:TESTO:I saw the new Beowulf flick the other day, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a goofy action movie sometimes, and some of the bit parts are poorly animated, but overall it's a delightful treatment of the Beowulf story.

Most of the reviews I've read and most of the responses I've heard from friends and passerby are self-righteously scornful of the "changes in the story" that make this movie different from the thousand-year-old text. In particular, everybody seems to be acutely aware that Grendel's Mother doesn't quite look or act like a hideous sea troll, and claim this as cause to pooh-pooh a plot that neatly ties together the rather disjointed and rambling "original" tale.

So, yes. Neil Gaiman and Bob Zemeckis aren't just retelling Beowulf, they're playing with it. It's gained a layer of shiny plastic, it's been pared and interlinked and slightly warped, and it's still recognizably Beowulf. It's clear that if the events presented were remembered in song and written down by a monk, they'd look a lot like the text that so many high school students have read the Cliff Notes for.

I rather think that any screenwriter worth his salt would find it tedious and painful to represent even the core three-monsters line of the Beowulf text faithfully as a film, and the producers would be hard-pressed to find an audience that would accept it as entertainment.

And if dropping a hot chick into a subterranean lake gets more folk out to hear a song as old as our tongue, I won't be miffed.


My own nitpicks and glories (small spoilers may be present):




Although it's historically flawed to have the Monster Family and Old Beowulf's Bard speaking Anglo-Saxon (PIE and Old Norse would be the correct choices, respectively), it's thematically appropriate and awesome - the bard's lines are straight from the text, and Crispin Glover delivers his tortured words in teachable form. Both his and Jolie's lines are thick with cognates, so an audience of moderately quick ear can pick up both meaning and structure from their dialogue. I winced a bit at Angelina's all-too-modern pronunciation of those words as old as sharks, but accuracy must give way to audience acceptance. I'll consider Jolie a gateway drug - may her flashy flesh and the time-warped words from her luscious lips gain a few more seats in Anglo-Saxon Studies courses worldwide.

I rather wish the film had mentioned Scyld, founder of Hrothgar's line. Lineage is such an important part of the root text, and the movie's plot itself. Just a casual name-drop would have been enough, but I could totally get behind a flashback scene, perhaps implicating Scyld in the same curse as befell the story's two kings.

The little links that Gaiman wove between the parts of the story were sometimes artful -- putting the big and obvious plot-twisting addition aside, Unferth, his slave, and the Horn provided a nice bit of continuity between the Act Grendel and Act Dragon. Unferth the Christian was also most appropriate.

And I still need to see it in 3D. Having seen the movie in a measly two dimensions makes it clear to me that it was built for a species with binocular vision. The majority of the animation, especially for facial close-ups, is top notch - believable, expressive, and shiny. I owe it to myself and the artists to view it in fulness.

Wyrd bith ful ared. :ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:I forgot to link to the Snö application yesterday, so here it is. And here's the source.

Also, I just got back from dinner at the same restaurant where Bill Richardson was holding a campaign shindig. We were the only people there who weren't there to see Bill, and it felt a little odd - almost like trespassing - to sitting there on the edge of the hobnobbing. We only saw the man himself on his way out, which took a while as he was buffeted between photo-seeking suits. He seems nice.

The food was quite good, too. :ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:Today was election day, which in Baltimore City means the schools are closed! I spent the day a-puttering. Firstly, I kicked some of the rust off of the Mac OS X application "Snow Desktop", also called "Snö" (I had previously modified it so that the flakes would collect atop windows, and so the rate of snowfall would be tined to network bandwidth, and added the ability for the flakes' color scheme to adjust chameleon-like to your desktop background). My modified Snö hadn't worked with Leopard, and now it does, and has a few minor tweaks and whistles in tow. The color-matching now correctly samples the entire image, and flakes can be set to fall *behind* desktop icons and in front of the desktop background. Many of my earlier modifications to the Cocoa were hackish and blunt, I might like to go back and clean it up later (especially the part that loads image-packs. On the upside, there are now nice Autumnal Leaves. And pretty flowers.) I also started what I hope will be a nice cranberry mead, with about three dry quarts of fresh cranberries and 8 oz of cranberry concentrate. There's a handful of ginger and a healthy dose of cardamom, and half an ounce of dried sweet orange peel. The honey was free (maybe 1.5 gal of 22% water honey), to boot. I think I might call it "Mad Doctor Hrothgar Can't Fit Down the Chimney," but I'm not sure it'll be ready in time. Perhaps "Mad Doctor Hrothgar Prevents Urinary Infections"? That's a nice, timeless name... :ENDTESTO: