Gary Kamiyawrites: Robert Zemeckis’ new film “Beowulf” gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “the sublime and the ridiculous.” Zemeckis took the oldest and most important text of our ur-language, and turned it into a 3-D Disneyland ride so cheesy he should have called it “Anglo-Saxons of the Caribbean.” Of course, there’s nothing new or surprising about this. Hollywood has been profaning history and literature since long before Cecil B. DeMille cast Charlton Heston as Moses. If the Bible isn’t sacred, why should the oldest poem in our ancestral language be?But the “Beowulf” travesty is especially glaring, because of the obvious contrast with another work that mined the same ancient field: J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” “Beowulf” isn’t just a bad, although visually spectacular, movie, it’s a huge missed opportunity. With enough imaginative audacity, Zemeckis could have created a mythical universe, one that finds the mysterious threads that connect the distant past to our time. Instead, he turned our shared cultural heritage into a cartoon. (This hasn’t hurt “Beowulf” at the box office: It was the highest-grossing movie in the country after its first weekend.) Beowulf vs. The Lord of the Rings
Day: November 20, 2007
Kristin Thompson, author of ‘The Frodo Franchise: The Lord of the Rings and Modern Hollywood’, writes: Back in September, Rick Porras joined me for a conversation and Q & A during my signing event for The Frodo Franchise at Barnes & Noble in New York. I’ve transcribed that now, and it’s full of wonderful information on the Lord of the Rings planning, filming, videogames, and so on. Rick worked in a wide range of capacities for Rings, and much of the material here has not come out in previous interviews. The transcription is pretty long, so I’ll be posting it in three parts. The first one is up now. Rick Porras Interview
Meghan S. Rodberg, Online Community Manager for Turbine, Inc. writes: Peer into the frightening fortress-city of Carn Dûm, built upon the slopes of the Mountains of Angmar by the Witch-king, who ruled with an iron fist. Though the Witch-king was driven out ages ago by an army of Elves and Men, rumours abound with stories that Carn Dûm stands poised to strike… Exploring Middle-earth: Carn Dûm