comment #1

chicbn872 says ...

I agree Jeff. The awards are arbitrarily created anyway.

I respect John Lasseter's work but anybody who thinks "Beowulf" isn't animated may have a screw loose.

comment #2

colby says ...

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Monster House done with the same motion capture technology, it just went with a much more tradition animated look? That was nominated for Best Animated Feature.

comment #3

FunkDaddy J says ...

I agree that Beowulf should be considered animation, but Avary comes across as a dick in his statement.

comment #4

carla kolchak says ...

[rolls eyes]Blahblahblahblahblah. It's animated.[/rolls eyes]

comment #5

Wrecktum says ...

Avary calls Lasseter "insecure" and "intimidated." The same Lasseter who has boldly changed and challenged Disney animation culture and who has helped creat the vast majority of the best family movies of the past decade, some being among the best movies of all time. Roger Avary, the director of Rules of Attraction and the writer of Silent Hill. That's rich.

comment #6

goodvibe61 says ...

The decision to categorize Beowulf as an animated film is a stupid one. But what's done is done. Animation has been put down by the academy forever, so why stop now?

The human characters were in no way, shape, or form, created solely from the imagination of the artist. Instead, it's all actors working in front of a blue screen. That my friends is NOT animation.

The heart of the movie, the artistic vision comes from live action, then being completed on a computer is no different from the special effects being ladled on to any other live action film. There is no difference whatsoever. That the academy would do this shows the complete lack of respect they have for the animators that continue to create some of the very best work in cinema. It's an insult of a very high order.

There will be many people, Mr. Wells obviously in this group, that will love this. What this leads to is obvious. People will argue down the road that those big blockbuster movies that drown in special effects should really be considered differently than the raw dramas and films set in the grit of "reality" as well. The argument is something like this:

Die Hard 4 (Star Wars, Tranformers, etc., take your pick) is an animated film. There are more than a thousand special effects in it. 80 percent of it was "animated" not with cameras, but with computers creating effects. Just like Beowulf.

This decision will enable folks to twist the rules in ridiculous directions to make them fit their narrow view of things. It sucks.

The decision the academy has made gives validity to something as stupid as that. It fills my heart and soul with disgust with the way they feel about work that others hold dear.

comment #7

SteveSchalchlin says ...

Motion capture is a legitimate form of animation, IMO. But it also looks like a short cut because it's so hard to truly animate a face. The Motion Capture faces don't QUITE move right. The lips don't QUITE pronounce words. The skin is stiff. The eyes dead. I mean the kids in the Polar Express just looked downright weird; like marshmallows with oddly moving parts.

To cast truly ANIMATED faces as "old school" is insulting, as if you're not "with it" unless you convert to using these lifeless pod people.

comment #8

Don Murphy says ...

To criticize the writer and producer of Beowulf when your screen name is an ass part is actually very rich indeed.

comment #9

Jay T. says ...

Zzzzzzzzzzzz........

comment #10

Dave says ...

"Roger Avary, the director of Rules of Attraction and the writer of Silent Hill."

And the creator of all things that were good in Pulp Fiction, instead of all things bad about Pulp Fiction, which was all Tarantino's fault.

At least that's what D.Z. always says, and he's right about *everything*.

comment #11

Wrecktum says ...

"To criticize the writer and producer of Beowulf when your screen name is an ass part is actually very rich indeed."

That's my real name. It's Flemish.

comment #12

DavidF says ...

-Avary does sound like a jerk there.

-Lasseter shouldn't have to apologize or kowtow to anyone given what he has accomplished. Certainly not to Avary. Maybe once Beowulf has confused everyone to the point that it doesn't win Best Picture OR Best Animated Avary'll shut his yap.

-Clearly there is an inability to definte our terms here. People are getting bogged down basically saying here that if the main characters are done with keyframe (vs mo-cap) the movie is animated. End of story.
But there are multiple components. The entirety of the backgrounds are CGI (as they were in 300 and a large % of the Star Wars movies). Obviously the dragons and other creatures are animated.

So, talking about Beowulf, the only discussion about whether the FILM is animated is whether you want to penalize the technique used for the actors.

