Beowulf Analysis

          This movie actually reminded me of another movie that I'm sure some of us are familiar with, How to Train Your Dragon. The elements in this movie are actually quite similar to those of How To Train Your Dragon. Both of the main characters were given extremely masculine voices, in How To Train Your Dragon the clan leader had Gerard Butler's voice and I don't know if there can be a more masculine voice than his. This goes along with something I mentioned in a presentation of mine during the Decameron Unit. I spoke of how Vikings now are depicted as hyper masculine due to the fact that in their culture males had the choice to overindulge in their masculinity or risk losing it completely. I even threw in the little tidbit of information about homosexuality in Viking society and how it was not exactly frowned upon, but rather a ritual of domination of one being over another. All this to say that I feel that even though this movie was not particularly entertaining, the way the Norse society was depicted was fairly accurate, I even recently read an article that said that the Norse peoples were accustomed to and preferred staying situated near the coast of the land they were on as well as taking in accounts of the topography of the landscape. In this movie the settlement was on the coast of whatever body of water it was, and it was situated in an elevated landscape if I remember correctly, it was on a cliff but it was also in the midst of some mountains, again, if I remember correctly.
           Another sort of ideal that especially caught my attention was when Beowulf first encountered Grendel in the movie. Beowulf was completely naked when he battled Grendel while there were all these other soldiers who were fully armed who were getting slaughtered by Grendel. Beowulf in a sort of way was so confident and in a way put everything on the line battling this evil demonic creature without the least bit of protection. This directly correlates to two other films one contemporary and the other in the movie wit Heath Ledger. Heath Ledger or Sir Ulrich/William at the end in the final round of the jousting tournament, when it was do or die, William as well put everything on the line (including his life because I imagine that if you get hit  with one of those lances in the chest without any sort of armor on the result would be fatal) but the fact that William was confident enough in his abilities and made himself so vulnerable, is what set him aside from all the other knights and turned out to lead to his victory in the tournament. I can also relate this to a very modern movie the newest Batman movie, I think it's called The Dark Knight Rises, but the point is when Christian Bale/Bruce Wayne/Batman is down in the prison/pit an the only way to get out is by scaling the wall which many have tried...with the safeguard of attaching a rope to themselves in case they fall they won't be hurt. Bruce attempts it with the rope many times until he hears a story of the only person who has ever escaped the pit was a little boy who did it without the safeguard of attaching a rope to himself. So Bruce, in turn, decides to (once again) put his life on the line and has to fully confide in himself and make himself completely vulnerable to achieve success and ultimately escape the realm of the pit.
           This was just a small facet that came together and clicked in my head. I don't know if anybody else noticed or found this interesting, but I feel like it's true and applicable and it almost sounds virtuous, "you have to make yourself completely vulnerable to achieve what you've never achieved before" or something cheesy like that. Actually I think its equivalent is the saying "you have to do what you've never done before to go where you've never been before"or something along those lines.

Beowulf Analysis

The Knight's Tale Analysis

           The movie we finished watching on Friday was actually pretty good, I thought at least. I thought it was kind of interesting or peculiar the style of music the directors chose to go with the movie. Like what was the song there at the beginning, I think it was " We will rock you" or whatever the name of that song is. I just wanted to point out (even though I'm sure most of noticed) how the songs seemed out of place and didn't quite seem to fit the movie. There were a few examples in the movie, I can't really remember what the song was but at the end in the final tournament as William was riding in on his horse there was another song that didn't quite fit because it was just so our time and out of place I felt like the whole soundtrack and string of unfitting songs kind of ruined the seriousness and in some ways like the respect you could have for the movie kind of if you know what I mean ( I watch a ton of movies so I've kind of  learned to pick apart and be really critical of a ton of movies). But then I guess in defense of the director of the movie as we were walking out after we had finished the movie on Friday I heard Dr. Comber talking to someone saying that how the music could've just been forcing upon the audience the notion that jousting created that sort of atmosphere for people back then where it was all competitive and whatnot just like it does for us nowadays, for instance I'm pretty sure we would play "We Will Rock You" at like middle school basketball games all the time and it just got everybody into that competitive atmosphere. So I guess that would really be one of the few if not the only case the director could have for throwing in those soundtracks into his otherwise exceptional movie. I'm still not sure if I had had the chance that I would've tried to bring across that point at the expense of affecting the quality of the movie.
           I also wanted to point out some examples that for whatever reason caught my attention and I just now thought of. I'm sure the director's of all movies that are made after a historical piece like The Knight's Tale do extensive research into the real story itself to see if they can convey these messages that were lost in the historical sense, and for this reason I want to point out a line that stuck out at me, I think it was somebody in a position of power that told a subordinate to hurry up and get whatever it was done "before the second coming perhaps", it took me a little bit to think about what it meant and then I was like oh yeah religion was big in this time period so it meant the second coming as in the second coming of Christ that is prophesied about in the Bible. I just thought this really showed the difference in culture and where, I guess to say, where we put our values or interests almost, for example in the movie The Sandlot, Squints says when he's yelling at Smalls to throw the ball in " Hurry up! My clothes are going out of style." Which I guess is kind of a bad example but to put it bluntly I feel like lets say as each of the time periods progressed if we had a time line that started with the Middle Ages that went up and every like 100 years or whatever amount of time you want to say, there was the common way for somebody to tell someone else to hurry up, on the timeline now for 2013 the quote would simply be something along the lines of "Hurry the f*** up!" Like I know it might seem really random but I felt like this was the best thing for me to talk about because I actually thought about it while we were watching the movie, I just kind of went off on my train of thought and this is what I concluded.
Following suit of Emma's blog overall movie rating: 4.3/5