer games, there's actually probably more work than ever for actors. You just don't know what they actually look like. |
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MM0rkeleb
"Better than HBO."
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Posted - 11/07/2007 : 18:13:45
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This has nothing to do with IMAX or CGI or whatnot ...
But when watching the ads for this movie, does anybody else expect Ray Winstone to bellow "I AM SPARTA! ... I mean ... BEOWULF!"
Or is that just me?
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 11/18/2007 : 20:40:04
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I'm talking here about the 3D version - not IMAX. Some spoilers.
Well - whatever doubts anyone may have about CGI - technically the film is stupendous, much as you'd expect from Zemeckis -- attention to the most minute detail.
What they do brilliantly from the very first shot is to set up a series of layers to create increasingly complex depth of field shots. Then, when you least expect it, something lovely happens in the layer closest to you -- you're simply not expecting it, so it takes your breath away. Just a moment, but it prepares you for the surprises of the story.
But, speaking of story, it is a bit of ashame that the film has literally lost the plot. It's okay - they've replaced it with a different plot, one partially derived from Sturla Gunnarrson's 2005 film Beowulf and Grendel, laden with more accessible modern drivers of lust and betrayal.
So, if you, like JRR Tolkien - who deconstructed the ancient turn of the 1st millennium saga documented by recent Anglo-Saxon converts to Christianity, and based on an amalgam of 6th century Scandinavian tales - are intrigued that the original tale of battling fantastical demons was actually a tract depicting the lunacy of war, you might be a tad bemused that Beowulf the 3D cine-hero reveals how he's doing it all for Glory and not for Gold. Glory was the very thing Beowulf's creators recognized was not to be coveted.
The plot also had to accommodate space to weave in significant screen time for the two female leads of Queen Robin Penn Wright and the monster Grendel's mother, a kind of sea witch in the replicated form of Angelina Jolie - whose breasts defy gravity as her genitalia is derived from a Barbie doll. Beowulf strips off a lot, too, but we can't tell if he's like Ken doll under his little tutu since there's always something in our line of vision. His pecs are well developed, though.
Nowhere in the ancient tale is it made specific who Grendel's dad was, and certainly nothing points to his being the King whom Beowulf rides the waves to save.
Admittedly it was a rough-and-ready era, back in the 10th century, and definitely a man's world, so all the references of bawdy ballads and lusting after maidens and a love of potent mead, that all rings true and faithful.
But it's a totally modern conceit to portray Grendel's mother - described in the original as every bit as horrid as her son - as some temptress just aching to be cross-species impregnated by some human hunk -- well, that's gratuitous, even though I understand it will up the box-office ante. Because, when you think about it -- and with a pace that often needs a stick of dynamite up its bum -- you will have moments to think about it, the screen message is that women are the source of the evil and the reason men get into such trouble. Mothers and whores, and often they're the same.
It also demeans what were meant to be the truly heroic exploits of the hero. Heavens forfend he should be defending what's right ... oh, no, he's got to be driven by some itch in his panties.
And now we come to Ray Winstone. Funny, innit, how all the other cgi characters bear such definite facial characteristics of their voices. We'd know that was Malkovich, Hopkins, Jolie, etc. even without the credits. But not Beowulf. They wanted the depth and power of Winstone, but just look at that punim ... in real life, only a Cockney mum could love it -- now look at the cgi ... hunky! Which I guess you might forgive, except -- and I DO think Winstone can turn in devastatingly good performances -- this Norse hunk speaks as though he's just motored in from the East End. I dunno -- kinda killed it for me.
Dialogue? Suffice to say, not the film's greatest element.
Songs? Prob'ly less said the better.
Visuals -- oh, yes, bring it on, warrior!
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 11/18/2007 22:35:21 |
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 11/19/2007 : 03:40:37
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quote:
the screen message is that women are the source of the evil and the reason men get into such trouble.
Completely untrue, considering the addition of princess bride Robin Wright Penn, who is depicted as both wise and hurt by the transgressions of her husbands. She is the good woman betrayed by the weaknesses of Beowulf, and as such I really doubt that there is any misogynistic intent to be found. In any case, this is not a movie about the source of evil as much as the limits and flaws of macho manliness.
I do agree that this particular approach to Beowulf is an entirely modern one, which is puzzling considering its source material as the prototype for all super-badass action movies. Puzzling, but not entirely unwelcome. This movie is practically a revisionist Western -- the Unforgiven to 300's A Fistful of Dollars. It's a smarter, deeper and more interesting film than 300.
If only it were a better film than 300. Sadly, all of Zemeckis's efforts and impressive technology only prove that we are not yet past the Uncanny Valley. And even if we had the technology to make these characters not look creepy and wrong, there's still no reason to have these characters animated. It would make more sense in 300, where the characters are fairly one-dimensional and meant to be considered in the abstract. But Beowulf being filmed like this is like having a Technicolor Busby Berkley musical version of Platoon. It makes no sense. |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 11/19/2007 : 07:54:05
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quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
quote:
the screen message is that women are the source of the evil and the reason men get into such trouble.
