| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Animal Mutha |
Posted - 11/01/2007 : 21:42:10
For all of you who can make it into the Big Smoke, from Nov 16th the BFI IMAX is screening Beowulf in 3D. This film should be perfect for the format:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/imax/film/106?utm_source=20071102imax&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20071102imax |
| 15 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Rovark |
Posted - 11/27/2007 : 21:24:41
Pretty much with Salopian on this one.
There are some glaring divergencies fron the poem but this didn't matter too much to me. The poem was originally in the heroic oral tradition, sung in the mead halls and would have existed in many versions from the 8th century onwards, possibly even earlier. Beowulf's liege lord, a genuine historic figure, was killed around 520. We only have a single written source for this epic which was written down around the 10th/11th century. It's therefore not a definitive text. We can allow some artistic licence to the film makers imho
Having just seen Beowulf at the London IMAX, I would say the whole 3D IMAX experience lifted it from a 3/5 to 4/5 film. Even if you can't get to a IMAX screen, do try to see it in the 3D version
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| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 11/22/2007 : 13:49:52
quote:
Originally posted by 8enj clews
The first Matrix film is testament to just how much can be achieved with green screen. Shame they threw it all out the window for the sequels
Saw them for the first time about a week ago. They were all right - just a shame that not a lot happens. |
| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 11/22/2007 : 13:26:30
quote:
Originally posted by BaftaBabe
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
quote:
Originally posted by BaftaBabe
It calls Grendel and his mommy demons, when they're nothing to do with the devil.
They're definitely supposed to be demons, or close enough. Grendel (presumably through his mother) is descended from Cain. So any implicit association with the devil is pretty much fine.
Not in the original Edda it's not. As I keep saying, this film reflects the Christian spin on the original tale. I think Snorrason refers to a word for monster, as opposed to demon. Cain doesn't get a look-in. But it's all academic.
In the poem, Grendel absolutely is a descendant of Cain. Sure, this doesn't make him by definition demonlike (my "definitely" before was a bit extreme), but it's definitely a valid interpretation. |
| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 11/22/2007 : 13:19:00
Beowulf
It has its faults, but is much better than I had anticipated. This is partly because the trailer made it seem so poor - Grendel was completely absent and I had no idea who Jolie was supposed to be.
I didn't actually mind where it diverges from the story. The main instances (Grendel's mother's form, Grendel's father, the dragon's parents) are quite extreme differences, but while I would prefer faithfulness to the poem, they probably are improvements. The dragon, in particular, is like an addendum in the poem, and so the film ties it all in together. I didn't expect it to include the dragon at all. (It's meant to be fifty years later, though, so the queen and the slave boy, especially, have aged very well!)
The C.G.I. looked quite plasticky at times, especially towards the beginning, but I wasn't too bothered about it either way. It can be considered to reflect the explicitly fictionalised versions of the characters, some of whom may have had some origin in reality. And the good-looking (there is some facial resemblance, just less than with the others) and Tom of Finland version of Winstone is definitely preferable to the potato-shaped real one.
Like B.B. says, Winstone's repeated talk of the "monstah" and similar is quite distracting (though kind of hilarious). Some of the characters have vaguely Scandinavianised accents and this would have been better uniformly. I really enjoyed Grendel and to some degree his mother speaking Old English - I did not expect this in the film at all. It is a bit of a shame that it is largely consigned to the evil characters, but much better than nothing, and the film-makers obviously enjoyed slipping swive ("fuck") in several times elsewhere.
I don't think there is misogyny in Grendel's mother being an evil force, but the golden Barbie version of her body does say a lot - the breasts have the nipples absent and there are no messy genitals, signifying that her body is for male pleasure rather than reproduction.
Grendel changes size apparently randomly. This doesn't serve any sensible purpose and so he should just have been kept a bit larger than a man.
The characters rather stupidly think that Grendel's arm being off means that he is dead. (I don't remember that from the poem, but you never know.) Since that would not even be a reasonable assumption with a person, it's bizarre that they imagine a demon to be so feeble (and then that they are right!).
On the message of the poem, there is debate over whether the final word, lofgeornost ("love-yearn-most", the keenest for fame) is validating or critical of Beowulf. The film is not unfair to the poem in this regard.
I would have liked to have been able to see it in 3D, but as I mentioned, I unfortunately cannot. Any views on the difference from people who have seen it that way?
So, certainly not perfect, but 4/5 from me. |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 11/22/2007 : 13:07:57
quote:
Originally posted by Salopian
quote:
Originally posted by BaftaBabe
It calls Grendel and his mommy demons, when they're nothing to do with the devil.
They're definitely supposed to be demons, or close enough. Grendel (presumably through his mother) is descended from Cain. So any implicit association with the devil is pretty much fine.
Not in the original Edda it's not. As I keep saying, this film reflects the Christian spin on the original tale. I think Snorrason refers to a word for monster, as opposed to demon. Cain doesn't get a look-in. But it's all academic.
The story in this film is, imho, is hardly on the same plane as the cgi. I just regret that a generation which has never been exposed to Beowulf will come away thinking this is the story.
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| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 11/22/2007 : 12:42:59
quote:
Originally posted by BaftaBabe
It calls Grendel and his mommy demons, when they're nothing to do with the devil.
They're definitely supposed to be demons, or close enough. Grendel (presumably through his mother) is descended from Cain. So any implicit association with the devil is pretty much fine. |
| benj clews |
Posted - 11/19/2007 : 22:43:20
quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
I honestly think they could accomplish every important shot with green screen -- look at Sin City or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Sure, they would probably have to resort to CGI figures for the more difficult scenes, just like they do with the Spider-Man movies. But I saw no reason to entirely remove the live-action.
The first Matrix film is testament to just how much can be achieved with green screen. Shame they threw it all out the window for the sequels  |
| MisterBadIdea |
Posted - 11/19/2007 : 21:37:14
quote:
At its best it's a happy amalgam of form and content
Indeed, but this is surely not it. The CGI actors are creepy and wrong-looking -- that Uncanny Valley has not yet been crossed. The warmth of humanity has been sucked off the screen. 300, with its archetypical characters, could have maybe pulled it off, but this is not the right movie for CGI's anaesthetic cleanliness. This is not a simplistic hero story, it wants to be a gritty revisionist take, and I simply don't see how that can be accomplished with PlayStation graphics.
I honestly think they could accomplish every important shot with green screen -- look at Sin City or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Sure, they would probably have to resort to CGI figures for the more difficult scenes, just like they do with the Spider-Man movies. But I saw no reason to entirely remove the live-action. |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 11/19/2007 : 16:50:24
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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| MisterBadIdea |
Posted - 11/19/2007 : 14:58:09
quote:
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.
quote:
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.
quote:
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. |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 11/19/2007 : 07:54:05
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.
quote:
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 |
Posted - 11/19/2007 : 03:40:37
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. |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 11/18/2007 : 20:40:04
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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| MM0rkeleb |
Posted - 11/07/2007 : 18:13:45
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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| benj clews |
Posted - 11/03/2007 : 14:06:54
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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