A Waste Of Perfectly Good Hubris

hubris |ˈ(h)yoōbris|
noun
excessive pride or self-confidence.
• (in Greek tragedy) excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.

“Beowulf” was released on DVD last week.

When I saw the preview (around this time last year?) I was wowed. MAN, the horse runs over A burning, collapsing bride. MAN, Angelina Jolie looks very, very naked (she was), MAN Ray Winstone is fat, what’s his head doing on a very muscular body? Must be amazing technology at work. MAN that’s a pretty all-star cast. I am excited. AND IS THAT A FREAKING DRAGON!? I love Dragons…

So I was excited. I then went to see it in Theaters…

imagine all your dreams being crushed. It’s not hard, I didn’t sheap it up with a witty insertion… just imagine all your dreams being crushed. Imagien the feeling. Now double that. That is how I felt when I saw Beowulf.

We all remember the story of Beowulf & Grendel, I hope. Grendel, a troll terrorizing a village, and Beowulf the hero who goes head to head with him in a battle of epic proportions. It’s the oldest known written and recorded story in the english language, if I’m not mistaken.

Well first they completely balled the story, and re-wrote it… Grendel was just a disfigured little kid with an ear ache, and Beowulf wasn’t the selfless hero… he was the Hubris-filled tragic hero, along the same veign of every play we read in High School. But.. hey, creative liscence, eh? I’m okay with that, if it makes a more exciting story… Hah.

Visually: stunning. I was extremely impressed with the level of detail that went into the animation and the effects. It really was a beautiful movie.

But despite a good premise, and despite looking prestine… it sucked. Why? Because it focused on the visuals only and let the story fall flat on it’s face. It took an hour and 15 minutes to begin, and then jumped to a 45 minute ending. No character development, no backstory… it’s all spelled out for you every frame. It didn’t even go quickly, and wasn’t engaging. Seriously, the last part of it I kept yawning and focusing on not getting the popcorn stuck in my braces. It was fun to watch, but in the end I was bored. The script fell on it’s face too, presenting relationships that could create interesting dynamics, for example John Malkovich’s character versus Ray’s Beowulf, or maybe Robyn Wright-Penn (Wright-Penn still correct?) and Alison Lohman: Wife versus mistress. SOOOOO MUUUCH POTENTIAL FOR AN ENGAGING STORY… instead it just kept looking pretty.

I basically took the movie as Robert Zemicks going “Hey, guys… this is what I CAN do.. just give me a good story, and I can do something LIKE this. BETTER, of course, hehe… but seriously, give me a job”

And on a level, it’s the perfect example of Hollywood’s ongoing fall from grace – big budget blockbusters that look good versus quality stories. Ironic : big studios are the only ones with the budget to finance and release good movies as they deserve to be, instead they have to rely on indipendant funding, for the most part, and release through Paramount Vintage, or something like that… (Big studios cashing in on these movies, finally…).

Why is this so? Because there’s money in it. People don’t demand to be educated, they demand to be dazzled nowadays, more cheap entertainment than thought provoking material has become popular. The human mind corrupted by cheap, stupid TV programs (*cough* reality tv*cough*)

Eragon: Good idea. Lots of Potential. Studios realize it’s popular, get their muddy hands on it, fast track it’s production, and make the worst movie of 07. or 06? Either way, it’s in the 2 for $5.oo bin at Wal-Mart. It’s not quality any more, it’s quantity. The only good productions are the ones who spend their time making art instead of speeding through to make a movie. LOTR – in production 8 years.

Basically what I’m saying: Art’s gone down the poop-chute, guys. Pop-culture and cheap, mindless entertainment has taken over. It’s high time we realized this and hired a plumber. (Probably a plumber with an accent… thank god for foreign films)

And what might have been a great tragic story… sucked.

My Bookshelf

Okay, I’m a messy person.

I’d be the first to say it, if a million people hadn’t said it before I could talk. I’m pretty sure it’s common knowledge in Malasia. If you don’t know it, you don’t know me. My mother knows, most of all…

I love my mother. She is the #1 woman in my life.

(Angelina Jolie a close, close second… she can adopt me any day)

It should also be mentioned that I love my nephews.

My whole family, actually. But I digress…

I am a messy person. and I am very comfortable with that fact. I won’t argue there’s a room in my mess, I’ll deny it flippantly when my parents ask. (Indeed, room in my mess accurately sums it up). I am a full time university student. I am a full time theatre student, no less, with two productions on the go. I am running a webcomic, and I’m trying to make money off the webcomic. If I don’t make enough money (in my opinion) wihin the next week and a half, I’ll probably have to get a job. With all this… I can not spare the half hour it would take to clean up my room. This might be attributed to laziness, but it’s not. It’s me not having the time nor the patience to deal with it.

Then my nephews visit (along with their father, my brother). I obviously have to go through the motions of baby-proofing the house, but I also have to go through the motions of babyproofing my own room. My room could be compared to a hotel room, because that’s… pretty much what it’s used for when siblings or family members visit. It’s the biggest bedroom next to the master bedroom, and when my brother comes to visit with his family, that’s the only room they really all fit in.