Personally, I don't really know.
Jar Jar Binks (for all his flaws) is 100% animated. The same goes for Buzz Lightyear, the T-1000, everyone in Ratatouille, half the characters in Roger Rabbit etc. etc.

Gollum, on the other hand, is a mix of animation and mo-cap.
Aside from the digital element it's not totally different from the rotoscoping used by Bakshi, Linklater and (yes) Disney.

The Beowulf characters are 100% mo-cap, processed in a computer. But someone has to design how they look in that computer, regardless of whether Anthony Hopkins looks like Anthony Hopkins or whether Crispin Glover looks like some weird demon thing.

Clearly there are differences between the three categories and someone somewhere will have to figure this out. In the meantime I don't think the animated category is "Ghettoizing" these films as much as it is providing a place for films they have already "gettoized". At this point the academy should probably just add a comedy category so we have:
Best Drama
Best Comedy
Best Animated
Best Documentary
Best Foreign

Obviously it's the only way to ensure that these films get treated properly since the Academy has made it obvious they don't know what to do with anything that falls outside the stereotypical notion of a "Best Picture" film.

Well, that post was longer than I intended...

comment #13

DavidF says ...

p.s. Dumb me - there is mo-cap involved with Jar Jar. Ten other Star Wars characters (Watto, Grievous, and especially Yoda) would have been better examples.

comment #14

T. Holly says ...

I'd like to see a category called BEST 3-D MOVIE. "BEOWULF" can go up against itself and win in that category, because that's all it deserves. The story is an abomination and razor thin in a way that screams "choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep" vein.

comment #15

lesterg says ...

Whatever happened with Glitterati? Is it sitting in rights hell?

comment #16

christian says ...

How about if we just break it down and divvy the awards up:

Best Flying Dragon Attacks On A Castle
Best Cute Animal Dance Set To Pop Song
Best Battle Scene With Lifelike Humans
Best Awe-Inspiring Journey Montage
Best Medieval Fantasy Environment
Best Colorful Supporting Character
Best Eyes Human
Best Eyes Anthropomorphic
Best Celebrity Likeness

comment #17

TheJeff says ...

"I respect John Lasseter's work but anybody who thinks "Beowulf" isn't animated may have a screw loose."

Or perhaps they just know something about animation. You certainly won't find any working animators who would claim Beowulf as the offspring of their particular artform. The only people who I've actually heard declare that it is animation are blowhard pundits and folks with their name in the Beowulf credit block.

comment #18

Hunter Tremayne says ...

We live in an astonishing time in the history of cinema. When Bob Zemeckis gave Roger Avery and Neil Gaiman their brief for the second version of their BEOWULF script he told them to write anything, because there was nothing they could possibly invent in their script that he could not produce on screen.

Think what that means for movies! Now it is possible to create stories on screen that are only limited by the imagination of man. That imagination, be it ever so fecund or feeble, being given free reign, will inevitably transport the viewer to worlds unknown to our fathers. Yet here we are, arguing the toss into which category, which box, we should put the very first of these stories, which is aptly the oldest story we have in the West.

It does not matter whether it is madcap or mo-cap, animated or adulterated, computer-generated CGI or hand-drwen by human eye, what we have herev with this film is something of wonder, that first step into that uncharted country, that place on old maps marked "Here There Be Monsters." And in BEWOULF here there are monsters indeed: trolls and dragons and men, perhaps the greatest monsters of all. Men and women to create and men and women and children to watch and all the world and everything that is in it, or ever was in it, or one day might be in it are coming one day, much sooner that you think, in full colour, in 3D, big and bold and bright, to a theater near you.

comment #19

Craig Kennedy says ...

I'm with Christian. Hell, let's just give everyone who shows up an Oscar. Oscars for most improvement. Best attendance. 3rd place. Best effort.

This whole semantic business about whether it's animation or not is the root of the problem in the first place. Why distinguish between good movies based on how they're created? Good is good.

Leave it for the Annie Awards to draw the line on technique.

comment #20

goodvibe61 says ...

