bulletproofheeb

Attention:
Here comes another batch of the Netflix dreg.  But there's also something different this time around.  In honor of the new(ish) movie section on Buzznet I've gone ahead and made this hinge on your very involvement.  What I'm going to do is open this up for voting.  Just leave your vote in the comments and whichever movie gets the most votes I will, dear lord, watch and then review.  I don't know if it'll be funny (MST3K) or depressing (I become a serial killer).  Let's see how it goes.  If I don't kill myself I might just do this again.

Just to let everyone know: The First Post is hosting an online animation festival.  You can click here to brows by category or pop on over here to see the full film listing.  I've never looked at The First Post before so this is all new territory to me.  What is refreshing is that they have a rounded selection of content.  Most times online festivals are just a pile of submitted video.  This actually has industry information, comics and advertisements featured.

I've only just started through the videos so I can't speak for the quality of the whole thing yet, there do look to be some promising shorts.  And while the video player loads quickly, unfortunately there doesn't appear to be any way to play back at full screen size.

In honor of the new J. J. Abrams production of Cloverfield I figured I would take a stroll down “Rejected Movie Lane” to another Abrams project. That project was a Superman movie. The script I have is a direct serialized copy, first draft, dated July 26, 2002.

The script starts out with a news report. The reporter is informing viewers of terrible destruction. Cities flattened. All due to Superman... There's a cut to Gotham where we see Superman (bloodied and hurt) fighting Ty-Zor. They fight, they smash and Ty-Zor leads superman into a trap. While searching for Ty-Zor in a lead lined NASA testing area. Behind the last door we just get Superman's reaction as Ty-Zor tells him to cry and Superman does.

It then cuts to a war on Krypton with the government and Jor-El on one side and his brother, Kata-Zor, on the other. We learn that Ty-Zor is Kata-Zor's son (and therefore Superman's cousin). The short version is that Kata-Zor wins his coup and Jor-El sends Superman to earth. Kata-Zor sends out search parties throughout the galaxy so Superman can't come back and fulfill the prophecy.

We see Kal-El raised into Clark. Clark is strong but by high school age is afraid of his own powers. He is pretty much Clark Kent instead of Superman pretending to be Clark. He wears lead flecked glasses to stop his x-ray vision, not to hide his identity. At one point he finds a pre-made Superman suit which leaches onto his body all by itself, but fears it so much he locks it away. In college he (as a senior) meets Loise (a prospective freshman) at a party and is smitten when she beats up a frat rat who's hassling her. That's when he chooses to go into journalism. To follow her.

Interspersed with all of this are torture scenes of Jor-el back on Krypton, which hasn't been destroyed in this version of the Superman world. Finally, Clark ends up at the planet. Loise is covering a crashed UFO story. Lo and behold, the person in charge of the investigation is Dr. Lex Luthor, head of a division of the CIA. Loise breaks the story and Luthor is forced to announce to the world that the CIA has a crashed alien pod, which looks exactly like Clark's. It becomes evident that Luthor hates the idea of aliens.

Eventually there's a big accident. Airforce One has an engine failure. Clark is sleeping on his couch. The plan is crashing. Clark sleeps. Loise is on the plane. Clark throws on his suit and saves the plane. Everyone loves him. Luthor calls for his arrest since he's an alien. He gets fired. Superman is noticed somehow and Ty-Zor follows him to earth with a small group of Kryptonians to kill him.

That's about the end of the character introductions. From here you can guess what happens. Luthor sets up shop with the Kryptonians to kill Superman. Loise and Superman fall in lover. There are huge battles. Superman is blamed for bringing his enemies to Earth. The shock that Superman had in the opening scene was Loise being held hostage in a tank of water while Superman's power was depleted. He manages to save Loise but is killed. Everyone misses him. There's a touching funeral. Luthor and the Kryptonians take over the earth. Jor-El feels his son dies and gives his life force to bring him back. Jor-El dies and Superman comes back to life. He sets up a giant battle with jets and kryptonite missiles. He kills the Kryptonians. Yay! Oh, and then it turns out Luthor is a Kryptonian and tries to beat up Superman. He loses. Superman leaves to fight in the Krypton civil war.