I’m okay with this. When it comes down to sleeping in my own bed vs seeing my brother+entourage, I’d much prefer the latter.

But baby proofing often involves sifting through the mess.. finally.

This is where me loving my mother comes in. Because I do as much as I can, but the day of their arrival I have to run off to school without it completely done. Mommy, dear as she is, picks up the slack. I come home and the only things left out are the toys that she doesn’t seem to understand are purely for display, not nephews who think the Jedi-fighter from episode III can fly down the stairs. But that’s cool…

What’s not cool is the mess. My sheets, my pens, my books, everything put away nicely… but in the wrong place.

I’m not sure about other messy people, but I know my messes are oddly organized. I throw something somewhere, but I make a subconscious mental note of where it is I threw it, and i can find it again in the blink of an eye. When my mother comes in, she doesn’t seem to understand that I know. I do know. She, as well as many others, can’t see past the mess to the quirky organization. I actually do better this way… But here, she’s taken everything and put it away in the wrong place. I can’t find a thing.

Most alarming is the fact that she just picked it up and put it somewhere, so important course outline sheets, sheets concerning tests, review sheets, instruction sheets for essays, and a few scripts are all piled in with doodlemores and excercises from High School I took out because I thought they’d be useful. I was thisclose { } to not finding a script in time for a rehearsal, and then when the nephews left I had to sift through it all and find important papers and seperate them from the unimportant ones.

But I’ve done this before. Several times. It pisses me off each time anew, but I’m okay with it because I’m living at home… this is the sort of stuff that happens when your mother’s a clean-freak. (Just a term, i don’t think she’s a freak)

The worst thing about it this time… was my bookshelf. Put together with an ungodly yellow drill (another story for another time) and my own bare hands, this bookshelf was supposed to be a symbol of my efforts to become clean and mildly decent. I backed it with books, DVDs, plays, and Box sets of LOST+LOTR (and a limited edition Hellboy Driector’s cut). It was my pride and joy because I didn’t have to pile my shit on top of the DVD player or my desk anymore. It was merely two steps away and I could browse the spines looking for something to entertain myself. It’s heavy… I managed to move it out to another room last time, but it’s still not light with all the hardcovers (last 4HP books, couple of fantasy books from my sister, “Golden Globe”)

Cut to nephews leaving, and I’m just waayy too busy to move everything back into my room. I plan to do it today… but then my car’s whel bearing breaks, and nobody is allowed to use it. I’ve either got to hitch a ride, or walk 45 minutes into town in order to do the other things I planned to do today, which take priority. I spend my afternoon in Corner Brook, walk home (hitch a ride with a friend at the halfway point, luckily) and then have supper at a relative’s house. I get home tonight, walk into my room, see that mommy put back the bookshelf… then I see what’s been done to the bookshelf.

Chaos.

It was too heavy for her to lift, so she had to take everything out…and put it back in. And it appears she didn’t make any effort to do it correctly. I’m looking at it now, and season 2&3 of LOST are seperated by an entire row of DVDs. Some spines are facing in, some are upside down, and upon further examination I see movies I’ve decided to sell have been put back, some movies are even piled horizontally on top because the shelves weren’t well packed, and my Rushmore VHS is somehow back in the loop… as well as the entire HP series seperated by several movies and books, even rows apart, not even in the right order… some DVDs (all of which are supposed to be on top) are on bottom, my plays are all over the place, and I can only imagine what happened to my Hitchhiker’s Guide series… the books are so small I think they’ve been lost in the confusion.

So I’m pissed. The calm sort of pissed that doesn’t manifest itself physically, the kind that people are frightened of when they see it in the eyes of someone normally calm.

My mother harps and chides me about cleanliness and organization, and the one sacred thing I put the effort into keeping neat and tidy… she doesn’t put the effort into doing herself.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some cleaning to do…

Holy crap…

So I start up a webcomic, “Doodlemore” ( here: http://hs.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8890655052 )  and I think hey, wouldn’t it be cool to have a blog, too? I come to wordpress, remembering I had a blog a loooooooooong time ago called “Arty’s Rant” (I was an angsty little bugger), but didn’t know if it was on wordpress or… somewhere else. I dunno. But I come here, try and sign up…and my email is already used? I go okay, that’s cool, so it is here…what’s the password? I try everything, ALL my über old passwords that, to me (now), seem quite stupid… none of them worked. Try my newest, and it works. wtf??? I mean seriously, have I been using the SAME password for so long?? It’s amazing my shit hasn’t been stolen from life yet…

anyways. I’m back. One might say I’m beginning where I began.. my first blog back then was concerning the academy awards, and it was the oscars this past sunday that reminded me blogs existed after Diablo Cody won best original screenplay.

It was odd for me to look back. I’ve since deleted those posts (hopefully not pissing off any diehard fans after two years of inactive), but in the quick glance I gave them before heaving them out the maturity window, I.. I just really don’t know. The difference between then and now is just astounding, it really is.

So here we are again. I’m sure I’ll quit this after the novelty wears off, and in another two years think Hm, I haven’t won an oscar yet…might as well start back at square 1!

cheers.

.R