what the swyve, indeed
I saw Beowulf this weekend!
Oy.
First off, I really really hated that digi-techy-pixely style. I don't give a toss how high tech it is, I don't care how advanced or whatever it is, it looks like shit. Simple as that. It looks like crap. If I want to play a video game, I'll play a video game (Note: I don't want to play a video game, and I don't play video games). It looked like a sodding video game. And whilst they may be fun for dexterity or puzzle solving and guns and blasts and booms and whatnot, the look is NOT good on movies. Simple as that. That looked like PANTS. Tartan ones. Yellow tartan ones. Grendel and his mother, especially, looked plain dumb and I LOATHED the blue flame thing that Grendel managed to, erm, 'invoke' whenever he attacked, I felt like shouting "CAST MAGIC MISSILE!" or something, it had that 'look' about it - I swear to god, if Pixar had done this it would have looked so much better. The blue flame appearing AT ALL fucked me off; Grendel is only described as an 'outcast from society', for God's sakes, not...whatever that thing was. Grendel looked like the retarded stepchild of Pizza the Hut and an emaciated supermodel and his mother...well, looked like Angelina Jolie and there's nothing wrong with that, really, unless you're supposed to be playing a demonic mother monster, in which case...erm, no. Just...no. Even the weird tentacley hair thing looked bad, I wasn't sure whether it was going to launch into a few minutes of tentacle porn or whatever and Angelina, dearest? You're very pretty and I love your lips and you're even a great actress when you put your mind to it, but not every foreign and/or ancient accent sounds like a Romanian vamp sister, ok? Seriously. Stop that. If you wanted to put an accent on, why not do a small study of Old English or perhaps maybe just a boring old Danish one from nowadays; sure, it's not historically accurate but that sure won't be unique in that movie.
I'm not going to sit and bitch about how unlike the original the story was because that's pointless. This is, after all, an adaptation and anyways, the original story is a thousand years old (give or take!), and stories were different back then, and trying to make a popular modern audience take thrill in the adventures of a Geatish warrior with little else but long, bloody battle scenes and descriptions of stuff is kind of hard. But did they have to write such a poor story to fill in the gaps? The whole Hrothgar-fucked-Grendel's Mama-and-Grendel-is-his-son thing is OLD, man, been there done that - Joolz Denby has a whole poem about it. CHRISTOPHER LAMBERT has been there done that, even. I think a lot of Neil Gaiman the person and a hell of a lot about his comics - less than a lot about his novels, I must admit, but apparently his screenplays SUCK ASS. Neil - what the hell, man? Of all the people I'd have expected to have some...I dunno, reverence or faith to an old story, the FIRST English story, you would be in my top 10. I expected better than this; this story was stupid! You could have done so much better than this; I know you have to fill in the gaps - especially between the battle with Grendel's mother (and BOY did you miss out an opportunity there, how could you leave that out? That was supposed to KICK ASS and way to go, thanks for taking the 'hero' away from Beowulf, man, thanks for that!) and the dragon's thing, but quite honestly I'd have preferred seeing the battle with Grendel's mother and maybe a little more...I dunno, storyline around some of the other characters (where was Æschere?), perhaps do more with that, than what we ended up with. As I said, I'm not going to bitch about it not being like the poem, but Beowulf is a hero. It was sad to see that taken away from him. It was also sad to hear Ray Winstone's irritating Cockney accent (Erm, aren't Geats Swedish, technically?), but that's not Neil's fault, but someone really should find the casting director and kick him in the nuts. But, seriously, Neil, what gives? Why did you do that? I feel bewildered. It's not as if you don't have a passion for the poem - I'm sure you do - and it's not as had to do this in a hurry cause you yourself mentioned this has been in the works for 10 years, but...what? What happened? You mentioned, when I saw you speaking last, that an adaptation of Sir Gawain would be cool and my heart soared because yes, IT REALLY WOULD BE, but now I'm a little bit TERRIFIED if you do the hatchet job on this that you did on Beowulf. Oh, and "swive" is a Middle English word, dude. Although I did sort of appreciate hearing Grendel speak in Old English, I know it was totally random, but it's nice to hear dead languages, I think, and I even understood bits, so that made me happy. But still! What happened? I was really looking forward to this, I only had faith in the project because your name was attached to it because you, of all people, would do it justice, would make it great, would bring the old heroic story to life. Instead...well, I don't even know. You might as well have shat on the Nowell Codex, considering what you did to poor Beowulf.
