The shaper's lies

Since I started this blog, I’ve been meaning to write about the upcoming movie Beowulf and Grendel. There are many pictures around the net, but still no trailer or US release date although it did make its world premier this past Wednesday at the Toronto Film Festival. Filmed along the south coast of Iceland near Vík í Mýrdal, it holds the distinction of being the most expensive movie shot entirely in Iceland. Starring the wonderfully Scottish and hunky Gerard Butler as Beowulf and Canadian Sarah Polley (not as Grendel), it promises to be a harrowing, often gory fantasy adventure with spectacular scenery. Butler plays the hero who is Beowulf, unlike in the late John Gardner’s nihilistic book Grendel or the epic Marillion song of the same name where the monster is the hero.