If you're about to make a movie, and you think hey, lets make it CG just for the fuck of it, DON'T.

Well I know what you've all been asking: Phil, what has happened with all your creative endeavours? Your books, movies, TV shows, songs etc. Well it is true that I have been neglecting the book for a while, but did open the sucker up the other day, wrote a few paragraphs. Still like it, so it may yet be finished.

Movies and TV shows have been on the back burner for a bit, though there have been a couple of graphic novel ideas I have been playing with, ideas that I'd like to be movies, but the budgets would be huge. My newest idea would be pretty gory, so once (or if) I finish writing it and get round to drawing it, I’ll need lots of red.

Songs aren't doing too badly, been perfecting my four favourites, and working on a couple of others, lyrics pretty much done for three of the favourites. Getting there with some little solos too.

Got Beowulf from Love Film the other day, you know the one, nothing is real and it’s all made of computers with Angelina Jolie’s tits comped in.

I had high hopes for this film, as I am not averse to stylised live action, I'm a big fan of 300, though that was entirely live action as far as principle characters were concerned, just background and long shots done with computers, and then some extreme grading.
The problem when animation comes this close to real life is that instead of helping you forget that what you are watching is not real, and draw you in more than more traditional and abstract animation, it does the opposite. Sometimes it looks almost real, sometimes (especially the horses and when people are shouting) it looks very fake. This constantly pulls you out of the film, and is visually confusing. Why was this even made as animation? Why not live action with CG monsters? Oh, cus then Ray “the old fat fuck” Winston would have had to get is fat ass in the gym for some long long gruelling workouts. I it just me or can anyone else buy him as a mythical hero? I can’t get the his fat sunburnt torso from Sexy Beast out of my mind every time he opens his mouth.

The vocal performances also come across as confused. Is this a cartoon or not? The actors seems to be constantly unsure as to what vocal styles to use, so they decided (Angelina in particular) to use stupid voices instead. The animation also frequently fails to convince when people are talking, it doesn’t match the emotions or expressions of the dialogue.

While talking about the vocal performances it is annoying that every character seems to have a different regional accent from the British Iles. This is typical of movies, (LOTR, 300 etc.) where anything from the olden days/mystical and far away (from America) is British, and never consistent, hence Scots, Cockney’s and Irish are all supposed to be from the same town, in Denmark – in a time when people tended to be born, live, and die in the same place. Perhaps they watch too much TV. I know this seems like nit-picking, which I suppose it is, but imagine a movie set in 1800's New York where a character born and bread there has a tick Texan drawl? Wouldn't fucking happen would it.

I admit that had I seen this at a cinema in 3D I would likely have enjoyed it a great deal more, but on Blu-ray it is not satisfying, nay, it sucks ass.