Beowulf

I BELIEVE THAT WE parents must encourage our children to become educated, so they can get into a good college that we cannot afford.I try to help my son, Rob, with his schooling, but over the years this has become more difficult. Back when he was dealing with basic educational issues such as why the sky is blue and what a duck says, I always knew the correct answers ("It doesn't matter" and "Moo"). But when Rob got into the higher grades, he started dealing with complex concepts such as the "hypotenuse," which hadn't been invented yet when I was a student.

Capsules by Michael Sragow unless noted. Full reviews are at baltimoresun.com/movies. American Gangster -- plays like a deluxe network-TV miniseries, but with all the nudity, profanity and gore the networks would cut out. (M.S.) R 160 minutes C+ Beowulf -- Geats champion Beowulf (Ray Winstone) conquers the monster Grendel (Crispin Glover) and goes on to confront Grendel's mother (Angelina Jolie) and, later, a dragon. Robert Zemeckis' garishly digitalized version of the medieval epic owes more to the sword-and-sex-play fantasies of 12-year-olds than the traditions of Old English poetry.

It began as a pagan poem told around shadowy campfires about a hero fighting the monster Grendel, the monster's mother and a dragon. Christendom's world of saints and sinners reinvented Beowulf as a soldier of God and branded Grendel one of Cain's evil kin. Lord of the Rings author and Old English scholar J.R.R. Tolkien reintroduced the story to the modern world in 1936 as an important work of literary art rather than an obscure artifact of Old English language. Since then, Beowulf has been resurrected in graphic novels, comic books, films and stage performances, including an opera and a dance theater production called My Beowulf.

Owing more to the sword-and-sex-play fantasies of 12-year-olds than the traditions of Old English poetry, Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf will allow adolescents to have their cheesecake - and beefcake - and eat it, too. Old Hollywood's moviemakers used to set their toga sagas in Rome when Christianity was poised to usurp paganism, so they could exploit nude milk baths and gladiatorial combat while bewailing godless excess. Beowulf (Paramount Pictures) Starring Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, Angelina Jolie.

I have boiled my brain and distilled the residue trying futilely to remember how many of the 3,182 lines of "Beowulf" I read as a student. I am no scholar, so I know I could not have read it in the original Old English. Yet I vividly remember Beowulf, the Scandinavian prince and king; and I know that "Beowulf" was the earliest, greatest European narrative epic poem -- arguably the firmest foundation stone of poetry in English. Almost certainly, my awareness draws more on memory of popularizations than on reading the work.

Owing more to the sword-and-sex-play fantasies of 12-year-olds than the traditions of Old English poetry, Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf will allow adolescents to have their cheesecake - and beefcake - and eat it, too. Old Hollywood's moviemakers used to set their toga sagas in Rome when Christianity was poised to usurp paganism, so they could exploit nude milk baths and gladiatorial combat while bewailing godless excess. Beowulf (Paramount Pictures) Starring Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Robin Wright Penn, Angelina Jolie.

The Book of Prefaces, by Alasdair Gray, Bloomsbury, 640 pages, $24.95 softbound. This is an absolutely amazingly delightful book. Gray is often called Scotland's grand old man of letters -- a prodigious novelist and scholar. He put in 16 years on this work, which is a compilation of prefaces and other explanatory documents published about and with a book, play or work of poetry. His definition of preface is generous; he includes, for example, the spoken prologues that open five of Shakespeare's plays.

Next Friday BEOWULF -- (Paramount) Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins and Ray Winstone star in the Norse legend of the warrior who battles Grendel and his mother. Robert Zemeckis directs. DARFUR NOW -- (Warner Independent) Actor Don Cheadle leads an examination of the genocide in Sudan's western region. JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM PLAINS -- (Sony Classics) Director Jonathan Demme chronicles the former president's travels as Carter promotes his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA -- (New Line Cinema)

BEOWULF -- Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins and Ray Winstone star in the Norse legend of the warrior who battles Grendel and his mother. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN -- A hunter stumbles upon dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash. MR. MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM -- Dustin Hoffman plays the mysterious proprietor of a magic toy shop. JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM PLAINS -- The story of the former president's book tour to promote Palestine: Peace or Apartheid. LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA -- Lovers wait a half-century to reunite in the adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel of the same name.

