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.wtf? no, seriously, W.T.Fing F?
Oh my God. I went to see the new Beowulf movie last night, and it was...
Wow. There are no words. It's even worse than the Canada/Iceland Beowulf and Grendel from a few years ago, which came very close to being unmitigatedly horrible but at least had great lines like "Who cares why a fucking troll does what a fucking troll does?"
The pain was nearly flawless. The new kind of CGI animation is vertigo-inducing (am I looking at real people? oh, no! Cartoon! And Robin Wright Penn's face is weirdly bloated!), Angelina Jolie and her golden, nipple-less breasts (WRONG WRONG WRONG, and her Russian-accent-inflected quasi-Old English), the rampant and rampantly awful Freudian imagery (hero, sword drawn and erect, walking into the cleft of the mountain), Beowulf's compulsive nudity, Old English rap (just because it's rhythmical poetry does not mean people played drums as accompaniment!), brutal raping of the plot and characters... I didn't think Neil Gaiman was capable of such a thing, but apparently he is, because OH MY GOD the atrocious suckiness of this movie begs, buggers, and is incapable of description.
I came very close to going upstairs and barfing on the projector and then burning it, but the people I was with (all fellow specialists) convinced me it would be more fun to stay and insult it. It was the weird kind of fun where you're laughing and insulting something (and there was SO MUCH in there that was funny in a horrifying way) because the alternative is to become violent or ill, or violently ill.
Also, people? For those of you thinking about writing the fourth Beowulf screen adaptation, please to remember that Hrothgar is not a.) an alcoholic, b.) senile, c.) afflicted with Tourette's, or d.) all of the above. He doesn't wear a toga, formal gift-giving does not involve the random flinging of coins, and twelfth-century stone castles do NOT belong in 507AD Denmark. Neither does Christianity. Also, just because they're northern Germanic women doesn't mean they're whores.
Oh, and there was a teenaged boy in the audience with a copy of Seamus Heaney's translation. If he was reading it for its own sake, yay for him. (Though I have issues with Heaney's translation, it does have the merit of being the most readable and interesting yet produced.) If he was reading it for Angelina Jolie, poor boy, the disappointment he must endure.
That isn't remotely all, but I should stop now.
Now, I'm tired, a bit hung over from all the wine I had to drink to cope with this monstrosity, I have to rake today, go to the library, and find some way to deal with people whose disorganization is visiting havoc upon my life. I am disposed to be cranky and hostile today.
In other, much happier news: Awesomest of awesome birthdays to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrsdtaylor! May you have a gift-wrapped Enrique on your front step today *snuffles you*
Wow. There are no words. It's even worse than the Canada/Iceland Beowulf and Grendel from a few years ago, which came very close to being unmitigatedly horrible but at least had great lines like "Who cares why a fucking troll does what a fucking troll does?"
The pain was nearly flawless. The new kind of CGI animation is vertigo-inducing (am I looking at real people? oh, no! Cartoon! And Robin Wright Penn's face is weirdly bloated!), Angelina Jolie and her golden, nipple-less breasts (WRONG WRONG WRONG, and her Russian-accent-inflected quasi-Old English), the rampant and rampantly awful Freudian imagery (hero, sword drawn and erect, walking into the cleft of the mountain), Beowulf's compulsive nudity, Old English rap (just because it's rhythmical poetry does not mean people played drums as accompaniment!), brutal raping of the plot and characters... I didn't think Neil Gaiman was capable of such a thing, but apparently he is, because OH MY GOD the atrocious suckiness of this movie begs, buggers, and is incapable of description.
I came very close to going upstairs and barfing on the projector and then burning it, but the people I was with (all fellow specialists) convinced me it would be more fun to stay and insult it. It was the weird kind of fun where you're laughing and insulting something (and there was SO MUCH in there that was funny in a horrifying way) because the alternative is to become violent or ill, or violently ill.
