Sunday, November 18, 2007

Beowulf Review Round-Up

Yes, of course, Rotten Tomatoes already acts as a round-up of popular reviews, but I'm talking reviews of actual medievalists -- you know, non-stupid reviews.

*In this article, Gaiman "said it's probably a good thing he and Avary opted against subtitles for Grendel, who speaks barely comprehensible Old English, because 'This way we give them [scholars] one thing that they can be happy about because if you really want to understand everything in that film you are going to have to take an Anglo-Saxon scholar along to translate for you.'" Um, I for one could barely understand them (particularly Grendel's whispering), and I happen to be an Anglo-Saxon scholar. I was kind of wishing for subtitles.

7 comments:

  1. Your footnote re: the OE-speaking Grendel cracks me up, because all of my students -- from my *Old English* class -- turned to me afterwards and said, "What did he say? I knew it was Old English, but..." Yeah, me too. I did catch, "Men make noise and my head hurts," but that's about it.

    As for your summary of my review, while that quote is accurate and is (partly) what I think, I *also* thought it had potential that it didn't quite make good on, and the bit you quote isn't really the thesis of my review, since I concentrated on the female characters. Just want people to know this before they click over -- you don't have to change anything and I'm not really getting on your case for once again misunderstanding me. ;-) (I tease!)

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  3. And actually, those words really apply to the "classic B- paper" I compared the movie to in an analogy, which also has, as I said, "smart moments of insight." Just saying.

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  4. "Mordor?!" repeatedly -- this isn't Lord of the Rings! Is "modor" really that hard to say, Mr. Glover?

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  5. Yeah, Dr. V., but the "sloppy disaster" line is so much cooler than "smart moments of insight!"

    Aaargh ... perhaps in looking for the best tagline for the link, I am guilty of "hastiness, illogic, and misreading."

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  6. Anonymous7:35 AM

    Another review...

    http://sceopellen.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/beowulf-the-movie-inaccuracies/

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  7. Anonymous5:30 PM

    good!!

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