Fin.

Boy, that was intense. The first thing that I thought when reading this is that it might be a good script but it's a terrible Superman movie. There are certain things that just don't work at all. Granted, there are also some amazing scenes. But this doesn't stand on its own.

First of all, Superman/Clark/Kal-El is supposed to be humble, and in this script he's not. He's craven. He's terrified of his own power and it doesn't work. With Superman so callow the only thing that forces him into action is a borderline obsession with Loise Lane. He was going to let the president die... until he found out Loise was on the same plane! And at that point she barely remembered him from college. It's a little creepy. Why is Clark so scared? That actually stems from a fantastic scene in his childhood. When he's about 7 Martha and Clark are approached by their landlord in Kansas. He tries to exchange sex for rent, since the Kents aren't too well off. It almost turns into rape as Clark sits in the car. Finally he jumps out and beats the ever living tar out of the landlord. We're talking about throwing him across a field and punching him until a 7 year old Clark is covered in blood and the landlord is left screaming about how Clark is the devil. It's an amazing scene. We've never really seen Superman let go like that and it's refreshing. It's human. And it never happens again. In fact, that's what transforms him into a shell.

The other thing is the whole “Krypton as an unlimited supply of Kryptonians” and the prophecy about the battle that Superman wins. Those are huge shifts in the Superman universe that might function if handled carefully and given more of a reason than “we need super fighters”. It's not. Instead of becoming Earth's adopted son (which gives him his inner strength, motivation and loyalties) he just becomes a globe-hopping super-tourist. Effectively, Superman has been torn down and replaced with a flighty and fickle man with the emotional level of an unhinged teenager... who just happens to have a Superman costume.

Now, the super-battles and Superman's death seem to be a lot bigger in the script circles than anywhere else. Kevin Smith does it (I'll get to that one later). Superman Vs. Batman attempts it (I'll get to that one later). Abrams does it. I know it's because it'll look wicked on the big screen, but the reason that Superman fans loved the Singer movie is because he doesn't throw a single punch in the whole film. Superman is almost a cheat of a hero. He's the ideal in every way. He's nigh invulnerable. Many writers think that in order to make him more interesting you have to exploit his physical weaknesses. That's not the way to do it. His mental and emotional weaknesses are what makes him dynamic. Some time I'll post my Tao of Superman thesis here, but the short version is this: Superman can do anything he wants and he chooses to protect and live fairly. It's the fact that he chooses to constantly expose his emotional weakness that makes him such a compelling character. And this script ignores that aspect of the character and just beats the crap out of him instead. It's amateur and does not make for a good Superman. Sure, it'll look cool but a character who is just physically amazing doesn't make for someone who's interesting. He's made out to be a jock with a crush, not a man in love with humanity and happens to be able to do something to protect it.

As for the twist ending with Lex, well, that's just sad. There are two mainstream twists in Hollywood.

1. The Scooby Doo – That's where something that you've been watching the whole time is revealed to be something else. Like pulling the mask off the guy and it's some else entierly. M. Night Shamalan has a huge obsession with these.

2. The Lynch – I'll name this one after David Lynch. He didn't start this one but he does it to the extreme. This twist is when you have seen something for the whole movie and know that you're not seeing the big picture. This twist is a bit more mature, as it takes detective work on the part of the viewer to figure it out. At the end it's almost like a pull-back and you see the tapestry that this twist has been woven into. Except Lynch never pulls back to explain it. Anyway, Abrams tends to lean in this direction with Alias and especially with Lost.

