Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf took a lot of hits for its perceived silliness, a verdict I could never quite sign on to. First of all, silly compared to what? Have these people seen the 1999 space opera Beowulf starring Christopher Lambert? Compared to that, Zemeckis's Beowulf is a sober meditation on the human condition. Have they seen the Gerard Butler clunker Beowulf and Grendel? Come on, guys: considering what the movies have done to this story in the past, last year's high-tech effort seems like serious business to me.

What about the source material – the ancient Old English epic poem upon which these movies purport to be based? If you've ever read it (or tried to read it), the perversions of the adaptations shouldn't surprise you. It's both begging for action movie treatment and impossible to faithfully adapt into anything resembling a compelling action movie. The story is credited with generating many of the archetypes we see in our fiction, and indeed, it's so archetypical that by modern standards, it's a skeleton; there's nothing there.

Seriously – you know how people complain about movies whose plots can be fully described in one sentence? A faithful Beowulf would take this phenomenon to new heights. A synopsis would read something like this: Beowulf beats up Grendel, Grendel's mom, and a dragon, and dies. The end. Some complained that the Zemeckis version distorted Beowulf, but I'd have liked to see their reaction to an undistorted adaptation. Trust me, it wouldn't work. There's a reason that all these screenwriters have scrambled to add elements to the story.

The rumors surrounding Watchmen began even before shooting did, most of which centered on what might become of the book's ending. If you haven't read it, I won't spoil it for you (though you need to go out and buy a copy right now), but suffice to say, it's pretty dark. It's so dark that every fan is convinced it's unfilmable -- and certainly, the leaked scripts suggested that many scriptwriters felt the same way.

The rumors persist despite several reports to the contrary (including one from an extra that leaked months ago), but now Patrick Wilson is setting the record straight. He talked to the MTV Movies Blog and literally laughed off rumors that the film has a happy ending. "Ha! I have to say, if you know how much Zack believes in it, you wouldn't believe he would go that far from the graphic novel. I don't know how those rumors start, but that'd be a stretch!"

The only scary part is that it is up to the studio to decide what to cut out of the film -- but even if crucial character bits land on the cutting room floor, Wilson explains that they tried to smash the detail in wherever they could. They've added "little lines here and there" to flesh out the character's backstories, as things have been cut by sheer necessity. And hey, the little details are what the book is for. It's the essentials, like that jaw-dropper of an ending, that have to stick to the page.

Watchmen opens March 6th, 2009.

"While waiting in line for the screening of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, I overhead someone say that Guillermo del Toro's latest is being seen as his audition tape for The Hobbit," observed Jonathan Pacheco in his review for The House Next Door. Of course, Del Toro already had the directing gigs for the two Hobbit films before Hellboy II hit theaters, but that won't stop audiences from evaluating the current parade of fairies, demons and evil elves with Del Toro's Middle-Earth-to-be in mind.
Needless to say, it's a narrow perspective.

It would make more sense to expect that these upcoming features will negotiate between the gothic horror of Pan's Labryinth and the blockbuster approach of Hellboy II. In the latter work, it's clear that Del Toro has more interest in placing these loony supernatural beings in relatively conventional action sequences, allowing the specificity of the characters to create a sense of ingenuity. Pan's Labryinth, on the other hand, offers a single package of storytelling: The art direction, special effects and even the violence directly relate to the drama. The best case scenario for the Hobbit films would be a happy medium: Glorious visuals that reflect Tolkien's deeply involving mythology.

Yes, the horrifying idea is true. Spooky Dan over at Bloody-Disgusting.net sat down with Rob Cohen, ostensibly to chat about The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and a startling bombshell was dropped. Cohen revealed that Paramount has snagged the rights to the 1987 cult classic The Monster Squad, and plans on remaking it in fairly short order. Cohen is going to produce, but isn't interested in directing.

The Monster Squad is a delightful horror-comedy about a group of middle school students obsessed with Stephen King, werewolves, and vampires. In a tidy plot twist, Dracula suddenly appears in their calm suburb, calls forth a few familiar minions, and makes plans to take over the world at midnight. It's the movie that proved, once and for all, that Wolfman has "nards." After languishing in cultish obscurity (and imprisoned on VHS), the movie had a resurgence once all us children of the '80s came of age, and is now available in a wonderful DVD package.

All of this is why the flick ... doesn't need to be remade. It's the perfect product of the '80s, one of those snarky movies the decade was rich in. Obviously Paramount is thinking that its ongoing popularity makes it an instant hit; I'm sure they will lamely explain this as a way to introduce the movie to the younger generation. But that's why we have DVD. I can introduce it to my future children just fine, thanks.

I never thought I would live to see the day when my entire childhood was remade. Surely Space Camp and The Goonies can't be far behind. What does that leave? Only Flight of the Navigator and An American Tail. Surely, the latter is being tossed around. I mean, two-dimensional animation doesn't speak to today's youth. Make it stop, Hollywood! Make it stop!