For decades the only limitations set on animated filmmakers has been their imaginations. Period, end of story. Please let us know all the things that Beowulf marks the beginning of that Walt Disney couldn't have done. Or that any other truly animated film since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs couldn't do, in terms of story.

Let's face it. The Academy is defined by its constituency, which is fragile, filled with ego and fear. In other words it's far from perfect, human. For many years films like The Lion King, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Iron Giant, and now Ratatouille, have been swept aside to satisfy the ego of actors and directors of live action films. None of the films I just mentioned should have been put into any other category than simply "Best Picture". It's the same with Remy the Rat this year. Not best animated picture. Not best foreign picture. Not best animated hybrid blue screen picture.

Best picture.

But then Remy takes one of five precious best picture nomination slots, meaning less opportunity for someone else to get the hype and the glory. So, go ahead and consider a film like Iron Giant or Ratatouille to be less than other kinds of films because someone says it is so.

Have a nice day!

comment #21

Rich S. says ...

"And the award for best fascist dictator goes to...Adolf Hitler!"

Woody Allen, Annie Hall (paraphrase)

Like the Olympics, I think the Academy Awards would benefit from actually reducing the number of categories. Any more add-ons, and we're in Golden Globe territory. Plus, I can't imagine tacking yet another 10 minutes onto the already bloated ceremony.

comment #22

DavidF says ...

Goodvibe61 is right - there should not be a distinction. I was just saying, not that more categories SHOULD be created but rather the academy is so messed-up it is apparently the only way non-dramas can get recognized.

If you do away with "Best Animated" you will not, unfortunately, increase the odds of Ratatouille getting a Best Picture nod.

As he says, animated films have been able to put anything up on the screen since the 1930s and really even what Zemeckis is saying ("Whatever you write, I can film...") is what Lucas set as the minimum before doing the Star Wars prequels. Yeah, Zemeckis is pushing it further but that's just technology moving forward. The Jurassic Park dinosaurs still look great and I think Optimus Prime won't look dated for an awful long time either.

The reality is that Beowulf has more animation in it than Lord of the Rings (but not by that much) and less animation in it than Ratatouille (but not by much). We're talking about differences of degree, not differences of kind and, since Beauty and the Beast, the Academy has been unable to parse them.

comment #23

Luke Y. Thompson says ...

As I recall, Stuart Little 2 got nominated for Best Animated feature. Under the same criteria, I would think something like Transformers could be eligible too if it met the 70% rule or whatever.

Stuart and the animals were not mo-capped, but they were more like what I'd think of as "special effects" rather than animation, since they existed in a live-action universe and were presented as realistically as possible.

comment #24

truefaith says ...

Instead of restructuring the Best Animated Film division, we should be talking about restructuring the Best Foreign Language Film division. When a masterpiece like RAN doesn't get nominated for Best Foreign Language Film--there's something wrong with the system. I'm afraid it's going to happen again this year with other foreign films.

comment #25

mutinyco says ...

Variety: http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117935372.html?categoryid=31&cs=1

comment #26

D.Z. says ...

Wrecktum: "The same Lasseter who has boldly changed and challenged Disney animation culture and who has helped creat the vast majority of the best family movies of the past decade, some being among the best movies of all time."

He then sold out to Disney and gave us Cars.

Dave: "And the creator of all things that were good in Pulp Fiction, instead of all things bad about Pulp Fiction, which was all Tarantino's fault. At least that's what D.Z. always says, and he's right about *everything*."

I'm probably right about that.

comment #27

Ian Sinclair says ...

Why did VARIETY give their BEOWULF review to a second-stringer?

Anyway, here's the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER's main guy, Kirk Honeycutt, on BEOWULF:

Bottom Line: This is not your dad's "Beowulf," as Robert Zemeckis and his 3-D animation team have brought the heroic poem to vibrant life.

What have they done to "Beowulf," everyone's least favorite Old English epic about a hero's battles with a monster, the monster's mother and an annoying dragon who turns up 50 years later?

Director Robert Zemeckis not only deploys 21st century movie technology at its finest to turn the heroic poem into a vibrant, nerve-tingling piece of pop culture, but his film actually makes sense of "Beowulf." In Zemeckis' hands, it's an intriguing look at a hero as a flawed human being.