So why on earth does J. J. Abrams go for the Scooby Doo in this script? We've seen that he likes to be more cerebral. Hell, in Mission Impossible 3 he realizes that the McGuffin is ridiculous but necessary and hangs a lantern on it just to make fun of the concept. We never learn what that movie is about and then we realize that it's a post modern action movie. We're not supposed to care what the mysterious point of the spy games was. We just want the characters and the action. But here Abrams almost literally has Luthor wear a mask the whole time. Here's the exact reveal:

Luthor: No, that pod the CIA recovered... it wasn't yours.
A long, insane, dramatic beat – and just as we get it:
Luthor (cont.): IT WAS MINE!

That's just silly. And for a final act twist? It does a lot to undermine the entire credibility of the plot in just 2 pages of reveal and fight.

All in all, this movie fails in what it tries to do. It makes a new Superman but he's moody and more cartoonish in his reactions than works. Someone of his power can't be so driven by a whimsical crush and a childhood of fear and still become Superman. Someone like that would turn out more like a villain or never manifest as a hero of any kind. It seems that Abrams set up a childhood that was completely different than one we've seen in the Superman world yet, but still tries to force out the same end result of a person. It just doesn't line up. Mix that in with the overly conscious attempts to make amazing fight scenes and drop on that cherry of a twist and you've got yourself a huge, sprawling mess.

It's hard to give this a standard rating as I'm glad I read it but also glad it was never made.

Rating:    +1 – as a script
                -2 – as a Superman movie
(on a rating scale of -5 to +5)

Police Reward Good Drivers With Coffee

Via BoingBoing

Police will be pulling people over in at least one California town if they are doing nothing wrong.  they will then be given a $5 gift card for Starbucks and sent on their way.

Who was stupid enough to think this was a good idea?  It's to promote holiday cheer.  By pulling people over?  No offense, but no one wants to get pulled over by cops.  Ever.  Let's go down the list of suck that this embodies.

• It will increase paranoia.  If you see a cop pulling you over and you know you did nothing wrong your body is gonna react.  Fight or flight.  Adrenaline.  Stress.  Specifically distress (as opposed to eustress).  Not that they'll try to run, but people will be slowed down, taken out of their routine and possibly made late.  All for driving well.  Great.
• The police are endorsing Starbucks in an official capacity.  That's like having a Starbucks logo on their car as an endorsement.  I know that they get the money from a 3rd party and then chose to buy Starbucks but it's still police officers on duty stopping people to give them Starbucks ads.
• $5 at a Starbucks will get you jack shit unless you're buying a plain coffee.  In which case you're just as well off stopping at Dunkin Donuts, as they both have good plain coffee and at DD they will get your ass off the line in a reasonable amount of time.  Pardon the rhyme.

Police: Seriously.  Just stop.  If you want to make people happy this holiday season try:

• Donating all the money to a shelter instead of buying gift cards.  They get really crowded this time of year.
• Volunteer at a soup kitchen, a school educational program or something community based.
• Let more people off with warnings for minor offenses like speeding in the 1-5 miles above the limit bracket.
• Don't shoot people for trying to show you their wallet.  Ok, that was cheap, but police brutality is still a problem.  Not that restraining people for not breaking the law to give them gift cards is brutality, but since they didn't do anything wrong and the police are suing their official capacity to restrain them it's still abuse of power.
  

This makes me want to let out a mighty "yawlp" followed by a Charlie Brown "ARGHHH"!

To all the other physics freaks out there, let me be the first to say congrats and happy holiday.  You don't know what today is?  Oh my.  Today is the 107 anniversary of the day Max Plank reported the values of H and K for the black-body radiation formula and established the Plank constant.  At that moment he established the concepts of quantum jiggers and everything that implied (quantum mechanics) was passed over at the time.  Today we know how important all that was.  In short, on that day the basis for quantum mechanics was born.  And we have been living with quantum physics for over a century!