And, yes, Beowulf does fight Grendel naked, but I've been told that that's quite common of the time; wrestling was done naked, and as Grendel couldn't be killed by any weapon (something they didn't bother to tell you, just vaguely sort of imply, kinda sorta ish), it would have been a wrestling match. The whole must-cover-up-bodies came with Christianity, so if we're going to attempt to be faithful to the time period in that way, can we at least be faithful to it ENTIRELY rather than finding various objects to cover up Beowulf's bits (now there's a band name)?! The fucking Austin Powers theme song kept running through my head! Just show the guy fighting naked, will ya? That was ridiculous. Just don't bother making it a 12A rating - fuck's sake, the hero TEARS OFF the monster's arm at some point, there's plenty of reasons kids shouldn't be watching this anyways! And FUCK kids, if the story isn't a 12 then don't make it a 12. ARGH.
Of course, they wrote out Hrothgar's sons, and ended up turning Wealhþeow into some kind of...I dunno, blonde haired prize and music box. The representation of the Danes was kind of annoying. In fact, the opening scene inside Heorot had me rolling my eyes so hard it kind of hurt. Almost everyone was some kind of ridiculous stereotype of the Vikings or something, I'm half surprised no one wandered around in a novelty horned helmet. The representations of all of them, really, was just...ugh. "Swyve." 'Sigh', more like it. Also, the entire drinking hall repeatedly shouting "HROÞGAR! HROÞGAR! HROÞGAR! HROÞGAR! HROÞGAR! HROÞGAR!" for what seems - I think literally was meant to be - HOURS ON END was just stupid. Please - there are people who specialise in that period on my friends list, please for the love of HROÞGAR, tell me this is total crap. I'm no specialist but something tells me that's a bit of an insulting representation of the people of that place and time period.
The dragon fight was kind of cool, although to be honest it got a bit boring after awhile, I get the whole "old man's regrets" thing but it was poorly executed, the castle looked ridiculous, what the hell was up with the gold muck stuff and it seems that someone else will have to rise to the challenge of making a decent adaptation of Beowulf for the modern audience, because this certainly ain't it.
And seriously, Neil? LAY OFF GAWAIN. I saw Gawain! I did! Fiona, Aleks and I went to the British Library on Saturday and Gawain is there! Well, the Cotton Nero texts are there and so is the MS Harley and stuff and it was BRILLIANT! Gawain! I'm going to go back and see if they'll let me touch it kiss it flip through it love it study it for studying purposes for studying you know studying, I'll be...well, you'll probably hear the squeal. IN BORNEO. The British Library is *gorgeous*, I love it, and the illuminated manuscripts are more beautiful than I could have imagined and I need to go back when I have more time and just wander amongst them and try to read the Old English (yikes!) and the Latin and just...wow. Wow. Wow.
The rest of the weekend was basically me procrastinating on writing my paper, writing my paper, angsting over my paper and somewhat focused around my paper. Oh, and consuming a rather insane amount of sugar. I'm sugared out. There was a stop at Cybercandy, but my parents went to Panzer's for Thanksgiving stuff so then there were freshly baked bagels (!!) and other tidbits I don't usually have and oy vey. I feel like a matzo ball.
Righty ho. This week is busy. It's THANKSGIVING on Thursday, too!
I have another paper due next Monday, too. BLARGH.
EDIT: Lists!
The Guardian Top 1000 albums. LONG list. Not a bad one, thus far...
AND.
Top 10 Most Overrated Supporting Characters.
Vincent Vega from Pulp Ficition is a good one, but...I like him. And Boba Fett is a good one, but you leave Slimer, Timon and Pumbaa alone, dudes! Timon and Pumbaa especially, I still sing Hakuna Matata when I want to cheer myself up sometimes! It's a wonderful phrase...
