Wednesday, November 21, 2007

MOVIE REVIEW: BEOWULF


MOVIE REVIEW: BEOUWULF
art and review by Phillip Seahorn
Starring:
Brendan Gleeson, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone, Robin Wright Penn, John Malkovich
Directed by:
Robert Zemeckis
Produced by:
Martin Shafer, Roger Avary, Neil Gaiman
This movie is the deathknell of movies as we know them today.
They have been trying for ten years now to create what's called "photo realistic imagery" that
will make movies produced in CGI look realistic...that you could not tell the difference.
If you saw "Superman", a lot of what you THINK was Brandon Routh was in actuality a CGI.
Many people in Hollywood did not appreciate "Sin City" or "300".
With this new technology, set designers,production people,lighting,location scouts, and countless other jobs in filmaking will simply cease to exist.
It can all be done with computers.
"Beowulf" is the first of these movies.
It is a truly amazing testament to CGI in Hollywood.
It is a brethtakingly beautiful movie, which is what struck me about it.Now,Kevin Pierra of "Attack of the Show" refered to this movie as a cartoon.
The point in that is that it was not meant to be a cartoon, but a actual movie.The realism in this movie belies that type of comment about these types of film.
This film is unique in that it uses a combination of "Rotoscoping"(developed by Disney, in which they film the actors, then draw over the film) and CGI.
By combining these two forms of filmaking, you get "Beowulf".
The actors in the movie really ACTED, and this was a tremendous step in making this movie "lifelike".
With these elements, this movie, as stated in the beginning of this post, is starting the trend toward making more and more movies like this in the future.
Hollywood is faced with serious financial situations.The writer's strike is just one of these, as well as licensing rights and distribution fights.
To make a realistic movie with half the budget is always the beginning of a downsizing situation that will simply put a LOT of people out of work, and thus saving the production companies bottm line.
That is why writers are fighting for more money now, before everything is pretty much locked in.
I love movies and the history of movies.
I deeply regret that my love for computers will pull me towards wanting more CGI movies.
Why not?You can do ANYTHING now with movies.
But many people will loose their jobs in Hollywood once they start mass producing these films.
Why do you think so many Hollywood actors are doing voice work now?They see the writing, or the computer, on the wall.
Go see "Beowulf".It is a amazing experience, but the 3D aspect is rather cheesy, and cheapens the movie.Go see the regular showing, as they are offering both.
THE SEAHORN MOVIEMETER:"A+"

posted by PHILLIP SEAHORN @ 6:09 AM