marramgrass

Beowulf.

I was looking forward to that film for ages.

It generally looks rather good. The proof is in a few of the faces (Beowulf, Hrothgar, Wiglaf) which are especially impressive, verging on photo-real. Others (Wealthow, Ursula) weren’t as convincing, and Grendel’s mum (Angelina Jolie) was good at a distance, but not so much up-close. I’m talking about her face, okay? There are a few Shrek-type moments, but I’ve a feeling they were ‘extras’ who were fully computer-generated rather than based on motion-captured actors. I can’t confirm that’s so, but it’s what it looked like to me.

I wish there was anywhere in NI where I could see the 3D version. But there’s not.

Beneath the surface, the writers (Gaiman and Avary) made some very interesting changes to the story. If you read over the Wikipedia page, you’ll find some debate and hand-wringing over this. In the source poem, Beowulf is a straight-and-dull action-hero type, but in this film he’s flawed and prideful, and it’s that pride that is his downfall, forming the thread that focusses and unites the three major sections of the plot.

Maybe I’m a bit of a philistine, but for me that makes for a much more interesting story. Tales of redemption are increasingly common in cinema, it seems, and this is a pretty good one. The way Grendel was played for sympathy (honestly, I think I wanted him to win) only strengthened this side of things.

So why am I disappointed?

Partly, I guess, because the film just didn’t live up to my anticipation. And partly because, despite all the great things about it, I felt at a distance from the action and the characters the whole way through. Maybe that’s a consequence of the motion-capture approach, I don’t know. I do have the feeling that the style was a strength - Ray Winstone’s voice was just right, but I don’t know if he’d have been as convincing ‘live’.

It was pretty good, but I can’t help wondering if it could have been so much more.

The weather today has been simply shocking — there’s lots of flooding going on round here.

Makes you glad to be inside in the warm. I think we’ll be lighting the fire tonight when some family come round.

My plans are well under way. We went to see Beowulf last weekend, and I caught The Golden Compass yesterday. They were, to different degrees, disappointing. I’ll come back to them when I’m not supposed to be writing something I actually get paid for…

I have discovered a new webcomic. It’s called Questionable Content, and it’s rather good fun. It’s also currently at edition 1026 — so plenty of scope for distraction there. Which just now may not be such a good thing.

By the way, when looking for it you really want to get the web address exactly right, or you might turn up some decidedly questionable content. Be ye warned :-o

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. For Western churches that follow the liturgical calendar, this is the start of the new church year.

I have mostly spent time in places where we haven’t really paid attention to that aspect of the day, but a couple of years ago I spent a short placement with a Church of Scotland congregation with a more liturgical approach to their worship than I was used to, and I was introduced to the rhythm of the year running under and through the rise and fall of day-to-day life.

The short season of Advent is a time of anticipation: of darkness waiting for light to break in (both physically and metaphorically), of the world waiting for the birth of Christ, of the world waiting for his return. There’s a tension around at this time of year, celebrating what has happened while waiting for what’s still to come.

This year I’ve discovered that it’s a reminder that we’re here, now. Living in the in-between time of the “now, but not yet”, I guess Christians have often been guilty of ignoring what’s going on around them — injustice, poverty, hunger… I know I have/am. But we are here, now, and there’s so much to see and remember and do.

Now in December, the pace has picked up over at The Mockingbird’s Leap as we’re practicing the attention that comes with being present in the world, the here and now. I’ve even been there already this afternoon.

It’s time to enjoy the tension-approaching-paradox of commemoration flavoured with anticipation, of the eye on forever that still takes in today, and to remember to look forward, and around, as well as back.

The list of films, either currently in the cinema or soon to be released, that I would very much like to see. Any chance?

• Beowulf
• The Golden Compass
• I Am Legend
• AvP: Requiem
• Sweeney Todd
• Cloverfield

It should be a good couple of months for film.

The Golden Compass will be an interesting one. I’ve heard a fair bit of concern from Christians over it all. Me, I’m looking forward to it. It’s a few years since I read the books, so I’ll have to go for a re-read before I can post sensibly, but I remember being struck by the sheer quality of them. Pullman is certainly writing from a worldview that differs from my own, but every author writes out of their own head. In the interviews I’ve been reading (sorry, linkage escapes me right now), it appears that he’s mellowed somewhat in his tone over the last few years. I will track down the books again, watch the film, dig out some bits I wrote the first time I read the books, then see what I have to say…

Recently I posted about going on a bit of a Gaiman kick. (I still haven’t made it to see Beowulf, which is disappointing, but life gets in the way.)

Anyway. Clicking around the web (as you do), not writing the bits I should be writing (as you don’t), I stumbled across this unusual yet compelling little tale of romance and hero-worship. Warms the cockles, doesn’t it.

While I’m here and feeling ‘literary’, I was in the car on Monday and heard a short story by Michael Morpurgo. I would recommend going and listening to it, but you’ll only be able to find it on that link until Monday, so don’t wait.

A couple of new distractions:

Chain Factor (HT: pix)

Desktop Tower Defence

I accept no responsibility.

• Winter seems to have finally arrived here in Northern Ireland. We had a couple of excellently cold days, and now it’s just wet. That is the true heart of winter in this part of the world. One of the things I miss about Edinburgh is how it could get properly cold, and even snow occasionally.
• In spite of my intentions otherwise, as Christmas gets closer I only seem to get busier. It seems like I could do with it being eight weeks away instead of four. It’s probably about time I learned some time-management. That or employed a ghost-writer, along with a ghost-facilitator, ghost-trainer and ghost-student… Less than four weeks to a wee break is great and terrible both at once. And I’m horrified that the Advent has become a countdown to holiday, at least on some level.
• The iPhone interface is not hugely well-suited to inputting HTML. Finding the < and > symbols takes too many actions, and the auto-correct gets occasionally flummoxed by the tags. Yet strangely it seems quite happy with ‘flummoxed’. Still, it gives me something to do when I’m waiting on my wife and I’ve forgotten my novel.

What is it with me and Google lately?

Just a quick one, here. When posting yesterday I needed to find my old post about jPod, and dredged up from the back of my mind a little bit of Google functionality that I’ve never used but is handy to know about.

To get the “one search engine to rule them all” to search a specific web site, just sart your search string with the name of the site preceded by “site:”. So yesterday I used the search site:marramgrass.org.uk jpod to find my old post.

Not at all exciting, but occasionally quite useful.

I think the world contains more than one Douglas Coupland. Last year I posted about jPod, being very underwhelmed by it. Now I’m reading his most recent, The Gum Thief, and it’s much more enjoyable.

This got me thinking about how consistently inconsistent an author he is. He has this reputation for social and cultural commentary, but even in that he’s a bit hit and miss. I think of myself as a fan, but a fairly critical one.

Case in point: of Coupland’s fiction, some of it is very good indeed, and some of it is decidedly not. Hence the two Douglas Couplands. A can write, B has trouble with it.

Coupland A:

• Life After God
• Microserfs
• Girlfriend In A Coma
• Miss Wyoming
• Hey, Nostradamus!

Coupland B:

• Shampoo Planet
• Eleanor Rigby
• All Families Are Psychotic
• jPod

I’ve excluded Generation X because I wasn’t sure where to put it, but to be honest I was leaning towards Coupland B. At the half-way point, I think The Gum Thief was written by Coupland A.

(Whilst writing this post, for some reason I consistently mis-spelled ‘thief’ as ‘theif’.)