Angelina Jolie's lips look even fuller than usual. She's emerging naked from a pool of dank cave water, rivulets of gold streaming gently down her body.
"Giiiif meee sonnnn," she coos, in an Old English accent.
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'Beowulf' grabs a ride on 'The Polar Express'
Robert Zemeckis employs motion capture technology again for the medieval epic.
COMIC-CON WATCH
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday July 27, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 48 words Type of Material: Correction
'Beowulf': In some copies of Wednesday's Calendar section, an article about Robert Zemeckis' new movie, "Beowulf," said that Crispin Glover, who portrays Grendel, had last worked with Zemeckis when he played Marty McFly in 1985's "Back to the Future." He played George McFly, Marty's father, in that film.
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Her flaxen hair is braided down her back in a long tail that slowly undulates and slaps the dark pool around her. She continues to purr enticements about making babies as a virtual camera circles 360 degrees panning around her long limbs and waist. Gold dribbles down her inner thighs past her feet, revealing sharp stilettos merged with bestial hooves.
Welcome to the world of Paramount Pictures' "Beowulf," as imagined by Robert Zemeckis, the same filmmaker who last bore zombie-like children in stiff pajamas riding a speeding train into the North Pole. Except this time Zemeckis is using his increasingly sophisticated bag of tricks to serve up adult fantasy (or a minimum of PG-13).
Adapted from the oldest story in the English language, "Beowulf" is a hyper violent and highly sexualized tale of the warrior Beowulf (Ray Winstone) who must slay the monster Grendel (Crispin Glover). Later, Grendel's mother (Jolie) seduces Beowulf so that she can produce a replacement heir that will allow her to reestablish her dominion over the kingdom. (Hence, Giiiif meee sonnn.)
The first public viewing of "Beowulf" will be served up in digital 3-D projection at Comic-Con in San Diego tonight before screening again in standard digital projection for thousands of genre fans on Thursday afternoon in the convention center's Hall H. It's impossible to say how this taste-making crowd will respond, even if some involved in the project have taken to describing it as " 'Lord of the Rings' meets '300.' "
But Zemeckis producing partner Steve Starkey is betting that "Beowulf's" horror-fantasy elements coupled with digital 3-D -- not to mention a digitally enhanced Jolie matched with a heroic Beowulf -- will be embraced by a genre crowd hungry for a big story with big themes that also delivers heaping amounts of cinematic spectacle.
"I think this will be right up Comic-Con's alley," Starkey said on Monday.
After poring over dozens of translations of the historic Anglo-Saxon epic poem, best known as required reading by high school and college English students across the country, screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary started translating the 3,183 lines of heroic poetry into cinematic language in May 1997.
