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First George McFly in BEOWULF and now Frankie jumps aboard!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. BEOWULF gets weirder and weirder. The cast is ecclectic, that's for sure... but now we have Robert Zemeckis directing a screenplay adaptation of BEOWULF scripted by Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman and starring Crispin Glover, Ray Winstone and Angelina Jolie. Curiouser and curiouser. It's also announced now that the film will be co-produced by Paramount and Warner Bros. I'm insanely curious about this project and would be looking forward to it even more if it was live-action! Can you imagine how creepy Glover would be as Grendel in some badass make-up? Click here for the Hollywood Reporter confirmation!
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This movie sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun. Yup....
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...cos otherwise there's not much point having Crispin Glover. All his performances are built from the subtleties...I hope performance capture is either perfected for this, or that they make it really artistic and painterly. I think it'll be the latter...I dunno. I'll wait to see footage of Glover - notice that his initials are CG!
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Aug 18, 2005 5:29:33 AM CDT
There are soo many shitty movie versions of this story ...
by godoffireinhell
Please get it right this time!
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Aug 18, 2005 5:42:58 AM CDT
performance capture is the one thing that will make this movie t
by mansep
people simply don't want to sit for 2 hours and watch that kind of imagery. Why do you think most people skip the animated cut-scenes in computer games?
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wait for the live action version coming out this fall. www.beowulfandgrendel.com
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Anyone seen the Chris Lambert version of this? Its...quite something. The person who decided that the story would benefit from being relocated to a post-apocalyptic future deserves a handshake, but for all the wrong reasons. The foolishly elaborate weapons (such as a sword with a circular saw attachment that can be fired like a shuriken) provide a nice distraction until they're actually used, and prove ridiculously impractical. The beowulf character spends around one third of the film backflipping, and his origin story is lamentably bad. Plus, Grendels mother is played by a playboy model. All set to a thumping techno soundtrack. That said, the film is worth seeing as an exercise in enjoyably bad filmmaking.
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"Friday, August 05, 2005
from the mailbag...
posted by Neil 8/05/2005 12:33:00 PM
hiya Neil,IMDB.com already has some of the cast of Beowulf listed!! so much for confidentiality...ciao,heather
They've got the ones who were mentioned in Variety last month, yes (although they don't know who's playing what). But they don't have Ms J, Mr M or Ms L. Or any of the thanes. They don't even have Crispin Glover down yet..."
... I'm guessing Ms J is Angelina, not sure who the Mr M or Ms L might be ...
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I heard the Gunnarsson version is finished and was shown in canada. Has anyone seen it? I'm suprised I never hear any news about it on this site.
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The idea that this film would be more "exciting" to look forward to if it was going to be live action is a weird one to me. People always want to make the creative decisions themselves. I want to trust Zemeckis and Gaiman, who are, frankly, both masters in their field. Oh, and that Avary chap. Ahem.
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Everyone should check out Crispin Glover's album "The Big Problem Does Not Equal the Solution. The Solution = Let It Be." He does a cover of "These Boots Are Made for Walking" that is the perfect soundtrack for sodomy and his ode to masturbation,
"Auto-Manipulator" sounds like Crispin Glover got together with Run-DMC and they wrote a rap about man's favorite past time. -
Aug 18, 2005 8:52:54 AM CDT
Yeah, this should definitely be live action. I love Zemeckis, bu
by brokentusk
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Because anyone who has does not care about this movie.
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...when I was in seventh grade. And while it seemed like an interesting story at the time (along with Gilgamesh), I can't see this translating well to film.
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The Seamus heaney translation anyway. Anyone know if they intend to film the whole thing, rather than just the Grendal part of the story?
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The Lambert version is so absurd it becomes good, I have a soft spot for it. And I have a hard spot for Rhona Mitra.
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Does anyone remember the Letterman where Crispin got kind of crazy and started doing karate kicks at David, nearly missing his face? The guy's a genius who never realized his full potential. Mental problems, I suppose.
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I've read the book plenty of times and can't wait for the movie. If only it will be as good an adaptation as the Friday the 13th series...
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The Jennifer Aniston fans will be thinking, "how apt".
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Call her Croft, call her Mrs. Smith. But for the love of God don't refer to that crapfest Sky Captain like it's Jolie's most famous role.
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Brad Pitt's going to make a cameo appearance and Angelina's arch enemy is going to be Jennifer Aniston! Everything is a publicity stunt.
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Declaring his love for Ms. Jolie...
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Does that mean good relations, which could lead to the Joker...?
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I'm sure the tabloid news shows will have fun making snide remarks about that. I'm siding with the camp that thinks motion captuure might ruin this movie. No one likes realistic depictions of humans done in CG. Remember the Final Fantasy movie that was supposed to shake Hollywood to its core because now they could make actors? Nobody wanted to see it. I'm sure we're all familiar with the Polar Express movie. The main complaint was how creepy all the characters looked. I hope it works out, but I'm skeptical.
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To be a fan of the original and still look forward to the movie. Us geeks (just me? OK then) live in hope that one day, ONE SWEET DAY, the movie version will fulfil our dreams and commit our favourite story/comicbook/novel/piece of history to celluloid in a worthy manner. I always get excited about ancient/medieval movies. Most are pants, but that doesn't stop me getting excited. Bring it on!
