You wait 1000 years for a Beowulf movie...

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

A little backstory as to how Zemeckis' version came to be. can be found here:

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/01/astonishingly-professional-post-for.asp

Very interesting...especially that bit about how the movie would look. I tried to imagine it like Polar Express and that just would be painfully wrong...

 

[Krieg]

Very interesting...especially that bit about how the movie would look. I tried to imagine it like Polar Express and that just would be painfully wrong...

That's exactly what I was thinking. Neil's description makes it sound like they are going for a very different look visually...which is good. Still I am probably going to have a nightmare tonight about watching Beowulf done in rotoscoping.

We went off to Mexico together and wrote it as a sort of Dark Ages Trainspotting, filled with mead and blood and madness, and we went all the way from the beginning of the poem, with Beowulf as a hero battling Grendel, to the end, with Beowulf as an old man fighting a dragon.

...now that sounds incredibly cool.

Conversely Beowulf filmed in Iceland by a Scandinavian and very likely with gobs of Icelandic extras could be very cool as well.

 

[Greylock]

My favorite version of the story is still John Gardner's. I'm such a wuss.

Daniel

I have a large tattoo derived from artwork in a John Gardner book. John Gardner books were argued over in my divorce. I want John Gardner's translation of Gilgamesh read at my funeral.

You were saying?

 

[Viking Bastard]

Conversely Beowulf filmed in Iceland by a Scandinavian...

Actually, he's Canadian. Of Icelandic descent, I think, but Canadian.

 

[MonsterMash]

Actually seeing that Neil Gaiman is writing for the Zemeckis one makes me think I might go and see it.

 

[Tetsubo]

Beowulf just isn't the same unless you read it in Middle English.

Ow. My head still hurts just thinking about reading in Middle English.

I second that. Plus the headache...

 

[Wolf72]

Beowulf just isn't the same unless you read it in Middle English.

Ow. My head still hurts just thinking about reading in Middle English.

My senior year english teacher threatened to make us do that ... as it was we had do read some of it in ME ... ugh, hardest year of high school ever (between that and calc, my brain was toast. Although that year did build great character! )

 

[Zoatebix]

I don't know Anglo-Saxon (for Beowulf reading purposes), but Middle English isn't hard. Plus it's the only way to go for Chaucer.

 

[Desdichado]

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

I don't know Anglo-Saxon (for Beowulf reading purposes), but Middle English isn't hard.

Yes, it is. It's not impossible, but it's difficult and tedious unless you've had a lot of practice. And Anglo-saxon is practically unintelligible to a speaker of modern English; it'd be almost like trying to read German without any knowledge of that language other than it's somewhat related to English.

 

[Terath Ninir]

I ain't touchin' Old English or Anglo-Saxon. The Middle English is difficult enough. If it's not difficult for you, Zoatebix, I salute you.