Yeah, I'm  a science nerd and that is amazing to me.  I'd love to give you a short rundown but there's so much behind it that that would be impossible.  At least for me.  The mind blowing parts?  Our universe is actually just a few dimensions of what's in the whole universe.  The laws of physics are different in other parts of existence and change over time (all of existence might be referred to as the multiverse, as there may be more than one "universe" so the "uni" won't work).  Matter and energy are connected, so said Einstein.  Well, perhaps matter is just a projection of energy reverberating in certain dimensions (string theory).  Since matter and energy are just vibrating projections (strings) then they can hold two states of existence at the same time.

Actually, this last one has been shown in experimentation.  They tested a spinning electron and got results that it was spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time.  If that seems impossible, well, that's just because there's a new understanding of what electrons and other basics of existence are.

Yeah, all that was tossed out in a mess.  There's no short answer when trying to get into quantum physics.  I can recommend some good layman's reading if anyone is interested.  I can also say that watching What The Bleep Do We Know? will not tell you anything about quantum physics and will actually provide you with nothing but false science and propaganda.  Most horrendous "documentary".  EVAR.


What did I buy quantum mechanics for its birthday?  I got it a kitten.

Oh yeah, it's also the 28th anniversary of London Calling's release and the 49th birthday of Spider Stacy.  Punk rock!

I haven't blogged about PETA here before but I've done a number of articles on them for other blogs and magazines in the past.  But lets stick with the present.  PETA doesn't know biology.

I've been made aware of the PETA "Got Pus?" anti-milk campaign.  PETA has been against dairy for a while and has been loving the "Got ___" parody.  Today, NYTimes.com ran an article about how the milk company that made the "Got Milk?" campaign is fighting back legally.  Do I think they can win?  Probably not, as the Got Pus? is part parody.  Sure, it's for a real organization so it might not get thrown out of court, but it's not for a product and it is relevant to the original, not something else.

That's not really the issue though.  The issue is that PETA is claiming milk has pus in it.  they are also claiming that it's so high in the states that it would be illegal in Europe.  Let's do the smart thing and actually break this down.

1. Does milk contain pus?
   The article linked above goes over the basics.  The answer is milk is an organic product.  Pus is a result of a natural immune system reaction.  That means pus levels are measured by white blood cells, the cells that fight back.  Symptoms of sickness and infection are fever and... white blood cells.  So the tests that measure for puss actually measure for a symptom.  So when tings come up positive it's coming up positive for white blood cells.
   
   Eww!  Would you want that in milk?  Honestly, if you know what milk is then you shouldn't mind a small amount.  It's made from a cow.  It has bio-matter in it because that's what it is.  There's stuff in anything that an animal produces that would sound gross unless you understood what is really in your food.  This is not a pro-vegetarian statement.  It's anti-ignorant.  The fact of the matter is: milk is natural.  Anything natural can be made to sound disgusting.  Sex, drinking water, eating plant life, giving birth.  And yes, food ingredients.  Humans are omnivores and born to drink milk.  To be natural would be to have a balanced diet of meat and dairy and vegetables.  In fact, there's a gene that is spreading that enables humans to digest dairy much more efficiently.
   
   You may have read that humans are evolving faster now than in the past.  Well, part of that is evolving to handle milk even better.  Anyone who wants to be a vegetarian/vegan for ethical reasons: great!  But never say it's more natural or healthier.  Balanced eating habits are natural.  Meat is natural.  Dairy and milk... natural.
   
   
2. Our milk would fail European health standards.
   That's actually an assumption.  The real fact is American standards for the white blood cell count in milk is double that of Europe.  Does the level reach that high?  Maybe, but PETA is claiming that it would not be tolerated and that means PETA is claiming the white blood cell count is always that high.  It's not always at the limit.  That would be cause for investigation and wouldn't help the dairy industry at all.
   
   The other thing that's never mentioned is that the milk testing takes place early on, when the milk is "raw milk".  Raw milk is straight from the cow, as raw as it gets.  If it's clean at that point then it's more than clean later.  After that the milk is then pasteurized which a) stops it from separating later and b) kills off all bacteria in the milk.  So American milk has a higher threshold for the cleanliness test but they are not overly loose and they are by no means the end of the sanitary line.