Police Blotter is a sampling of crimes in Baltimore and Baltimore County.Southeastern DistrictVandalism: Someone used a BB gun to shoot out at least one window at Bea Gaddy's Women and Children Center in the 100 block of N. Collington Ave. on Wednesday night. No injuries were reported. Police said the center has been the target of vandals in the past.Western DistrictDrug arrests: In separate incidents Wednesday, police arrested four men on drug charges and seized quantities of suspected heroin and marijuana and about $300.

BEOWULF -- Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins and Ray Winstone star in the Norse legend of the warrior who battles Grendel and his mother. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN -- A hunter stumbles upon dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash. MR. MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM -- Dustin Hoffman plays the mysterious proprietor of a magic toy shop. JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM PLAINS -- The story of the former president's book tour to promote Palestine: Peace or Apartheid. LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA -- Lovers wait a half-century to reunite in the adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel of the same name.

It began as a pagan poem told around shadowy campfires about a hero fighting the monster Grendel, the monster's mother and a dragon. Christendom's world of saints and sinners reinvented Beowulf as a soldier of God and branded Grendel one of Cain's evil kin. Lord of the Rings author and Old English scholar J.R.R. Tolkien reintroduced the story to the modern world in 1936 as an important work of literary art rather than an obscure artifact of Old English language. Since then, Beowulf has been resurrected in graphic novels, comic books, films and stage performances, including an opera and a dance theater production called My Beowulf.

Next Friday BEOWULF -- (Paramount) Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins and Ray Winstone star in the Norse legend of the warrior who battles Grendel and his mother. Robert Zemeckis directs. DARFUR NOW -- (Warner Independent) Actor Don Cheadle leads an examination of the genocide in Sudan's western region. JIMMY CARTER MAN FROM PLAINS -- (Sony Classics) Director Jonathan Demme chronicles the former president's travels as Carter promotes his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA -- (New Line Cinema)

HOLLYWOOD studios are said to be in a backslide, grappling with unhappy realities. Well, boy, oh boy, that's not the picture I got of Paramount Pictures when I lunched with Brad Grey who now runs things there. Brad and I go way back to his days as a Young Turk agent/manager with the (Bernie) Brillstein-Grey Agency. Now, he's a movie tycoon in the creative manner of a starmaker. (Well, maybe not exactly because times have changed so much!) But with Brad, the talent still comes first. He and I sat down for a catch-up at Michael's popular watering spot.

NEW YORK -- In the world of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, the storied comic-book series he wrote from 1988 to 1996, there lies a library filled with books their authors only dreamed of writing. If Gaiman were crafting the dream king's domain today, he might well add a multiplex to show all the movies he's never made. In the past 16 years, Gaiman has watched more than a dozen of his comics, stories and novels languish in Hollywood's often dark maze of development without a single one making its way to the screen.

The Book of Prefaces, by Alasdair Gray, Bloomsbury, 640 pages, $24.95 softbound. This is an absolutely amazingly delightful book. Gray is often called Scotland's grand old man of letters -- a prodigious novelist and scholar. He put in 16 years on this work, which is a compilation of prefaces and other explanatory documents published about and with a book, play or work of poetry. His definition of preface is generous; he includes, for example, the spoken prologues that open five of Shakespeare's plays.

American Gangster -- A Harlem, N.Y., criminal mastermind puts together a heroin operation with drugs smuggled out of Vietnam in soldiers' coffins and a wholesome army of outlaws. It plays like a deluxe network-TV miniseries, but with all the nudity, profanity and gore the networks would cut out. (M.S.) R 160 minutes C+ Beowulf -- Geats champion Beowulf (Ray Winstone) conquers the monster Grendel (Crispin Glover) and goes on to confront Grendel's mother (Angelina Jolie) and, later, a dragon.