I'm typically a fan of all the movie-related stamps produced by the U.S. Postal Service, and I'm very glad to read the news that important early African American movie stars are being recognized and celebrated with a new series of 42-cent stamps (see them all here). However, I am a little disappointed that it carries on the usual exclusion of mostly forgotten non-musical race films, which are a significant part of both film history and African American history. Considering the stamps are tagged "Black Cinema USA," a number of people may assume this was the height of what African Americans were offered in the first half of the 20th century (Oscar Micheaux deserves a stamp).

Gripes aside, though, it is nonetheless a wonderful set. The five stamps feature vintage poster designs from old movies starring musical artists Josephine Baker (Princess Tam-Tam), Duke Ellington (Black and Tan) and Louis Jordan (Caldonia), plus King Vidor's monumental Oscar-nominated musical, Hallelujah! (it was one of the rare studio films featuring an all black cast) and the 1921 silent film The Sport of the Gods. In previous, separate years, Showboat costars Paul Robeson and Hattie McDaniel have also received their own postage stamps.

The new stamps come out Wednesday and there will be a ceremony on their behalf that day at the Newark Museum, which is currently holding the 34th annual Newark Black Film Festival. The festival is also holding free screenings of Hallelujah on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Maybe you've seen them, maybe you haven't, but French thrillers are making a comeback in North America. That's good news for people uninterested in art houses solely for the sake of watching foreign films: You don't have to be a Francophile to appreciate smart, meticulously generated suspense, and that's exactly the appeal of several French movies hitting American theaters this year. A steady mixture of warm reviews and positive word-of-mouth appears to have helped Guillame Canet's breathlessly entertaining drama Tell No One land an impressive $240,858 at 18 locations. Earlier this year, veteran auteur Claude Lelouch, long known for his cinematic explorations of eroticism and lawbreaking, remained thematically consistent with a delightfully complex story of double-crossing novelists and dysfunctional families called Roman de Gare. The movie made over $25,000 on two New York screens when it opened in late April, and eventually pulled in more than $1.5 million after expanding to theaters around the country. It's not hard to argue that Tell No One and Roman de Gare put most recent American thrillers to shame. North America, once the haven of film noir, appears to be outsourcing.

As journalist Erica Abeel recently observed in an interview with Canet, "French filmmakers are currently making the best old-style Hollywood thrillers." It's not the first time for a country that has a long history of borrowing from American cinema, and often improving on it. At the beginning of the French New Wave in the early 1960s, former Cahiers du Cinema critics like Jean Luc-Godard discovered Hollywood genre films and decided to make their own loopy versions. The results were often strangely philosophical and experiment works, ranging from Godard's Breathless to François Truffaut's ambitious Shoot the Piano Player.

With The Dark Knight making its debut this Friday, I thought the time was right to take a look back at this jaw-dropping Batman parody from 1966. Rat Pfink A Boo Boo was the brainchild of Ray Dennis Steckler, the B-movie auteur behind The Thrill Killers, The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (the latter of which would have me muttering "cha-ching" right about now if I was paid by the word). Released in 1966, the same year the Batman TV series debuted, the film actually doesn't focus on costumed hero buffoonery until nearly the half-way mark. Apparently Steckler decided that the earnest but incompetent crime thriller he had been making wasn't working out, so he decided to do his own take on Batman, a character he had long admired. The resulting film is a disjointed mess unlike anything you've ever seen before, making this the Plan 9 From Outer Space of super hero films, and if you're the type who can find enjoyment in amazingly bad cinema then you just have to see this.

Christopher Lee attended the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival this week, and our friends from RushBlogg, Karsten and Eirik, were on hand to talk to him. Of all the attendees, Meinich was the only one who asked Lee about his involvement in The Hobbit. Lee's answer came as quite a surprise -- first, he's adamant that he won't be appearing in The Hobbit, because as we all know, Saruman isn't in the book. This comes as no surprise -- Lee is a Tolkien purist (thank goodness!) and he won't allow himself to be shoehorned in, even if Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro were interested in doing so.

But what about the much discussed second film, which would likely deal with the Council of Wizards? That's a location problem. Lee isn't interested in filming in New Zealand again because it is simply too far away, for too long of a time. You can hear the tiredness in his voice -- and perhaps a bit of regret too.

That doesn't mean Lee isn't interested in being in The Hobbit at all, however! He'll appear in the film as long as he can stay in London, and there's a character he's quite keen to play. Or rather, voice. Someone very large, with a penchant for gold...

Head on over to RushBlogg and watch their video of Lee. It's a fantastic clip, and listening to him talk about Saruman, Return of the King, the Council of Wizards, and much more. It's like story-time. I could listen to him talk about Middle Earth for hours.

[Thanks Karsten!]