Word: beowulf
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...young people take flight on a dragon, just like in Avatar, but the trip is longer and way swoopier. Ancient warriors strut their testosterone in approved Beowulf or 300 fashion. A kid befriends an otherworldly creature - a flame-spuming update of the alien from E.T. - and tries to hide him from adults. It's a foolproof scheme for picture making: take the plot elements of favorite movies, paint the concoction with bright colors so it looks like the zazziest customized car, set it running at NASCAR speed - then add 3-D - and you have How to Train Your Dragon...
Norton, in emphasizing the literary and artistic nature of the book - there's an accompanying art exhibition in Los Angeles' Hammer Museum - has been promoting it more like an intriguing new rendition of Beowulf than a sacred text. (Perhaps shortsightedly, they did not market the book to Christian bookstores; neither big Bible publishers Zondervan and Thomas Nelson nor the American Bible Society had heard of the volume when contacted.) There's a little synergy at work too: Crumb mostly uses the well-regarded translation by UC Berkeley Professor Robert Alter, another Norton author...
...Besides writing poetry, you’ve also translated many classic texts—the most famous of which may be “Beowulf.” What are the challenges and pleasures specific to translation...
...neither the acting nor the story matters much here; the movie is simply the sum of its 3D effects. In recent years some upscale films, notably Robert Zemeckis' Polar Express and Beowulf, have been available in 3D. Yet for a viewer to put on those glasses, still as cumbersome a visual appliance as they were in the '50s, is to surrender to cheesiness. (I tell moviemakers who want to work in the format: get back to me when you invent 3D without specs...
...blend of Jolie's previous adventuress roles: the CIA killer lady in Mr. & Mrs. Smith crossed with a mix of Lara Croft, the daredevil pilot from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and the witch-goddess of Beowulf. (Oh, and her Tigress in Kung Fu Panda.) Densely tattooed, richly skilled in the automotive and firearm arts, Jolie's Fox reeks of a take-charge sexiness we might call feminismo. When, to make a point, she kisses Wesley in front of his perfidious girlfriend, you can almost hear the curling of toes of every comic-book guy in the audience...