It’s raining this afternoon. This is a good thing, though they tell us we might get some severe weather later tonight. But that’s OK. I don’t mind a little storm damage. As long as it happens to somebody else.
Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard got a link from Hugh Hewitt at Towhall.com today.
I hate you, Gaius. Curse you, and your little animal uprising too!
Dale sent me this link to a trailer for the upcoming Robert Zemeckis Beowulf movie. Looks like they’re going the 300 route, which isn’t necessarily bad. It can’t be worse than the recent Icelandic effort with Gerard Butler, which I reviewed a while back. But it doesn’t look like much effort has been made to get the costumes authentic (which the Gerard Butler incarnation at least got right, pretty much the only thing it got right).
We Viking reenactors don’t ask for much. We’d like to see a Viking movie (Beowulf isn’t technically a Viking, but close enough to get on our radar) with historical authenticity and a good story.
So far, the best Viking movie ever made is still The Vikings with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. And that movie isn’t really very good (though it’s a lot of fun). The Thirteenth Warrior had its points, but it went so far off the reservation with armor and weapons that it kind of hurts to watch. (Unless you’ve just watched the Gerard Butler Beowulf, in which case it’s like a drink of cold water on a hot day.)
So I’ll see this one. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. I don’t think anyone has ever imagined Grendel’s mother (the part Angelina Jolie plays) as a siren before. I suppose it could work.
Just as long as I’m not supposed to like her. I like Robin Wright-Penn all right, even though she has lousy taste in husbands.
Hollywood! Don’t you realize the world is screaming for a film version of The Year of the Warrior?
YEAR OF THE WARRIOR!
YEAR OF THE WARRIOR!
YEAR OF THE WARRIOR!
YEAR OF THE WARRIOR!
YEAR OF THE WARRIOR!
YEAR OF THE WARRIOR!
YEAR OF THE WARRIOR!
*Now* they’ll listen.
I refuse to believe anyone who thinks Grendel’s mother is human has actually read the poem. (The professors have destroyed another work of art I guess.) Hollywood’s version of Beuwlf bears as much relation to reality as the theory of evolution.
– as Thomas Sowell used to say; “is realty optional?”
Hmm…the only version of Beowulf I’ve seen was a sort of sub-B-movie science fiction. So there’s not a lot of competition.
Gaiman has a rather happy history of molding his writing to his subject matter–Stardust, for instance, really reads like a fairy-tale, while Anansi Boys reads like P.G. Wodehouse. So I guess there’s certainly hope. But then, in his words “it’s going to be the first cool and successful adult cartoon, essentially, that’s ever been made in the West, or it’s going to be a really cool, magnificent failure of such stupendous proportions it’s going to be an honor to have been involved in it.”
And re. the humanizing of Grendel–those who do so seem to be entirely reversing the poem, in which Beowulf himself often becomes de-humanized and appears as a savage monster during his fights (if at no other time.)
In any case, I’m probably going to go into the theater pretending it’s not a Beowulf movie, and be happy for any similarities that pop up.
By the time Hollywood got through with your book, it would be Afternoon at the Beach with the Warrior And we would all say, “The book was better.”
Yes, I know. With Mark Wahlberg playing Erling in a mini-tunic.
But I’d get paid money for it. That’s the part that matters.
Hey, it’s not my fault. The animals got to Hugh. “Nice blog you got there, squire.” They can be persuasive.
Hwæt! Wé Gárdena in géardagum
þéodcyninga þrym gefrúnon·
hú ðá æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Gaius, I have a dog and I know how to use it.
(Actually I don’t have a dog. But I know some people who do.)
Year of the Warrior the movie?
They’d just screw it up and you know it.
Humph.
All I want is to prostitute myself a little.
Oh Lars. You don’t have to put on the red light.