QotD [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

"Many scholars believe that the original Beowulf poem was a Christian propagandist restructuring of familiar tales to impose Christian values on them. So one can hardly blame a modern retelling for imposing current rules of cinematic story structure on the film." -- amelia_g, 2007-11-25 [in a movie review that finally made me want to go see the movie despite having thought, "oh come on, it'll be some sort of spectacular but can we trust Hollywood to do justice to a story like that without cheesing it up?" -- Amelia's review offers a mindset that might allow me to really enjoy it]

"There is some buzz about whether the technology involved in making Beowulf will ultimately somewhat replace actors, or at least turn them into licensable clip art. I will be interested to see if this sort of technology will ultimately mean that writers and scenic designers and people like that will receive more credit for how a movie turns out. Before I knew anything about how Hollywood works, it used to trouble me, as a consumer, that whether or not I enjoyed a movie depended very much on plot and story structure, only movies were never advertised as 'written by the guy who wrote that other thing you liked.'" -- ibid.

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My English teacher friend took her Brit Lit classes to see Beowulf and posted a detailed review of it, including where it deviated from the original. Her LJ is f-locked but I can ask her if I can cut and paste her review and send it to you if you are interested.

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Yes, interested.

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Kewl, asking. Random other fact, I just came back from my doc to get the results of my blood tests, one of which was for Vitamin D. Even with taking 1000 IU supplement, I'm still low. She recommended bumping it up to another 1000 and mentioned that some of her fibro patients are on 3000-4000 IUs/day. So I don't know if you are taking it or not but it might help. It certainly helps me and if I don't take it, I get really achy.

I just did a quick check of the fibro newsgroup to see whether anyone was talking about Vitamin D; seems a few people there have tested low but there's some disagreement over the effect on FMS of bringing the level back up.

Next time I manage to corner my doctor I'll ask whether Vitamin D was includde inthe last batch of bloodwork. In the meantime, I suppose I can just start experimenting with how supplements make me feel, after the next time I feel well enough to walk to the drug store.

Thanks for the info.

My doc says it's a relatively new test and vitamin D studies have only come out in the last couple years or so . I was kinda surprised but taking 1000 IUs/day has helped the general aches and pains tremendously.

Here's a thread on a vitamin D and fibro that I found: http://brain.hastypastry.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3214 Has some links to medical journals with studies of vitamin D and various conditions including fibro.

Good luck with it!!

If technology does replace actors it will be a huge mistake, and one that at least some in the industry are aware of and trying to avoid. I was very pleased with some of the comments in the DVD "featurettes" for Pirates 3, about how careful they were to make sure that every move of Davy Jones was driven by Bill Nighy's performance. I think if Disney people know that in live action you have to have a human being performing the part, then there's hope for the rest of the cinematic world.

I remember reading P G Wodehouse on how writers used to be treated in Hollywood, and hoping very much that he was exaggerating...

I don't know what Wodehouse said, but up to the point where my information is current, he probably wasn't. Conditions for writers in Hollywood have always been varying shades of atrocious.

For instance, Harlan Ellison, who seems compelled to document the atrocities in car-crash detail, recounts several multi-million-dollar production deal meetings where the executive with whom he was meeting hadn't even read the script. Also, if you really want a wince-worthy anecdote, look up his story about doing a pitch for Star Trek: The Motion Picture and being asked to put Mayans in the story segment that dealt with pre-human times... If that's not good enough for you, look up the anecdote where he was giving a pitch -- which must, by contract, be done verbally, with no "spec writing" allowed under hard-won union rules, and someone taped his oral presentation without his knowledge or consent, transcribed it, and wanted to use it as a first-draft screenplay. No matter what Lubachevsky said about the secret of success, if you do that crap to Harlan Ellison, you'd better be prepared to be on the receiving end of a hurricane made of trouble...

Another friend of mine who writes screenplays (and other things) for a living describes being jollied through the negotiation phase more times than he can count, only to have deal after deal scrapped suddenly with no compensation to him. (Print writers often get what they call a "kill fee" if a tentative agreement has been made but then the work doesn't see print, and the rights revert to them automatically. With screenwriters, I'm under the impression that reverting the rights is nearly impossible.)

Beowulf & Grendel was not perfectly faithful, but I quite enjoyed it.

It was slow, despite having Gerrard Butler and set in Iceland. Beautiful scenery tho'.

We do have one big advantage now -- IMDB often has pre-release information on movies, so you can actually find out if it was 'written by the guy who wrote that other thing you liked,' even if they don't advertise it.

Aw thanks :-)

BTW, I wasn't the only one who found what you wrote to be worth propogating (http://skreidle.livejournal.com/1827575.html).

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