![]() Television Rating: 5.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Scott Thompson on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on February 18th, 2021, reviewing the new TV series “Young Rock,” Tuesdays on NBC-TV.
CHICAGO – It’s all the rave today to exhume an epic from long, long ago and bring it back on the monster screen bigger, better and with more grandeur than ever fathomable before.
While the story of “Beowulf” is the oldest epic poem in the English language, Zemeckis from his early days was unaroused by it.
“Frankly, nothing about the original poem appealed to me,” Zemeckis said about the original story. “I remember being assigned to read it in junior high school and not being able to understand it because it was in Old English.
He added: “It was one of those horrible assignments. I never really thought about it after that [and] never considered that it might make for an interesting story.”
Gaiman and co-writer Roger Avary (“Pulp Fiction”) had to fashion a 180-degree change of heart. They indeed captivated Zemeckis, who returned to his new art form from “The Polar Express” that opened the can of worms on a new age in filmmaking.
It’s not Pixar. It’s not just CGI. It’s “performance capture”.
With a steep price tag in excess of $150 million for “Beowulf,” the unproven concept is competing with itself in an attempt to slather the most palatable sauce you could coddle on the best filet mignon you could ever gorge.
It’s like what online avatars are doing to offline creators: zapping the pimples, ballooning the boobs and bulking the muscles. It’s essentially making big-name actors better than even they can be.
Ray Winstone as Beowulf – who went into battle buck naked with the overpowering demon Grendel – wishes he could be that chiseled.
Angelina Jolie – who was nervous with her own libidinous revelations – could learn a thing or two about her digital self and certainly make Brad Pitt jealous. Jolie as a seductress to the nth degree is big selling point for this film.
Zemeckis said of his Jolie selection: “When she stepped on set and became that character, it was a powerful thing to watch. She was just magnetic. She hypnotized everyone. Nobody can do that kind of sultry character as well as Jolie.”
“There is so much freedom to just be everything in the moment – and give it your all – because it’s being covered completely and you can overlap and you can play and you can improvise.
“There’s also an immediate friendship between the actors. When you’re both covered in dots, you become very close and you rely on each other.”
Jolie’s maternal instinct kicks in while playing Grendel’s mother. She said: “If someone hurts your son, you would go to the ends of the Earth to avenge him.”
Jolie, who describes her character as a “sexy lizard” who could assume a quasi-human form, had to personify the beguiling woman reptile without the benefit of costumes, prosthetics, props or makeup. She largely relied on Zemeckis’ direction.
As for the film’s rating, something is seriously amuck here.
Even if you extricated the entirety of Jolie’s full-frontal flesh time, the MPAA is offensively off its rocker in handing this film a “PG-13” rating instead of the “R” rating it absolutely should be.
The graphic violence and the adult jokes alone make it wholly inappropriate for kids around 13 years old.
To get today’s most lavish filmmaking realized, digital sensors are affixed to their faces and bodies via a form-fitting Lycra suit. Their live performances are “captured” and input into Sony Pictures Imageworks mega computers.
Action happens in an invisible box called a “volume,” which is segmented into quadrants that can house up to 40 cameras. This is performance capture-speak for a soundstage and is thusly because multiple cameras can capture scenes in a three-dimensional space.
If you transport back to your early school days, we recall that the geometric formula for volume is “x,” “y” and “z”. These equate to width, height and length. In film, a volume is the area where the cameras are all aimed within which face and body data are captured.
Takes (or “beats”) from multiple sessions can be edited, blended, mixed and matched to amputate most of the cartoon-like visuals we’ve seen in the past. Instead, the imagery is tethered to the actual creative expression of the actors and the director.
The mouth is still an area of contempt for careful critics, though, who’ve grumbled even in “Beowulf” about its sometimes wooden and unnatural ways.
If you remove your IMAX 3D lenses at any point during the entirely 3D picture, you can in fact discern flaws shielded by the technology. Also, the float factor still needs ironing out as humans don’t glide so gracefully.
Nitpicky criticisms aside, you’d be making a regrettable mistake waiting to view “Beowulf” on DVD at home or even on a standard movie screen. The film is the most IMAX-worthy picture released to date and seeing it any other way is like shutting one eye with 20/100 vision in the other.
By Adam Fendelman
Publisher
HollywoodChicago.com
![]() Television Rating: 5.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Scott Thompson on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on February 18th, 2021, reviewing the new TV series “Young Rock,” Tuesdays on NBC-TV.
CHICAGO – What is one of the greatest survival instincts of the pandemic? Creativity. The Zoom web series “What Did Clyde Hide?” is the result of a creative effort from Executive Producer/Show Runner Ruth Kaufman, Producer Sandy Gulliver and Director Sean Patrick Leonard. Kaufman and Leonard talk about the series, naturally, via Zoom.!—break—>
Grendel should visit a acnee
Grendel should visit a acnee clinic because he is so ugly