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Robert Zemeckis to Direct Beowulf Movie
jangobongo writes "Robert Zemeckis, who directed the Polar Express and Back To The Future among many others, will helm a new remake of the epic tale of Beowulf. Sony Pictures is in discussions to distribute the picture. (This version is unrelated to another remake scheduled to be released in 2005 titled Beowulf & Grendel, which is currently in post-production.)" I have no idea which version will make for a better film, but this one has Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary writing the script for it as well.
Neil Gaiman just posted about this in his online journal.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
That sounds like the beginnings of a cluster!
*ducks*
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now Dan Rydel can finally say that he's seen the Beowulf movie and mean it.
Casey: "There's no movie of Beowulf."
Dan: "Then what the heck movie did I see?"
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
...a modern remake of this epic tale!
;-)
What, expecting me to say something else?
So now theres two Beowulf movies coming soon and two War of the Worlds. I think its interesting to watch interpretations of the same source material by very different teams of filmakers. But I think this is the first time airs of movies have opened so near each other in time.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
Grendel's mother is so fat, she have to... well... I mean, she's so... actually, I guess she is large, but mostly that has the effect that she's menacing to tough medieval warrior types. Hmmmmm.
Tweet, tweet.
Then again, Hollywood hasn't ruined *everything* it has touched (think of the LotR movies.) There might still be hope.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
Grendel is an unfinished Java-based mail client.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/grendel/
Will it be done in Anglo-Saxon, or in that sucky post-Norman dialect?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Depending on where you look, a Windows/Linux MUD server, or a Mozilla project building a mail/news reader entirely in Java.
Who'd have thought they'd make a movie of that? ;)
Proof that the only idea that still exists in movie-making is 'Let's drag X up and recycle it.' I predict the Beowulf movies will be at least as good as Troy and Alexander.
'Sparrow.'
Hollywood is a ridiculous echo chamber. After a millenium and a half, they finally make a Beowulf in 1998, after a century of movies, so they make another in 1999. Then they make another two in 2005. They're more "me, too" than Usenet. Ever since the biz stopped being run by gamblers, it's gone straight down the tubes.
--
make install -not war
Yeah, just imagine it!
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Yet Another Beowulf movie? How many is this now? 5? 6?
Indeed hopefully this one will be better than "The Thirteenth Warrior". That movie is based on a Michael Crichton book, "Eaters of the Dead", which is a rather amusing literary exercize.
There's a lot of them. It's like an entire cluster of movies.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
The lyrics go, I kid you not, something like "Beo- Beo- Beo- Beo- Beowulf!"
Found via Beowulfiana
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
Will it include honey nut clusters or just them weird computer-thingy-ma-jiggy ones? We don't want to confuse the public with their breakfast and spyware infested super networks now do we?
I like muppets.
Tell you what, read Neil Gaiman's blog on this, which the terrifyingly sane and sensible first poster linked.
And then retract your initial comments, when you realise that a. Gaiman is one of the two writers, b. he wrote it a while ago and Dreamworks rejected it, c. Bob Z. is making it because he was blown away by Gaiman's script.
Then start to midly freak out because it's going to be motion capture. Like Polar-Bloody-Express.
fortune -o
the Mel Brooks version!
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Yes! And they should name it
The Passion Of the Beowulf.
Check out "The Thirteenth Warrior" with Antonio Banderas, believe it or not. Based on the real writings of a travling muslim cleric that ran into a bunch of Vikings at a funeral. The novel/movie takes that and runs with it, right into the Beowulf story. Actually very enjoyable, and well done, I thought.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Damnit! Now you've got me itching to read his shopping lists!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The 98 release was a 30 minute made for TV cartoon. The 99 release stared Chistopher Lambert. I really don't count either of these as serious screen adaptations. I'm glad that Beowulf has been taken on as a big budget production with a talanted director and writers.
So what happens once Hollywood has remade every story familiar to Americans and first published on or before December 1922? Will Hollywood finally get the guts to demand a repeal of the unwritten policy of perpetual copyright on the installment plan? Or will the entertainment industry all have merged into one conglomerate that incidentally doesn't have to worry about infringing its own copyrights?
staring Christopher Lambert with short blonde hair, set in a post-apocalypitic world. Now that was a bad movie, and the overly used sex scenes didn't add to the movie, though were enjoyable for there moments of interlude.
I hope that Gaiman takes some influence from John Gardner's Grendel , which attempts to tell the story from the monster's point of view. I wouldn't expect most writers to know about it, but Gaiman? It's a good bet.
In short, it tells the story of how Grendel first tries to make friends with the humans and is attacked out of their fear, and then is later used as a scapegoat for Hrothgar's (the human king's) treachery. He responds by attacking out of anger at the humans' pettiness and hypocrisy, outrage at the storyteller's lies about him.