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Sorry - just read that back and realised that our American cousins might wonder why I was comparing movies to trousers. Sorry - pants.
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Seriously. It seems like their ultimate objective is to have "animated" characters on screen that look photo-realistic. Let's put aside the fact that they have not yet been able to achieve this (as evidenced by the corpse-like people in Polar Express). In order to even come close, they need to spend countless hours on an effects stage with the actual actors they are trying to motion capture. Those actors then have to perform all their scenes and read every line as if it were just a regular movie. The animators then have to spend god knows how many hours parked in front of a computer screen to ultimately arrive at subpar results. Again, WTF? If they can't do this without shooting the actors anyway, then why bother with the extra steps for artificial-looking results? .....If all they're going for is "life-like" results, why not just friggin' shoot the actors performing their parts, you know, like a normal sane person would?..... All this "motion-capture" stuff seems to render the whole idea of animation pointless. It would be like me spending millions of dollars trying to perfect the "ultimate" form of claymation, one that looks just like real-life actors. (As if that was the ultimate goal of any artform.)
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Aug 18, 2005 5:58:14 PM CDT
Why bring Angelina Jolie aboard? She's too campy, not a good
by spacesheik
she's gonna bring plenty of cheese to this BEOWULF
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i remember the first time i read "beowulf" ... years and years ago ... it was a paperback copy of the book and it had a really awesome illustration of grendel on the cover. it looked vaguely like chet in "weird science," when lisa turns him into that toad-like creature ... only much, much scarier looking and less humorous.
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Who would have thought that those two phrases would ever crop up together?
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Firstly to fully capture a human performance for animation. Secondly it's far easier to have full atmospheric integration when EVERYTHING is an effect. Star Wars (at times) can look like an actor on a stage, which well... it is. This achieves something a little different. You can have the actor's play EXACT descriptions of the characters, and give them emotion. Not only that, but you can literally do anything at any point in time and still have a human performance. It seems like beating a dead horse, but it's being considered a Pixar hybrid. Although that would be wrong anyway. The plain fact is that animated performances have to be ANIMATED. You can play as subtle as you'd like with mo-cap, but it'll never come across on screen. Watch the movements in The Incredibles (a brilliantly animated film, technically) and you'll realize that the movements aren't exactly human, but they also are very human. It's a balance of over-acting and keeping it "real". Once you're sitting there capturing what a human face is expressing, it's un-naturally real and doesn't come across very well. It's essentially like acting under a theoretical monkey mask. You'd hardly commend an actor in the original Planet of the Apes for a good performance. Mainly because the performances are so subdued underneath the mask (no matter how animated the actor) that you lose it, and essentially make the art form devoid. But this is a pivot in the right direction, I figure eventually it'll strike right down the middle. Mo-Cap is an art form, like live action, cel animation, or digital animation. If you don't like it, don't watch it. But right now it is very much an infant in style, and is going through growing pains. I applaud Zemeckis for plugging away at it, but I'm sure Cameron will take it ten years beyond anyone else... Raising the bar yet again. So I'm hopeful for the form itself, but quite honestly it's going to take time. I consider myself patient, and once it's mastered it'll be a hell of an interesting ride. Now I'm going to stop ranting and watch T2: Judgment Day again, and marvel at how James Cameron is thirty eight million times more talented than I, or anyone else for that matter. Thank You.
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Motion Capture is destined to go the way of Rotoscope animation (remember Bakshi's Lord of the Rings?) The common refrain will be "what was i tinking?"
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Aug 19, 2005 11:05:58 AM CDT
Good call. Rotoscope - Whatever Tron did - Motion (or "performa
by hypeendshere
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I'm waiting for the Gerard Butler version...not only because he's hot, but because it looks like a decent version. The costumes and the sets look incredible. I wish AICN would devote a single feature to it, rather than this version. This production just smacks of Hollywood jumping on a bandwagon, and making it over the top just to do it. I sense a bomb.
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it was supposed to be painterly. I didn't read the book but apparently that is how the author wanted it. Get over it already. On another note, A Scanner Darkly looks awesome. I have to wonder if people will bitch about that too.
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Aug 19, 2005 7:06:07 PM CDT
the 3D at the IMAX was the only reason to see Polar Express
by demosthenes2
I thought Zemeckis understood that most people loathed the blankness of the characters in The Polar Express. Animation has never intended to capture reality, what's the point if you don't want the people to look as larger-than-life as their world? Although another problem was that book is flimsy material to stretch to a feature.... Still this is just... *sighs*
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At least that's what Malkovich told the public at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland.
Check out the Interview:
http://www.outnow.ch/specials/2005/Locarno/Interview-Malkovich.E/
or "tinier":
http://tinyurl.com/7f32f -
The actual reason for the motion-capture (as Zemeckis and Gaiman have already explained, but nobody on this site EVER pays fucking attention) is that the story follows the same characters over the period of 40 years or so, and Zemeckis wanted them to be a) visually consistent, and b) well, played by the SAME actor, which you can really only do with motion-capture. Zemeckis really does like to play with his toys, but the man has massive talent even if it doesn't always show, and is one of the few true geek filmmakers out there (along with Cameron), which puts him on my good side. Also, Gaiman (co)wrote it, which is really all I need to know. Gaiman is a demigod, and can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. PS: Of course it won't look like Polar Express. Why would it? What, you think CG can only look one way?
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