Sorry.
Oy.
First off, I really really hated that digi-techy-pixely style. I don't give a toss how high tech it is, I don't care how advanced or whatever it is, it looks like shit. Simple as that. It looks like crap. If I want to play a video game, I'll play a video game (Note: I don't want to play a video game, and I don't play video games). It looked like a sodding video game. And whilst they may be fun for dexterity or puzzle solving and guns and blasts and booms and whatnot, the look is NOT good on movies. Simple as that. That looked like PANTS. Tartan ones. Yellow tartan ones. Grendel and his mother, especially, looked plain dumb and I LOATHED the blue flame thing that Grendel managed to, erm, 'invoke' whenever he attacked, I felt like shouting "CAST MAGIC MISSILE!" or something, it had that 'look' about it - I swear to god, if Pixar had done this it would have looked so much better. The blue flame appearing AT ALL fucked me off; Grendel is only described as an 'outcast from society', for God's sakes, not...whatever that thing was. Grendel looked like the retarded stepchild of Pizza the Hut and an emaciated supermodel and his mother...well, looked like Angelina Jolie and there's nothing wrong with that, really, unless you're supposed to be playing a demonic mother monster, in which case...erm, no. Just...no. Even the weird tentacley hair thing looked bad, I wasn't sure whether it was going to launch into a few minutes of tentacle porn or whatever and Angelina, dearest? You're very pretty and I love your lips and you're even a great actress when you put your mind to it, but not every foreign and/or ancient accent sounds like a Romanian vamp sister, ok? Seriously. Stop that. If you wanted to put an accent on, why not do a small study of Old English or perhaps maybe just a boring old Danish one from nowadays; sure, it's not historically accurate but that sure won't be unique in that movie.
I'm not going to sit and bitch about how unlike the original the story was because that's pointless. This is, after all, an adaptation and anyways, the original story is a thousand years old (give or take!), and stories were different back then, and trying to make a popular modern audience take thrill in the adventures of a Geatish warrior with little else but long, bloody battle scenes and descriptions of stuff is kind of hard. But did they have to write such a poor story to fill in the gaps? The whole Hrothgar-fucked-Grendel's Mama-and-Grendel-is-his-son thing is OLD, man, been there done that - Joolz Denby has a whole poem about it. CHRISTOPHER LAMBERT has been there done that, even. I think a lot of Neil Gaiman the person and a hell of a lot about his comics - less than a lot about his novels, I must admit, but apparently his screenplays SUCK ASS. Neil - what the hell, man? Of all the people I'd have expected to have some...I dunno, reverence or faith to an old story, the FIRST English story, you would be in my top 10. I expected better than this; this story was stupid! You could have done so much better than this; I know you have to fill in the gaps - especially between the battle with Grendel's mother (and BOY did you miss out an opportunity there, how could you leave that out? That was supposed to KICK ASS and way to go, thanks for taking the 'hero' away from Beowulf, man, thanks for that!) and the dragon's thing, but quite honestly I'd have preferred seeing the battle with Grendel's mother and maybe a little more...I dunno, storyline around some of the other characters (where was Æschere?), perhaps do more with that, than what we ended up with. As I said, I'm not going to bitch about it not being like the poem, but Beowulf is a hero. It was sad to see that taken away from him. It was also sad to hear Ray Winstone's irritating Cockney accent (Erm, aren't Geats Swedish, technically?), but that's not Neil's fault, but someone really should find the casting director and kick him in the nuts. But, seriously, Neil, what gives? Why did you do that? I feel bewildered. It's not as if you don't have a passion for the poem - I'm sure you do - and it's not as had to do this in a hurry cause you yourself mentioned this has been in the works for 10 years, but...what? What happened? You mentioned, when I saw you speaking last, that an adaptation of Sir Gawain would be cool and my heart soared because yes, IT REALLY WOULD BE, but now I'm a little bit TERRIFIED if you do the hatchet job on this that you did on Beowulf. Oh, and "swive" is a Middle English word, dude. Although I did sort of appreciate hearing Grendel speak in Old English, I know it was totally random, but it's nice to hear dead languages, I think, and I even understood bits, so that made me happy. But still! What happened? I was really looking forward to this, I only had faith in the project because your name was attached to it because you, of all people, would do it justice, would make it great, would bring the old heroic story to life. Instead...well, I don't even know. You might as well have shat on the Nowell Codex, considering what you did to poor Beowulf.
