Beowulf in 3D

Beowulf pursues Grendel's mother
The Cincinnati Movie Bears got together last night for a 3D showing of Beowulf.

The tale of Beowulf and his battle with the monster Grendel is something I think most of us got stuck reading (or trying to read) in high school, so I wont recount that. The movie does a great job explaining the story in grand detail. Of course, the hype really comes from the animation of the film, which was incredible. Amazing detail in every scene and lots of male nude backsides and strategically placed items to hide the full frontal from appearing. Lots of giggling from the bears during certain scenes were heard. Watching it in 3D with my special 3D Carrie Donovan glasses was fun too :)

Did I enjoy the movie? Very much.
Watch it again? I think so.
Buy the DVD? Oh yeah :)

The Editing of Tom & Jerry

Cartoon Network is running a Tom and Jerry marathon today. I used to love watching these cartoons for the most part. However, I find them more difficult to watch these days, especially since whoever owns the rights has been making them more politically correct. This entry might be a bit unpopular with some folks.

Tom's owner, referred to online as "Mammy TwoShoes," is a large black woman whose face we never see. In the cartoons as I remember them as a child, she had a very cartoonish voice. She used the word "ain't" a lot (I still do). A modern voice by another black actress has been re-dubbed over the original dialogue now. Certain scenes have also been cut from the cartoons because they were deemed politically incorrect as well.

One of the points that bothers me about this is that these are Academy Award nominated or winning cartoon shorts from the 1930's and 1940's that have been edited. I feel like someone is trying to clean up history, if you can view these cartoons to be historical. I often wonder how people would feel if they re-dubbed Butterfly McQueen's dialogue in her Oscar winning role in Gone With the Wind. I am bothered that the cartoons of my youth are being distorted.

As a child, I never thought the Mammy TwoShoes as a racial stereotype, only that this individual lady had a funny way of talking. I never though of Tom's charred face from the exploded tea pot as "blackface." I suspect that if young children watched the unedited cartoons today, they would likely not see these things either. I can't even buy the DVD's of these cartoons because they only sell the edited versions. By chance, I own a VHS copy of some of the cartoons that are the original versions and I'm sure it will be valuable someday as it is valuable to me already.