What does this mean?  It means that while PETA isn't flat out lying they are by no means trying to be honest.  Yes, according to them milk has pus.  But according to them you don't need to find pus in milk for it to "have pus" in it.  Yes, our milk would not be legal in Europe.  That's not because it's dirty.  That's because we have different standards for testing during production.

I said I'd keep this in the present so I won't bring any past grievances I have with them to the table.  But this is awful by itself.  Rather than trying to educate people to their cause they are relying on flashy gimmicks, hot buzzwords and scary reaction-based responses to push their cause.  They are trying to obscure the real facts and push fear to further their agenda.  No one likes it when the government does that.  Why should it be acceptable from PETA?

After my super serious Evolution and Hacking blog this morning I figured that this tied in quite nicely.  That's right, speaking of evolution...


And here's my LOLmeme-style coverage:

It's funny.  Last night I was just thinking about hacking and then the news totally busts a nut that humans are evolving at an incredibly fast rate compared to the past.  Not only that, but many scientists had assumed evolution was slowing down.  How's that for a turn-around?  Also, suck that creationists.

Back to hacking.  I don't mean to sound like one of those aging hackers that they tritely write into crime dramas on TV but the scene has changed sooo much.  I was there when the internet went retail.  My father has always been in the computer industry so we had internet before you could find it on every block.  The whole "AOL users suck" thing? That's because AOL originally didn't carry the internet.  They just made their own network which sucked.  Back when the internet first went non-military and non-academic (and text formatting was the most impressive thing out there) it was all just looked at as coding.  I think that's why there's a generation out there who look at everything on the internet as nothing but code to an extent.  Not that I can program in every language, but when the net went multimedia it was never a photo I was looking at.  Never a song I was listening to.  It was a file.

Now people just pirate and it's the norm because the industries for film and music suck so bad at respecting rights.  And to be fair, they were violated by the net.  But then people had a choice: to side with too much freedom or to side with legality.  And while laws can change, freedom is a binary situation.  On of off.  And as much as Bush doesn't want to admit it, as much as the MPAA and RIAA hate it, America was based on the idea of leaning towards too much freedom.  Innocent until proven guilty, all that?  That's to err on the side of too much freedom.  So now piracy is seen as an act of defiance by pirates and theft by companies.

That's not how it used to be.  It used to be that once something went digital it was a file and files weren't afforded the same protection as material copies.  Digital was just code and that's like trying to copyright a 1 and a 0.

What does this have to do with our newfound evolutionary speed?  Everything.  People have been talking about how fast technology changes.  The rate of technological generations is nuts.  Antique furniture has to be 100 years old.  An antique car is 20 years old.  A computer antique can be as recent as 5 years, usually closer to 10.  So I find it incredibly heartening to find out that the human genome isn't beyond humanity (I also find it heartnening that Bruce Sterling's column on this topic reads like watching a wall of TV screens).  Things are faster now.  Humans thrive on change.  The only reason we've survived is because our main advantage is our brains.  Our brains have led to our world moving and changing faster.  And?  And it's led to our genome following suit.  It's not just our minds that that are racing now.  It's our brains as well.

That's not to romanticize the issue too much.  Evolution is a harsh mistress, to rip off a classic The Tick quote.  Evolution is not interested in developing a better human, a smarter or faster human.  It's interested in a reproducing human.  It's quite feasible to imagine a situation occurring (sooner, now, than later) where evolution comes around and kicks us in the ass.  A situation in which we evolve to a point where we aren't able to produce enough skills or people to exercise the skills necessary to sustain us.  But you know what?  If there is a god then it (not he or she) has such a delicious sense of irony that god must be a hipster.  Irony because not only is our physical development possible too damn fast to support us, but so is our social and technological evolution.