Marillion did a song based on the book and it appears on their CD, B-Sides Themselves . The song is somewhat reminiscent of Genesis' Foxtrot in parts, highlighting Marillion's origin as a Genesis cover band.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Actually, the IMDB lists only one movie titled Beowulf, and it wasn't at all like the poem. There's also an animated short which sounds a lot like a project I have wanted to do for a while.
Thing is, Beowulf is famous primarily because it's the oldest example of something, not because it's a particularly good story. At its core, it's kind of a dull story: a man goes out and beats up a monster. And that's the good part; in the second half he goes out and beats up the monster's mother, and dies in the process, but it's all kind of murky. (Sorry for the spoiler, but the book has been out for twelve centuries; if you haven't read it by now it's your fault.)
In the original it's a fascinating read, from a linguistic point of view. The connections to modern English are tenuous but visible if you know where to look. The style is very different from the Greek-inspired poetry style we think of as epic poetry; the rhymes and meter are replaced by alliteration and a less strict line length with a pause in the middle.
The new translation by Seamus Heaney preserves a lot of that and gives a good taste of the original, but it's important more because of its age than because it's telling a great story. (Though I'd love to have a reading of it by James Earl Jones.)
I've actually wanted to do a Beowulf project myself, but instead of telling the story I'd read the poem aloud as narration to a nearly silent visual recreation of the story. Sort of a documentary recreation of the event, as accurate as possible in terms of costumes and set. The DVD would come with two soundtracks: the poem in English and the poem in the original, both synchronized to the visual. The actors would speak Old English when dialogue appears in the poem, with subtitles as necessary.
The IMDB lists an animated project which sounds a lot like this, with some top-name actors as voice talent (Derek Jacobi, Joseph Fiennes). Harrumph.
I just re-read the latest (and imho greatest) Beowulf translation by Seamus Heaney. (If anyone is interested in re-reading it, this translation is stunningly good.)
The problem with making a major film version of the poem is that Beowulf is the most anti-Hollywood tale ever told. When most people summarize the story they reduce the lengthy plot down to something like this: a foreign hero comes to a land plagued by a horrible demon, slays the demon (and the demon's mother) and lives happily ever after.
Unfortunately for Hollywood screenwriters, that's not the whole story. Beowulf is a far more modern tale about a rarely discussed subject: Life in the aftermath of fame. Its an almost depressing story about a hero whose greatest achievement occurs early-on in his career. Beowulf slays his adversaries surprisingly soon in the text -- and then must live on in an exhausted world (filled with far less glamour) for the rest of his long days.
The story ends -- without another climax, without another conflict. At times the reader has to wonder, "where's this story going?", and the truth is: It isn't going anywhere, and neither is Beowulf. And that's the painful part of the story -- that Beowulf's finest years and greatest deeds are already done.
Its hardly the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters, and the chances are good that the story will be Hollywood-ized with an abbreviated ending. A far more interesting (and accurate film) would include the bulky second part of the poem where the conflict shifts from man vs. monster to man vs. himself.
-Popo
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Has everything. Feisty queen, wet husband, flawed hero with spectacular attributes (Cu Chulainn did an Incredible Hulk transformation 1500 years ago), setpiece personal combats, battles, and a few additional legends to provide subplots. And it's Culture with a capital C, and no charge for an option on the script. Of course in the past Hollywood has struggled with the Irish language, but after Alexander I have a solution: Play Cu Chulainn with a Greek accent.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
So. We have seen many a slashdotter
Grieve and grumble greatly over films.
"Classics ruined!" they clamor. "Memories killed!" they cry.
Should Greedo shoot first? Surely nay.
Why then should they not whimper and whine
When they hear this horror, a Beowulf film!
Scyld Scefing? Shield Sheafson? Sam Soros?
Which woeful name for the screen will be chosen?
Michael Crichton told a tale once;
The movie was made, many watched.
Sadly it sucked. Sigh.
English is easier said than done.
I read part of Beowulf in high school (of course) but didn't read it all the way through, and enjoy it, until I read Seamus Heaney's translation a couple of years ago. One thing I found striking while I was reading the later portion of the book, which wasn't required reading in high school, was how much Tolkien borrowed from Beowulf.
:)
He borrows from Arthurian myth among other things, but the whole bit about the thief sneaking in and stealing a goblet from the dragon, and the dragon razing the countryside, was obviously taken from Beowulf.
In the grave on the hill a hoard it guarded,
in the stone-barrow steep. A strait path reached it,
unknown to mortals. Some man, however,
came by chance that cave within
to the heathen hoard. In hand he took
a golden goblet, nor gave he it back,
stole with it away, while the watcher slept,
by thievish wiles: for the warden's wrath
prince and people must pay betimes!
Yadda yadda yadda... this etext translation isn't as good as Heaney's.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga