There are two ways to watch “Beowulf,” Robert Zemeckis’s eye-popping action spectacular. The first is with an attitude of academic solemnity; the story is adapted from an Old English ballad and will no doubt attract a host of scholars hoping for a resonant adaptation of their favorite Scandinavian myth. These viewers will be sorely disappointed. What they will find is a dizzying pop spectacle, a bastardization of classical source material into a bloody, sexy, relentlessly entertaining roller coaster of a movie. Viewers who approach “Beowulf” in this spirit of thrill-seeking decadence will get their money’s worth.
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On Nov. 15, a discussion on “Visual Humor and Race at Dartmouth” was held in Brace Commons in the East Wheelock cluster. The forum was intended to further dialogue between students and faculty that was prompted by “No Laughing Matter: Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality, and Ethnicity,” an exhibit at the Hood Museum of Art. However, that intent wasn’t entirely fulfilled.
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Lions for Lambs
A sanctimonious piece of political propaganda, Robert Redford’s new movie will disturb liberals who agree with its politics and delight conservatives who will tear it apart. Redford plays a grizzled professor trying to browbeat a student out of political apathy, while Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep spar over the Iraq War on Capitol Hill. In its least offensive moments, “Lions for Lambs” is boring and preachy; when the film moves from the halls of power into the field of battle, it descends into the exploitative and the ludicrous.
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