As I said, it's not just our minds that are evolving.  It's also our brains.  And I never said evolution is in our favour.

EDIT  I can't believe I almost missed this one:

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Here we go again.  I tried to mix things up a bit by tossing in more than just crap horror.  It'shard since so much of the wank that show up on the New Release is horror crap.  Here's what has been culled.

Covers are a delicate thing.  You can do it so faithfully that you get your ass sued (and rightly so).  You can do it so poorly that it just makes people want to listen to the original.  What a cover should do is add something to the experience of the song.  How, you ask?  I'll tell you.

You can do the song in a style that's different so you hear it in a whole new way.  Punk covers started this way and then just turned into a raging gimmick.  Another thing to do is juxtapose a strange aspect with the original.  Alanis Morissette did this to My Humps and Fake Brain did it to What A Girl Wants (they're an immature all boy indie band).  Well, here are some covers that I came across on the net.  Some are old.  Some are newer.  And now I shall break down the art of the cover song.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name - The Wedding Present
Love is All Around  - Joan Jett
Rehab - Seether
These are all "bad" covers.  It has nothing to do with the quality of the performance.  The fact is these songs are just people playing someone else's song in their own style with no thought to the content.  Sometimes this will work (What a Wonderful World - The Ramones) and sometimes it doesn't.  When it does work it's because the song played in that style becomes something different with a purpose.  This style of cover is more of a "because I can" tune.

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? - Violent Femmes
I had to include this but I can't really critique it.  It's just too... strange.  And scary.  Oh god.

I Want You to Want Me - Eric Metronome (with Megan Palmer)
Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps - Anna Fermin's Trigger Gospel
And now we enter into the realm of purpose.  These songs are taken directly into a different song style.  "I Want You to Want Me" nearly straddles the unnecessary/new meaning line but comes across just onto the side of good.  The original was a rocker with a soft side.  The guy had his sights on a girl and is almost wooing her with his desire for her.  In this one the story plays out a bit different.  This has such a slow, gentle pace that it's almost an afterglow song.  Where the original is like a teenage high school movie anthem, ending with the boy getting the girl, this one seems more mature.  It, instead, paints two people in bed in afterglow.  He already has her attention ad affections to a degree.  But he doesn't want lust.  He wants love.  This is "I Want You to Want Me" all grown up.

The crooning of "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" is not taken in a surf guitar style and I think it works.  Normally the vocals tell a story of a woman held up by the man's ambivalence.  With the faster pacing and the sharp guitars she sounds more defiant.  She doesn't lament his hesitation.  She doesn't tell him she wants an answer.  She demands it.  Old songs, new life.

Straight Up - Luna
Genie In A Bottle - Something for Kate
Ah, a little bit further into the realm of covers we have the songs that slow things down.  Where punk covers try to make any song "fun and fast" these bring out the subtle layers of pop songs.  That crappy keyboard riff?  Now it's a slow and twangy guitar part and it can hold a sustain.  Could you imagine "Straight Up" as anything other than a dance-pop song before this?  And now?  There's a human side to it.  Damn, if Chris Isaak sang this he'd have models wetting their panties.

As for Genie?  I've actually heard a couple Aguilera covers off of her first album done in this manner.  Peeling back the percussion loops does make them sound deeper.  Sometimes this is because the songs have been dumbed down by mixing.  Other times it's because the cover artist adds a lot of talent where there was little before.  Either way it ends up with a bit more depth.

California Girls - Oingo Boing
My Humps - Alanis Morissette
The key word here is "juxtaposition".  Both of these songs are made completely into new songs in completely different styles.  Either one could be taken as an original if you ignore the lyrics.  And the point for this style of cover is to make you see a song by showing you what it wasn't before.  These stand better when compared to the original and they know it.  California Girls isn't sped up, it's Oingo Boingo'd.  Beach Boys as New Wave?  Let's try it.

