I didn't realize GNOME had an Advogato blog applet. Very nice!

Well, for a first applet post, what could be more approapriate then a movie review!

As our cable TV connection thingie is down atm, my girlfriend has moved to watching all the nice things she has recorded on video but never actually had the time and passion to watch. That naturally leads to quie a few pearls being discovered, rediscovered, and the ocassional tape being ceremonially buried. The movie I'm talking about is of the latter kind.

Now, I have the kind of luck, that ocassionally steers me to see watch embarassingly bad movies, like Troy, Hulk, or similar movies that fit so well with other four letter words. But I've got trouble remembering when was the last time I saw something so really, truelly bad that matched 'Beowulf', the climax of Christopher Lambert's career as the master of cheese.

'Beowulf', the movie, is loosely based on 'Beowulf' the epic. There are folks with the same name running around and killing people in both. Only that the movie is set in some kind of a bizarre parallel universe that's a cheap cross from whatever was left from some D&D movie set, and random garbage from the techno-trash heap of the 90s. Infra-red telescopes & swords, anything goes. It's like 'Blade' in worse.

Ah yes, the acting. Christopher acts his way so tragicomically into fight situations in which some poor stunt double needs to flick-flack all over the set, always ending up being wiped off his feet in the end. I'm sure there is a deeper message in that, but it goes under in the very, very cheap CGIs used. And ... it's soo bad.

Other actors also perform equally 'plan9 from outer space' like: with lethargic, fatalist faces, they work their text off, and it seems as if everyone was having a really bad time making that movie. The camera loves the talents of the 'actresses' on the set, and the crew have done their best to put them in spotlights. One of the actresses gets to show off her talents in a soft-core scene that's supposed to be some sort of a succubus-and-lover tete-a-tete with the sleeping lover. The scene is so 'good', that it has been cut and pasted verbatim in another part of the movie.

Oh, yes, CGIs. Well, Grendel, the monster, is some poor chap in a latex rubber costume that makes him look like a small rip-off from Godzilla. In order the make that less obvious, I guess, the directory had some really bad blur effect added to all scenes with Grendel. It's optically ... awful.

So, if you want to see what 'plan9' would have looked like if it was made in the 90s, don't hesitate to enjoy an evening with Lambert's 'Beowulf'.

Now I just wish someone would make a movie with Lambert, Van Damme and Stallone, the three kings of cheese. That would probably undercut everything I've seen.