Completely untrue, considering the addition of princess bride Robin Wright Penn, who is depicted as both wise and hurt by the transgressions of her husbands. She is the good woman betrayed by the weaknesses of Beowulf, and as such I really doubt that there is any misogynistic intent to be found.
Yeah, she's so good that all the read-between-the lines flirting and hot-looks between her and Beowulf while she's still married to Mr King -- that's good and pure? And that ridiculous song she sings with equal glance to Beowulf and Oscar - that's not a contribution to sending him off on his travails, with a promise of reward when "the hero comes home"?! Or maybe it was just a mindless disco number thrown in by mistake.
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In any case, this is not a movie about the source of evil as much as the limits and flaws of macho manliness.
Evil, its sources, and suggested methods of defeat is precisely what this film is about. It calls Grendel and his mommy demons, when they're nothing to do with the devil.
It takes an OT view of pagan sagas -- which, to be fair, is exactly what happened over the centuries, but not what the original story was concerned with. In other words, instead of going back to the source material of its creators, the filmmakers have plumped for the more schematic construction of the Anglo-Saxon interpretation. Fair enough, I suppose, and much more acceptable to a modern Christian culture.
Macho manliness, as I've said, was unremarked in the original sagas - that's just what guys did. This film tries to overlay a moral patina on behaviour originally unencumbered by perjorative adjectives. I never used the word misogynistic. It's the anachronism I was noting.
Guys boasting about how many and the methods of past and future victories have long been a weapon in their morale-boosting armory. Like proverbial fishing-tales - they're part of folk culture. Modern armies still indulge in it. In this film the stories are not merely shared and enjoyed, but shoved into question by the proselytising and -- I have to say - creepy, mealy-mouthed convert voiced by John Malkevich.
As to why the choice was made for cgi - it's been discussed here above. It's a money thing - not just savings in production to achieve fx and stunts and povs which would have been impossible with conventional photography, but also because the inevitable and truly big-bucks transition to various games platforms will repay in billions the R&D money and tax breaks which the studio has undoubtedly already benefitted from. As we know - the whole development of cgi has been linked to various gov and military application.
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MisterBadIdea
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 11/19/2007 : 14:58:09
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In this film the stories are not merely shared and enjoyed, but shoved into question by the proselytising and -- I have to say - creepy, mealy-mouthed convert voiced by John Malkevich.
Malkovich does this in the original poem too, if I recall. ("'Art thou that Beowulf with Breca did struggle?' did asketh John Malkovich." Gummere translation, Episode IX, line 8.) What's different is that when Beowulf answers, the movie makes him look like an asshole and a liar.
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It's a money thing - not just savings in production to achieve fx and stunts and povs which would have been impossible with conventional photography, but also because the inevitable and truly big-bucks transition to various games platforms will repay in billions the R&D money and tax breaks which the studio has undoubtedly already benefitted from.
Was it possible to attain those things without resorting to motion-capture actors as well? Couldn't they have done this a la Sin City or Attack of the Clones, with real actors on green-screen? Because the movie would have been so much more solid otherwise.
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Fair enough, I suppose, and much more acceptable to a modern Christian culture.
Heh, that's another thing I wanted to mention, how the film comments -- maybe even attacks -- Christianity as destroying strength and heroes like Beowulf, providing nothing but "fear and shame." Oooooh, BURN, Christianity. |
Edited by - MisterBadIdea on 11/19/2007 17:14:15 |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 11/19/2007 : 16:50:24
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Well, you may be making my point for me -- Translators like Gummere were not only influenced by their Victorian mores, but worked - NOT from the original Edda but from various drafts of the Anglo-Saxon texts, prepared some 4-500 years after the Eddas.
Even Snorrason's translations from the Icelandic -- which I've never read, I'm afraid, are reputed to have been influenced by the growing popularity of Christianity. The tale, as I understand all the original Eddas were, were tales of boasting and adventure. Several experts in linguistics and those anthropologists who specialize in the oral tradition of story-telling, seem to agree that the Edda tradition has most in common with the pre and post hunting rituals derived from African and Australian hunter/gatherers. The telling of the tale - however tall - was meant to imbue the hunter/warrior with the best qualities of the enemy. It's also supposed to be the genesis of cannibalism - respecting the brave heart and sinew of one's most fearsome enemies, adding to one's own courage and bravery by ingesting theirs.
As to green-screen, it's really unlikely it could equate with many of the shots made possible by cgi. At its best it's a happy amalgam of form and content -- that unreal animated feel as a mirror for the fantasy of the story itself. Surreal in many ways. Green screen is much more a collage technique, though in many cases, I grant you, it's more flexible when matching in with 'real' shots.
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Beowulf 3D (London IMAX)