My Humps.  I don't know how much I need to explain this one.  Just listen to the Fergie version (sorry for ever telling anyone to listen to Fergie) and then this one.  Is it hilarious?  They both are.  But the Fergie one is sad, too.

Do You Know the Way to San Jose - The Avalanches
Like a Virgin - Detholz!
Toxic - The Boss Hoss
Smoke on the Water - Dolapdere Big Gang
And here we are at the end.  This set of covers take the original themes in the song and change them completely.  For Do You Know the Way to San Jose it's almost a new song.  The only thing left over is a sense of inspiration from the lounge feel of the first.  The rest is just brooding electronica.

Like a Virgin is still broken down the same musically, but the musical themes have changed.  Instead of a playful, sexual tune you have a darker song of scary sexuality.  The girly verses are now threatening in their masculinity.  The chorus takes on the severity of a march.  And when the singer says "Gonna give you all my love, boy" you can't help but fear for that boy.  Is this a stalker song?  A child molester's anthem?  It's depraved and glorious.

This cover is one of my all time favourites.  Toxic as a country/bluegrass hoedown style song?  I think this might be a perfect cover.  The original tune is still there and is simply enhanced.  Instead of cheap synth string we actually have a slide guitar doing the repeating twang.  This has juxtaposition, a completely different style and the added depth of real instruments over samples and loops.  It drips with "Ghost Riders in the Sky" rather than teenie-bopper hits.

And we end with Smoke on the Water.  This isn't one of my top cover choices simply because of the vocals.  I would cite this as an example of a really good idea without great follow through.  The singer tries to enunciate the end of his words too much, pure and simple.  The instrumentation, however, is golden.  A Moroccan take on a 70s classic rock song?  That part works perfectly.  I think it would have served better without a singer, as a belly dancing tune.

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And that's that.  It's not a list of the best covers.  It's a review of cover types using a handful of songs.  I hope this clears some things up for people.  Like "punk cover" does not necessarily mean "good cover".  It can, but it's hard.  A cover song should bring something of its own to the table.  And if it brings too much and overshadows the original?  Well, then sometimes you just have to wonder why it was done.  There's a balance to a cover.  They are not to be taken lightly.

Since it's the last episode of the season and possibly ever (just trying to start rumors.  it'sll probably be back) I figured I should do another caption tribute.  But this is just part one!  Newageamazon has posted part two: an alternate script that we wrote together have discovered!  So, enjoy.

And there you have it.  I hope you liked them and I can't wait to start making fun of season 3.

P.S.  If you go through the episode in slow motion you can clearly see who shoots Nathan.  Go on and check for yourself, or ask me and I'll just give it away.

P.P.S.  I lied.  Upon closer inspection the shot isn't as clear as I originally thought.  Sorry.

So I  saw Beowulf the other night and figured I might as well do a review, seeing as how so many people out there really don't understand where the story came from and therefore what the story they are seeing is.

The movie itself was pretty good.  My friends got creeped out by the CG so I think that means it was good.  The still shots could have competed with live action.  It was in 3d I-MAX which is really the way to go on something like this.  It's a spectacle, pure and simple.  And that's when I have to break from regular review mode and start to dissect where it came from and why most people are reading into this film... wrong.

Beowulf is from an 8th century Old English poem.  It is famous because it is

• an incredible example of the archetypal story of Journey of the Hero
• the second oldest written work in English (the first being Gilgamesh)

Now, as far as reviews go that I have seen it seems that many teachers and professors are impressed with how close to the text it remained.  Many "regular folks" have been saying it's a bit flat and to the point.  They're both right.  We're talking source material from the 700s.  How much of a rounded character do you want?  Dynamic development?  Modern character development as a hero who is also a villain on some level?  Fuck off to that!  Beowulf isn't a great story because it was well written.  Beowulf is a great story because it was written at all!  The spectacle of the poem was that the people passing it down had the gift of letters.  Until then stories had been an oral tradition.  In fact, you can tell this because (outline format again)

