(no subject)

Last night Other Kenjari and I went out to see Beowulf and Grendel. We prefaced it with dinner at the ASgard, mostly because of the oh-so-appropriate decor (we like the food there, too). The movie itself was kind of a mixed bag - the film-makers did a lot of things right, but made a couple of glaring mis-steps.
The Goods:
It's beautiful. The movie was filmed in Iceland, which is just gorgeous - craggy mountains, green meadows, desolate shorelines. I think my next big trip may very well be to Iceland.
They did a good job with making everything else look good and authentic, too. Costumes, weapons, sets, etc. all looked right. There were so many scenes where I really felt like I had stepped into a saga.
The script captured Viking culture (as I understand it from reading sagas - I'm no expert) pretty well. The banter between Beowulf and his men, the bravado, the sense of humor all reminded me of the sagas.
also, the music and acting was generally good.

The Bads:
The story is an interpretation of Beowulf. While this is not a bad concept in and of itself, I was not entirely convinced by several aspects of this rendition. The script introduced a level and flavor of moral ambiguity that I'm not sure really worked.
The witch/seeress character, Selma, didn't quite work for me. This is probably mostly because she is the conduit for the moral ambiguity. But I also kept feeling that she didn't quite fit well with the rest of the movie. Selma had lots of potential, but the script never quite got there.

( We saw a couple of other movies recently. )