Also, people? For those of you thinking about writing the fourth Beowulf screen adaptation, please to remember that Hrothgar is not a.) an alcoholic, b.) senile, c.) afflicted with Tourette's, or d.) all of the above. He doesn't wear a toga, formal gift-giving does not involve the random flinging of coins, and twelfth-century stone castles do NOT belong in 507AD Denmark. Neither does Christianity. Also, just because they're northern Germanic women doesn't mean they're whores.
Oh, and there was a teenaged boy in the audience with a copy of Seamus Heaney's translation. If he was reading it for its own sake, yay for him. (Though I have issues with Heaney's translation, it does have the merit of being the most readable and interesting yet produced.) If he was reading it for Angelina Jolie, poor boy, the disappointment he must endure.
That isn't remotely all, but I should stop now.
Now, I'm tired, a bit hung over from all the wine I had to drink to cope with this monstrosity, I have to rake today, go to the library, and find some way to deal with people whose disorganization is visiting havoc upon my life. I am disposed to be cranky and hostile today.
In other, much happier news: Awesomest of awesome birthdays to
mrsdtaylor! May you have a gift-wrapped Enrique on your front step today *snuffles you*
no subject
I found myself laughing at the horror, like you said, so as not to crawl out of theater in shame for paying actual money for the privilege of witnessing that. The symbolism and its blatant offensiveness were what really took the cake for me. As well as the totally unrepentant sexual innuendos. My favorite was the drinking chant: "We found a dozen virgins,/ Fresians, Danes and Franks,/ We took them for some swiving,/ but all we got were wanks!" I burst out laughing at that, but absolutely no one else in the theater got it, so, kind of embarrassing. :\
Also, was it just me, or was the dragon/Beowulf's son's heart really disproportionately small for the size of the beast?
no subject
was the dragon/Beowulf's son's heart really disproportionately small for the size of the beast?
I think maybe it was supposed to be a human-sized heart? Because the dragon isn't really a dragon so much as it is a guy who can turn into one????
*has no idea*
no subject
Ok, so the class is supposed to be focusing on the way masculinity is depicted in medieval literature. So far in this class we have watched the following films: 300 (because watching any old depiction of masculinity will do apparently), Beowulf and Grendel ("for the scenery! I know it's a little inaccurate, but look at the scenery!"), this crazy 1970's film called Lancelot du Lac, where everyone wears their armor 24/7 and apparently it's cool for Gwenyhfar's dress to be made out of polyester, and an old adaption of the Canterbury Tales to film, which included full frontal nudity of Tom Baker (yes, Dr. Who Tom Baker).
I'm not even sure we've cracked a book in this class. The only remotely medieval texts we were assigned were Charny's Book of Chivalry, the Oxford Anthology of Anglo Norman literature, and a book called Boys to Men, which is about the different ways boys were taught to act like men if they were becoming knights, scholars or priests, I think. We also have to read Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, because apparently this is a women's studies class in disguise, and has nothing to do with medieval anything. This broad is getting a formal complaint from me when evaluation day comes around, I swear to God.
no subject
The Ruth Mazo Karras book is good; I like it a lot, and I've used excerpts from it to teach a section on masculinity in a basic gender in popular culture class. I'm not sure why you have to read all of Butler's Gender Trouble--I think the whole "you perform your gender" argument is quite enough, and you can find that in a thousand articles or synopses of her work without plowing through all the close reading.
*headshake* I'm sorry for the crappy class :/ It especially sucks when you think it's going to be good and interesting and then is... the opposite.
no subject
I think I like that one best out of all the things we've had to read. I am only about half way through it, I'm a little behind in my reading and so I have to finish that one this weekend, but it is accessible and an easy read while still being informative, which is more than I can say for Judith Butler. *rolls eyes* When you have to disclaim your writing style as opaque in the preface, you have a problem. Honestly, we could have read a three paragraph summary of the whole book and gotten enough of an idea.
This class was originally supposed to be taught by the faculty's best medievalist, but for some reason he dropped it and by the time I found out about it, I couldn't drop the class, as I had nothing to take it's place. It's turned out to be an easy A, but I actually wanted to learn something this semester. I got more out of the 200 level medieval culture class I took last year, which was taught by a grad student. Oh well. I have modern novels class next semester to look forward to.