Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Before I get into my wail over Beowulf, let me express my sadness over the loss of
Hans Bacher‘s multiple blogs. The artwork he created and/or recreated for his blogs Animation Treasures 1,2,3 was too rich to have been lost so quickly. Apparently, Hans was having problems with “Blogspot” re the number of images he could support on his sites. Hans has decided to eliminate all of his blogs, and that’s an enormous loss for us all. I checked in at least once a week just to look at the Snow White treasures he’d recreated, and now they’re gone. I should have saved copies, ____The Art they once painted and
but I wanted to support the blogs by going there. ______Hans once recreated & posted.
Ah well, time moves on, and nothing lasts forever.
They were among the very best sites out there, like all the work Hans has done.
It’s our loss. I still wait for a copy of his book, Dream Worlds, from Amazon.

- Beowulf likes to lay claim to being “animated”, while at the same time issuing statements from those who worked on the film that it’s something other than animation. “Beowulf” director Robert Zemeckis’ longtime producer Steve Starkey calls the method ‘digitally enhanced live action.’” (quote from a NYPost article.) Yet the distributor, Paramount, is pushing for that Oscar in the animated feature category.

The critics seem a bit confused. However, they all have the same criticism: “Beowulf” can be a lot of fun to watch – at least in the 3-D IMAX version I saw – but it’s hard to forget for long that you’re stranded in a waxworks netherworld between live action and animation.
This quote from Lou Leminick‘s three *** star review in the NY Post. The review is generally positive and puts its focus on Angelina Jolie‘s beautiful body
(Wait! Isn’t this an animated film?).

I’ve made no bones about saying that it’s a travesty to equate this film with other animated features and allow it to compete in an Oscar “animation” category. It’s just a different sort of beast. For a hundred years now, Live Action people have persistently considered animation to be little more than “Special Effect.” Now they’ve proven it and have taken the reins of their “Effx” films out to one-up the animators. The Academy is allowing them to do it if they include this film in their Best Animated Feature category.

I know I’m an old fart with outdated principles, but I think of it as a voice crying in a desperate attempt to keep real animation alive. I think too much of the medium in which I work to let it be so easily sideswiped..

Clips from other reviews:

Mr. Zemeckis throws a lot of stuff at us in “Beowulf” besides Ms. Jolie, including spears, swords, pools of gore, dribbles of mucous and images with extremely forced perspectives, which direct your vision toward the center of the frame, goosing the 3-D effect. Mostly he throws technology at us. The main characters in the movie were created through performance capture, a system that allows filmmakers to map an actor’s expressions and gestures onto a computer-generated model, which is then further tweaked. (Eye movements are captured separately.) Neither wholly animation nor live action, it is a sophisticated visual technique, and true believers see it as the future of movies, though really the most interesting thing about it is that it’s not intrinsically interesting.

To be honest, I don’t yet see the point of performance capture, particularly given how ugly it renders realistic-looking human forms. Although the human faces and especially the eyes in “Beowulf” look somewhat less creepy than they did in “The Polar Express,” Mr. Zemeckis’s first experiment with performance capture, they still have neither the spark of true life nor that of an artist’s unfettered imagination.
- NY Times Manohla Dargis

. . . director Robert Zemeckis delivers a muscular, sometimes stirring but ultimately soulless reinterpretation of “Beowulf.” For all its visual sweep and propulsively violent action, this bloodthirsty rendition of the Old English epic can’t overcome the disadvantage of being enacted by digital waxworks rather than flesh-and-blood Danes and demons.
- Variety

. . . Despite the story’s new bridge, there’s still no middle to it. After Beowulf is compromised and inherits the kingdom from Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins), we simply fast-forward a few decades, barely alluding to the guilt that has estranged the hero from his queen (Robin Wright Penn), also inherited from Hrothgar.

An even greater problem is that while the performance-capture process gives “Beowulf’s” world a mythic quality, it drains the characters of nuance. The movie may be three-dimensional, but the people in it are not.

For those Beowulf scholars already groaning out there, there’s even worse news: The movie sets up a sequel.
- NY Daily News Jim Mathews

Go directly now to Mark Mayerson‘s site to read his commentary on this film. A big BRAVO for Mark.

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