Beowulf

[Jeroen]

This means the actors must ACT with their bodies as much as their voices, and the animators must be allowed to tweak peformances to produce better animation where needed.

And that worked out great with Lord Of The Ring's Gollum, so why doesn't Robert Zemeckis & Co. see the light?

[Ben]

...Which is why I say get the mo-cap ARTISTS to act out the movements and leave the "acting" to the vocalists.

And I also can't see how Final Fantasy, over ten years later, still looks better than all this fakery. How can they get it so right with Gollum and Kong and still come up with a mess like this?

Oh yeah...three words: Sony Pictures Imageworks. Never have I seen a convincingly animated human figure from them.

[eddievalient]

Finally saw this at the campus theater over the weekend and I just have to say, wow. After Polar Express and Monster House, I had pretty high expectations and I'm happy to say that they were met (although these idiots behind me kept laughing through it and that kind of spoiled things). I hadn't read the story since high school and I didn't remember much about it, so I was able to judge it on it's merits as a film and it passed with flying colors. Visually amazing, well written, well acted (for the most part) and the music was especially good (who was singing those harp tunes? they were beautiful!). One of Silvestri's best scores in years I'd say. Funny thing, after watching the movie I wanted to read the story again but when I went to the bookstore today, they were fresh out of copies. I guess I wasn't the only one with that idea.

[Foxtale]

Funny that this topic is brought up again. I am currently watching this movie for one of my classes and comparing it to the original story. In about 2 hours I will go finish the movie. From what I have seen so far it's not that bad but it's not that great.

At times the animation is really believable and other times I feel like it is below some poor video game animations (which aren't bad themselves but I'm not sure if they fit a feature length film).

I am a little confused, so the whole movie was animated using motion capture? So no film was integrated? Were any figures or models made from scratch?

[eddievalient]

I would assume the dragon was made from scratch, but what do I know? Thay could have found an actor for that too.

[Randall]

Ray Winstone played the dragon. No lie. Everything's mo-cap'd.

I'll have much more to say in my look at the HD DVD later tonight!

[Ben]

Gee...I wonder what he used as a tail?

[Foxtale]

That's impressive. The movie at times did seem eerily real. It wasn't a bad film but it wasn't a great film either. From what I'm finding out they really changed the story a lot from most translations of the original.

[Dacey]

Even the dragon was mo-capped? Golly.

How different is the director's cut from the theatrical one? Is there some good stuff added?

[Randall]

The DC has the same runtime as the theatrical version. There's just some added blood and guts, from what I understand.

[Ben]

Yep, just a couple of more extreme shots and a tad more explicit Jolie, but no actual added footage.

Some shots just had to be toned down to get a PG-13 instead of an R. This is basically an R-rated version, nothing that would warrant anything higher.

[Dacey]

Oh, great, just what I wanted...more blood and guts.

If I get it at all, I'd still probably get this edition. It has extras that the theatrical cut doesn't, right?

[Ben]

Yep...this is the one to go for. The extra blood 'n' guts doesn't amount to much - again, not even added shots, just shots that had to have stuff removed from them to get the lower rating.

Unless you ran them side by side, I doubt you see a difference. But, yes, the Director's edition is the one with the extras.

[Dacey]

Okay. This sounds like it could be pretty amazing.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 236054832/

I actually quite dug Bob Z’s Beowulf (honestly a lot of the visuals have held up incredibly well), but this could be a very cool new take.

[Randall]

I was just thinking of giving Bob Z's film a rewatch, as my son just read Beowulf in school. I recall liking the film a lot (differing greatly from Ben), and said so in my HD DVD review.