TV/Movies Megathread

[garbon]

Also, there's no explanation as to why Beowulf feels sad when he's old.  Dude, everything turned out great--you got a castle and a drinking hall and you swive bitches all the time, what's your problem?

There's always reason to feel sad when you're old. Either you haven't done much and are filled with regret, or you've done a lot and it's coming to an end.

Yeah, I would think being old is enough.

[Sheilbh]

Sheilbh, do we know how important Beowulf was in Anglo-Saxon society?

It's difficult to say. We've got 400 Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. It's almost impossible to judge because so much was lost.

Clearly it was important enough to be written down, but this was one of the most literate societies in the Western Christian world.

One suggestion that it may have been very widely known is that phrases are used in it that then recur in works we know came later. But Anglo-Saxon poetry was alliterative and used 'kennings' (two-words together to mean another, 'sea-rider' for ship for example), so they had a lot of stock phrases (which the Beowulf poet often messes with). We know there was actually a guide to writing poetry, but sadly nothing of it survived. So it's difficult to say whether those phrases that are used in lots of subsequent heroic poems came from Beowulf or were part of the poetic inheritance that the Beowulf poet had.

Similarly poetry seems to have been really important to the Anglo-Saxons - as I say there was a book about composing. For example there's a bit in Beowulf were Hrothgar's court poet recites a tale. We have a tiny fragment of the full version of that poem, which would suggest that the Beowulf poet could assume his audience would understand a reference to the Fight at Finnesburg.

Also whenever it was composed it is still widely seen as a sort-of myth the Anglo-Saxons told of their own original homeland and, of course, a Christian people told of their pagan ancestors.

[jimmy olsen]

It's difficult to say. We've got 400 Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. It's almost impossible to judge because so much was lost.

Clearly it was important enough to be written down, but this was one of the most literate societies in the Western Christian world.

How do we know that? Is 400 a lot more than we have from France? If not, how do we know that so much was lost?

[Ideologue]

Also, there's no explanation as to why Beowulf feels sad when he's old.  Dude, everything turned out great--you got a castle and a drinking hall and you swive bitches all the time, what's your problem?

There's always reason to feel sad when you're old. Either you haven't done much and are filled with regret, or you've done a lot and it's coming to an end.

Yeah, I would think being old is enough.

OK, but without making the deal with Angelina Jolie, it would have been even worse.

[garbon]

Also, there's no explanation as to why Beowulf feels sad when he's old.  Dude, everything turned out great--you got a castle and a drinking hall and you swive bitches all the time, what's your problem?

There's always reason to feel sad when you're old. Either you haven't done much and are filled with regret, or you've done a lot and it's coming to an end.

Yeah, I would think being old is enough.

OK, but without making the deal with Angelina Jolie, it would have been even worse.

I didn't watch that crap movie.

[Ideologue]

Finished Bonnie and Clyde.  Apparently, the Thomson submachine gun parts began immediately after I stopped it the first time. The last forty is significantly more entertaining than the first sixty, and the ending is pretty great.  Overall still a B  I understand it's actually important in film history, though, so kick it up half a point if you feel your sense of propriety has been violated, or the best gangster movie of the 60s or whatever has been underrated.

Road to Perdition (2002) again.  Its theme is perhaps a mite underdeveloped (Michael Jr. never seems seriously in danger of following his father's path of violence), but I still adore all the father/son dynamics, the occasional humor, and the beautiful photography.  (And it damned sure is a lot better than Skyfall.)  A

[Ideologue]

Bummer.  Amazon removed the exploit where you can lock down a temporarily low price indefinitely by adding a pre-order, at least in the case of big-ticket items.  In this case, I wanted the option to buy the Hitchcock BD collection for its current, lower (still high) price, but only if this autumn proves to involve more gainful employment than my summer; for obvious reason, I am not particularly into spending that much right this second.  Unfortunately, Amazon was insistent that it had a very different estimated shipping date than the Omega Man/Logan's Run/Soylent Green triple feature I was pairing it with--rather glad I noticed.

[dps]

It's difficult to say. We've got 400 Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. It's almost impossible to judge because so much was lost.

Clearly it was important enough to be written down, but this was one of the most literate societies in the Western Christian world.

How do we know that? Is 400 a lot more than we have from France? If not, how do we know that so much was lost?

I'm no expert on Anglo-Saxon literature, but in general, with old stuff like that, often a still extant work references other works which are lost, so we know that they existed.  And it's reasonable to infer that there are other lost works which aren't even referenced in anything that still exists.

[Sheilbh]

How do we know that? Is 400 a lot more than we have from France? If not, how do we know that so much was lost?

Yeah we have more, we know that the Anglo-Saxons were keen on literacy and there's an unusually broad number of subjects. It's more than any Western European vernacular language at the time. We're talking texts that have survived from the 7th century to the 11th and there's no comparable hoard of vernacular writing elsewhere in Western Christendom.

In addition we know that the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were interested in education and in writing in the vernacular, famously Alfred ordered the establishment of a court school and other schools (ultimately he wanted education for every free man with means). He ordered that important Latin books should be translated into Old English and, himself, translate Boethius, Gregory the Great and St. Augustine.

The texts we have are very broad. There's 30 000 lines of verse which includes heroic poems like Beowulf, historical poems, elegies, lyrics, riddles and paraphrases of the Bible. Similarly the prose that's survived is wide there's translations of books of the Bible, a range of homilies but also secular writing like prose fiction (both translations and original), translations of philosophy, legal documents and even some scientific and medical work. In addition there's the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which is estimated to have started in the mid-7th century and was still being updated as late as the 1150s.

I'm no expert on Anglo-Saxon literature, but in general, with old stuff like that, often a still extant work references other works which are lost, so we know that they existed.  And it's reasonable to infer that there are other lost works which aren't even referenced in anything that still exists.

Yeah. There's lots of references to other books, there are fragments and there's the odd bit of a monastery library catalogue surviving. That's how we know that the poetry guide, the 'handbook of songcraft', existed.

It's incredible that anything survived though. I mean 1000 years is a long time but when they've had to deal with Viking and Norman invasions, civil war, plague, random fires, the disestablishment of the monasteries when the texts were just sold to men with antiquary interests and so on it's extraordinary. For example the only copy we have of Beowulf was almost destroyed in a house fire in the 17th century.

[Ideologue]

Just watched Inside Man again, and maybe I do need to watch Orange is the New Black.  Kim Director guest stars in an episode called "Fucksgiving."  In Inside Man, she was Stevie--i.e., the brunette with the Cal-approved cans--so, yeah, that piques my interest.

[Gups]

Orange in the New Black is very good. Not in the Superleague with BB, MM, the Wire or the Sopranos but near the top of the second division.

Plot is not up to much but the characters are great and it's very well-acted.

[viper37]

I like the Blacklist.  I don't know how long I'll like it, but so far, I find it very funny.  Of course, I do like James Spader as an actor, and I think his style fits well with the show.

[garbon]

Catching up on The League and this episode with Seth Rogen in LA is pretty dreadful.  Did enjoy the episode before last though with Snoop Lion.

[garbon]

Other observation - David Krumholtz, who features as a fat friend in the episode, apparently bulked up quite a bit. Wiki says that a couple years back he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

[katmai]

Other observation - David Krumholtz, who features as a fat friend in the episode, apparently bulked up quite a bit. Wiki says that a couple years back he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

I hadn't seen him since Numbers went off air and didn't think it was him at first.