Beowulf and Angelina Jolie Give 3-D a Second Chance in Hollywood

Beowulf used to be a Hollywood punch line, the cry agents uttered when confronted by arty screenwriters with an idea: "Oh God, just tell me it's not Beowulf!" So it was a particular triumph when two such scribes, indie filmmaker Roger Avary and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman, took the stage at Comic-Con last summer to introduce Beowulf, Robert Zemeckis' retelling of the primordial Anglo-Saxon monster epic — in 3-D. "It's the oldest story in the English language," Gaiman declared. "Told," Avary interjected, "with the most modern technology available."

Wearing special glasses that looked like Ray-Ban Wayfarers, the crowd of comic geeks sat rapt through scenes of menace and mayhem that rivaled anything in The Lord of the Rings. But the spine-tingling moments weren't when Ray Winstone, playing Beowulf, thrusts his sword at the audience — a 3-D cliché from the '50s. They came when he faces a digitally enhanced Angelina Jolie playing the mother of the monstrous Grendel, in a dank, forbidding cave. Jolie makes for a stunningly seductive sorceress, so it's all the more terrifying when her features momentarily morph into a death mask. A 3-D sword can make you jerk back in your seat, no question. But 3-D is even better when it draws you in — into the endless shadows of a cave, or into the vortex of a shrieking face.

news source: http://www.wired.com/