Remember in "Annie Hall" when Woody Allen advised Diane Keaton, "Just don't take any class where you have to read 'Beowulf'"? As multitudes stand in long lines to see this movie, many may indeed be reading "Beowulf," if only to relish what Zemeckis & Co. have accomplished. In any event, those lines should last through year's end.

There are two sets of heroes here. One is the writing team of author/graphic novelist Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary (the nearly forgotten other writer of "Pulp Fiction"). They have genuinely solved the structural problem of the poem, written around 700 A.D. The link between the early battles of a young hero and his fatal confrontation with the dragon as an aging king is his temptation by the monster's mother who dangles wealth, power and sexual favors before his bedazzled eyes. Makes sense -- Beowulf's sins come back to haunt him.
The other heroes are Zemeckis' "performance capture" and 3-D animation teams, who digitally enhance the bare-bones live action into a beguiling other world brimming with vitality. This new technique, which Zemeckis broke ground with in the visually impressive though dramatically weak "The Polar Express," comes to full fruition in "Beowulf," where myth becomes vigorous flesh.

"Beowulf" tells of a young warrior, Beowulf (Ray Winstone), who emerges out of a raging storm in a Viking ship to rescue a Danish kingdom ruled by old King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) and his beauteous queen Wealthow (Robin Wright Penn). The monster Grendel (Crispin Glover), angered by the noise of singing and drinking in Hrothgar's great hall, has butchered many warriors.

Grendel is a thing of horrific beauty. He looks like a mummy with a contagious disease. He's a slobbering, puss-filled, bloody, drooling, hideously deformed giant with a lop-sided face and rotting teeth that can barely chew a man's head.

Knowing no weapon will defeat this monster, Beowulf sheds his clothes and waits for the next attack. In an epic battle, Beowulf rips off Grendel's arm. The now whimpering bully limps home to his mother's lair to die.

Grendel's mother (Angelina Jolie) takes revenge by attacking the hall following a night of celebration. She strings up the corpses of all of Beowulf's men save for his trusted lieutenant, Wiglaf (Brendan Gleeson).

Presented a sword by Unferth (John Malkovich), who initially doubted Beowulf's resolve, Beowulf enters the mother's grotto with its eerie lake. But rather than battle Beowulf, the mother sets out to seduce him, as she did Hrothgar years before.

Zemeckis is not afraid to indulge in moments of camp. Jolie's golden and nude temptress with a devil's tail strides toward her adversary in high heels! Grendel's whimpering about the Big Bad Man who tore off his arm reveals a pathetic mama's boy. The hero's constant assertion "I am Beowulf!" and Wiglaf's equally frequent refrain "You are Beowulf!" cry out for a "Saturday Night Live" skit.

But here lies Zemeckis' keen pop sensibility. He means to avoid Woody Allen's "Beowulf" by tapping into both the "Lord of the Rings" crowd and "Knocked Up" enthusiasts. The gruesome violence and male and female near nudity -- about as bold as a PG-13 rating will allow -- mixed together with ribald humor make "Beowulf" a waggish bit of postmodern fun. It may raise the eyebrows of English Lit professors but will quicken the pulse of everyone else.

"Beowulf" will roll out in the largest 3-D release of any film to date, including Imax 3D. While 2-D prints will certainly play well, Zemeckis has brilliantly designed the movie for 3-D, creating a strong depth of field and action in the fore, middle and back grounds in his more complex shots. Figures do blur slightly with heavy action or quick camera pans, but audiences will experience total immersion into the world of "Beowulf" best in 3-D.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film/reviews/article_display.jsp?JSESSIONID=fGj3H09TQDcfW0kVHwkXczntG5BplhK11lK0LwR102hFpTr6Snyn!1205910682&&rid=10190

comment #28

christian says ...

"by tapping into both the "Lord of the Rings" crowd and "Knocked Up" enthusiasts. "

Uh, you mean medieval dick jokes?

comment #29

wayne76 says ...

God I hated this fucking movie. Jeff, you shit on Lord of the Rings every chancd you get, but you give THIS dreck a pass?