8 Points: Beowulf

Spoilers abound, especially for those of you not familiar with the original poem. Even if you are, I may ruin surprises.

So here goes.

1. See this in 3-D. Now. I mean it when I say that this is, bar none, the best 3-D work I have ever seen. Where the CG mocap animation has flaws, the 3-D smoothes them out and more than makes up for them.


2. I don't care what the rhetoric is; this is an animated film. Yes, it is in the direction of photo-real, but it stops short of traditional feature film effects trying to pass for real. It is stylized, especially when it comes to the light-like elements.


3. I wish they had pushed the style further. Early talk was of a moving Frank Frazetta painting; the final result is true to this in design, but is too polished for a real Frazetta feel. Maybe next time?


4. My three favorite moments: Beowulf digging through a sea-monster's eye, and being so worked up, he can only scream his name; Beowulf proclaiming his own legendary status to Grendel, just before ripping his arm off; the entire dragon fight.


5. This may be the best cinematic dragon yet. And certainly the best dragon battle yet. Eat your heart out Sean Connery. The bar has been raised for The Hobbit, if it ever gets made.


6. Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman have some serious credit due; they did one hell of an adaptation, that not only maintains the tone and feel of the epic poem, with its boastful braggarts and ritualized deeds, but feels energetic and exciting in a modern way. And the few additions they made tie the entire narrative together... Hrothgar fathering Grendel, and Beowulf fathering the dragon, make Beowulf's last stand, and the whole progression of the story, resonate in relation to the earlier confrontations. Balanced with the coming of Christianity (a contradiction in the original poem, as it is about Old English gods, but transcribed by Christian monks), and the (classic) death of the Old Ways, and you have a damn fine movie.


7. This is a truly mythic film; 300 wishes it could get you to care about its characters half this well, or get you invested in the battles a tenth what this film manages to do. Bravo.


8. James Cameron's Avatar is going to kick all of our asses.

Post-Thanksgiving

Well, that was a success.

The turkey came out well— came out great, if I do say so myself. Everyone brought a wonderful selection of food, from swiss chard to cranberry mousse. Will made his first cheesecake (pumpkin-flavored). We played some Wii games (Super Mario Galaxy is a solid console entry). We talked and went for a walk. We drink good wine, some Beaujolais Nouveau, some low-end blush sparkling white wine.

For those of you interested, I put my Nikon D80 to solid use tonight; once I finish developing the photos, I'll post and entry to new Flickr photos.

Coming home, unloading my equipment from the car, the cold air caught my attention. I was wearing my new hoodie jacket, hood on my head, carrying a large Rubbermaid tub full of cooking utensils and ingredients. I still smelled of brined and roasted turkey, a smell associated with the cooking my parents did. I had a pumpkin pie in my hands. I closed my eyes, just for a minute, and imaged I could smell frost on the cool air, and hear the wind in the woods back home.

Pretty damned close, for a minute there. Almost like home.

I hope all of your dinners were as good, and as fun, as mine. For those of you going shopping tomorrow, good luck. Will and I are heading out quite early... and, one way or another, I plan on ordering my HDTV. And who knows? Maybe I'll find some other things that spark my fancy... for either myself or others. The Apple Store is down as of right now; computers may be a cool $100 cheaper for tomorrow, both online and in person. And maybe Airport Base Stations and TVs will find themselves discounted. Who knows?

Sweet dreams to you, Dear Reader. I am off to bed to dream of the smells of home cooking, the chills of winter, and the feelings of home.

Goodnight.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Things are starting to get going back at the old digs in Century City...

More pictures as things progress... but I hope all of you have a happy Thanksgiving with great food, great times, and great company!

Amazonian Kindling

I was going to make a post regarding Amazon.com's new device, the "Kindle," but Fake Steve just does this stuff so much better than ever I could. Check it out.

I mean, really? This looks like bad sci-fi from 1987; it belongs on a shelf with old portable audio cassette recorders.

Hawaii Photos

I finally got some of my photographs from our Hawaii trip up on Flickr. These are the ones from my Canon point-and-shoot... I haven't finished developing any of my Nikon DSLR shots yet. But for the time being, here's a bunch for everyone to enjoy.

[UPDATED: Functional link posted.]

Waimalano Sunrise 1, originally uploaded by Hutson.

Paint Archaeology

This is one of the greatest photographs I have ever seen.

Not only is the subject matter fascinating, it's gorgeous. Excellent composition and color... and one hell of a found object.

I found it linked to over at kottke.org; it's a photo by Cassidy Curtis, which he explains better than I could back at the first link. Take a look at Kottke's second example for another cool application of paint-in-action.

Sherm the Star

Here's my good friend Sherman, starring in a music video back in his RISD days.



Some quick notes and observations:

• As a man with a beard, Sherman, please bring the beard back!


• But only if Meredith says it's okay.


• This RISD house looks pretty much exactly like the Senior Woodframe houses at Wesleyan, where most of the college films I myself participated in were shot. So that's funny.


• Speaking of my films, I should post some of them to YouTube...


• Just for reference, here is Sherman's IMDb page.

I Love The Daily Show... & Its Writers

Brilliant.


(courtesy of Daring Fireball.)

Twitter

I never "got" Twitter until this morning, when I was doing what I do every day: bemoaning my inability to get any regular posts up to TWGB these days.

I had two or three short things to throw on the blog, but they didn't seem to warrant full posts. Combining them into one didn't feel right— when I'm not going through three weeks of backlogs, I like things to be somewhat separated. So what to do?

Well, I guess, Twitter.

I'm not saying that I'm about to rush and make myself an account; I really do like the idea of having my internet presence being centralized, in respect to this blog. But the impulse that leads to Twittering (or is it tweeting?) makes a lot of sense.

What the solution is, I don't know. The "Linked List" approach that John Gruber uses over at Daring Fireball is a great model for what I'm thinking of; his longer posts have a different style and layout from his daily collection of links. So maybe, as I move to a fully Hutson-designed layout (someday!), I just need to implement something along those lines.

For now, though, I'll probably just end up being inconsistent about it, I'm sorry to say. I'll try and just make posts with my short thoughts/links/whatever; we'll just have to see.

We're Everywhere

On Sunday, Tracy and I went to Trader Joe's and came across this:

Doh!

Courtesy of Fake Steve Jobs, check out these stills from "The Bionic Woman." To add to iJustine's comments about the iPhone being upside down, I'd also like to point out that the screen is on, which doesn't happen during talk as the iPhone has "proximity sensors" or somesuch that kill the screen when it's against your cheek, to save on battery life.

Whoops!

Any "Bionic Woman" fans out there who can tell me if these pictures are of "Leoban" from "Battlestar Galactica?"

Simpsons Wars

Someone just sent this to me via Flickr, probably in response to my "Building the Falcon" photo set. It's pretty good.