And, yes, Beowulf does fight Grendel naked, but I've been told that that's quite common of the time; wrestling was done naked, and as Grendel couldn't be killed by any weapon (something they didn't bother to tell you, just vaguely sort of imply, kinda sorta ish), it would have been a wrestling match. The whole must-cover-up-bodies came with Christianity, so if we're going to attempt to be faithful to the time period in that way, can we at least be faithful to it ENTIRELY rather than finding various objects to cover up Beowulf's bits (now there's a band name)?! The fucking Austin Powers theme song kept running through my head! Just show the guy fighting naked, will ya? That was ridiculous. Just don't bother making it a 12A rating - fuck's sake, the hero TEARS OFF the monster's arm at some point, there's plenty of reasons kids shouldn't be watching this anyways! And FUCK kids, if the story isn't a 12 then don't make it a 12. ARGH.
Of course, they wrote out Hrothgar's sons, and ended up turning Wealhþeow into some kind of...I dunno, blonde haired prize and music box. The representation of the Danes was kind of annoying. In fact, the opening scene inside Heorot had me rolling my eyes so hard it kind of hurt. Almost everyone was some kind of ridiculous stereotype of the Vikings or something, I'm half surprised no one wandered around in a novelty horned helmet. The representations of all of them, really, was just...ugh. "Swyve." 'Sigh', more like it. Also, the entire drinking hall repeatedly shouting "HROÞGAR! HROÞGAR! HROÞGAR! HROÞGAR! HROÞGAR! HROÞGAR!" for what seems - I think literally was meant to be - HOURS ON END was just stupid. Please - there are people who specialise in that period on my friends list, please for the love of HROÞGAR, tell me this is total crap. I'm no specialist but something tells me that's a bit of an insulting representation of the people of that place and time period.
The dragon fight was kind of cool, although to be honest it got a bit boring after awhile, I get the whole "old man's regrets" thing but it was poorly executed, the castle looked ridiculous, what the hell was up with the gold muck stuff and it seems that someone else will have to rise to the challenge of making a decent adaptation of Beowulf for the modern audience, because this certainly ain't it.
And seriously, Neil? LAY OFF GAWAIN. I saw Gawain! I did! Fiona, Aleks and I went to the British Library on Saturday and Gawain is there! Well, the Cotton Nero texts are there and so is the MS Harley and stuff and it was BRILLIANT! Gawain! I'm going to go back and see if they'll let me touch it kiss it flip through it love it study it for studying purposes for studying you know studying, I'll be...well, you'll probably hear the squeal. IN BORNEO. The British Library is *gorgeous*, I love it, and the illuminated manuscripts are more beautiful than I could have imagined and I need to go back when I have more time and just wander amongst them and try to read the Old English (yikes!) and the Latin and just...wow. Wow. Wow.
The rest of the weekend was basically me procrastinating on writing my paper, writing my paper, angsting over my paper and somewhat focused around my paper. Oh, and consuming a rather insane amount of sugar. I'm sugared out. There was a stop at Cybercandy, but my parents went to Panzer's for Thanksgiving stuff so then there were freshly baked bagels (!!) and other tidbits I don't usually have and oy vey. I feel like a matzo ball.
Righty ho. This week is busy. It's THANKSGIVING on Thursday, too!
I have another paper due next Monday, too. BLARGH.
EDIT: Lists!
The Guardian Top 1000 albums. LONG list. Not a bad one, thus far...
AND.
Top 10 Most Overrated Supporting Characters.
Vincent Vega from Pulp Ficition is a good one, but...I like him. And Boba Fett is a good one, but you leave Slimer, Timon and Pumbaa alone, dudes! Timon and Pumbaa especially, I still sing Hakuna Matata when I want to cheer myself up sometimes! It's a wonderful phrase...
Sorry.