• the movie makes constant references to the story of Beowulf that will be told
• the actual poem is pretty much formatted as "I am going to tell you a story..."  It's not actually in any sort of narrative other than a first person storyteller

That said, the new script has amazing amounts of layering worked in considering what they were working with.  What people seem to have missed completely is that while there isn't a lot of character development there's a huge dynamic between cultures.  The movie is framed as a sort of true story.  There are many differences from the poem but those are all actually addressed in the film.  What the movie sets out to do is tell you a story but let you see the schism between the old polytheist cultures and the new Roman Christ Jesus religion.  Was that a bit of a jump?  Let me explain.

Throughout the whole movie things happen that aren't in the poem.  The poem is pretty much: Beowulf kills Grendel, a monster/demon.  Beowulf kills Grendel's mother, an older monster/demon.  Beowulf sets out to kill a last monster and is killed in the act, a valiant and honorable death for a warrior.  That's it, guys.  That's the whole story.  So what does the movie give us?  It gives us the story of a man who does these things but also give the characters a reason to fight.  A land plagued by a monster.  Why this land?  The king.  Ok, it goes on from there.  And every time a complication like that occurs, something that would tarnish the reputation of the hero, it gets dumbed down into the written poem which is essentially a bragging resume for the dead.  Before the Christian afterlife (Jews don't have a hell to speak of) people only had their legacy to give them any form of immortality.  By making the story great they made sure that only the best of that person lived forever.  No one wants to hear the immortal poem of "Stan, the guy who was pretty OK but did lose a lot of money gambling and once had an affair".  That would be a shitty epic poem.

Now, back to the culture.  Any time you see something in the movie that isn't in the poem, or vice versa, then you get a little insight into one of the surviving characters or the culture.  Examples?  Sure.  How about when Beowulf tries to explain the true story of his fights to Wealthow and Wealthow refuses to listen.  That's because Wealthow knows Beowulf the hero already and that's who he wants to live on if Beowulf dies in the cave.  When Beowulf first shows up and tells the story of killing 9 sea serpents and one of his guys mutters it was 3 last time.  We see some of Beowulf's vanity as well as the origin of the monsters in the poem.  Or when King Hrothgar is asked by Unferth if he would like to pray to the new Roman god, Christ Jesus and Hrothgar declines.  In the actual poem Grendel is explained not to be a demon but rather one of the descendants of Cain and therefore of evil seed.  Scholars know that the poem was written before Christianity and that means the Christian elements were written in later by people making new copies of the epic.  Unfurth's crippled assistant is named Cain and that should be looked at from a completely non-Christian point of view.  Then Unfurth becomes a priest!  Ah, so he will learn to write (as clergy tended to be the only educated folks back then) and has a personal link with Cain the name and Cain in the bible.  So we already gt many shades of truth and cultural interpretations worked into the story of a sad, fallible man named Beowulf.

Got all that?  I'm not saying it was the greatest movie ever.  Hell, I'm not saying it's faithful to the source material (quite the opposite).  What I am getting at is that anyone saying the characters were flat and boring and a bit one sided as a complete negative really doesn't know what it is they're watching.  Sure, the movie can stand on it's own as a story.  So can the poem.  But without context both of those versions of Beowulf come across as simple and full of people that really don't change.  In context the poem is amazing just because it's an example of written English!  Wow!  And the movie is a study in cultural shifts during the early spread of Christianity that happens to have a bunch of kick-ass monsters and bad-ass fights.  So the fact that Beowulf was done in 3D to be a spectacle of technology is fitting.  Both are have a fun, simple story that takes advantage of the newest forms of storytelling.  Toss in some really dirty dialogue and one fantastically obvious ejaculation reference and you've got a fun movie.


EDIT:  Beowulf, I am now being told, is in fact the oldest English epic. Gilgamesh is in fact in Mesapotamian.  Blame English teachers for the temporary mix up.