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'Beowulf'

Epic poem getting the Hollwood treatment

This is what you call beastly advances.

Paramount Pictures already is giving the Big Push to director Robert Zemeckis' film adaptation of the epic poem "Beowulf," which does not open until Nov. 16, presumably to give most of us time to get over grim memories of having the tale force-fed to us in school.

Starring burly Ray Winstone ("Sexy Beast," "The Proposition") in the title role, with Anthony Hopkins (as King Hrothgar), John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn, Brendan Gleeson, Crispin Glover (as Grendel), Alison Lohman and Angelina Jolie also on board, the film does not lack for gifted actors ("Star Trek: Enterprise's" Dominic Keating also plays a prominent part). But it remains to be seen if legend can be turned into lucre in this case.

Neil Gaiman (the graphic novel "Sandman") and Oscar winner Roger Avary ("Pulp Fiction") penned the script, which is probably a good start.

The battle between mighty warrior Beowulf and the fearsome demon Grendel (not to mention Grendel's formidable mom) was the linchpin of the Old English epic, composed during the Early Middle Ages. And at 3,183-lines, a prodigious one. Despite the fact that this single major surviving work of Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry deals principally with Scandinavian concerns, it has been adopted over the centuries as "England's national epic" — a testament to the conquests and great Germanic migrations from Scandinavian lands into what are now England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The last, and one of the very few, times anyone tried to tell the tale on film was in 2005's botched "Beowulf and Grendel," a joint British-Icelandic-Canadian production notable for stunning vistas and side-splitting anachronisms.

Better luck this time.

YWCA centennial

Three local black mothers established the YWCA in 1907 to guarantee that young minority girls had an organization dedicated to their welfare. For more than 100 years, the YWCA of Greater Charleston Inc., has played a key role in furthering civil rights, generating education and enrichment opportunities and striving for "a more just and equitable world for all people in our community."

In commemoration of the local YWCA's centennial, the Avery Cultural Center will screen "Honoring Our Legacy, Celebrating Our Future: 100 Years of the YWCA of Greater Charleston" tonight at 6. Admission is free. A jazz reception follows.

Produced "to capture and archive" the YWCA's history and legacy, the 30-minute documentary is being presented in conjunction with the MOJA Arts Festival. The film, which is sponsored by the Humanities Council, features interviews with pivotal leaders involved with the YWCA's work throughout the civil rights movement into the present day. "Honoring Our Legacy" was directed by documentary filmmaker Tony Bell. The project director was Dr. Warachal Faison.

Silence speaks

Films of the silent era (1886-1929) were to "talking pictures" what the black-and-white cinema was to color: a wholly different art form, closely related yet radically different in how they told a story.

The story of the silents is itself a fascinating tale, endlessly examined, interpreted and revised. Peter Kobel draws on the extraordinarily comprehensive collection of the Library of Congress, one of the greatest repositories for silent film and memorabilia, in the making of his new book, "Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture" (Little, Brown & Co., preface by Martin Scorsese). Publication of the book coincides with the launch of a traveling film series at the Library of Congress opening Nov. 7, which highlights movies that have been restored by the library.

Lavishly illustrated with more than 400 amazing images — including extensive collections of posters, paper prints, film stills and memorabilia — this work of film history captures the birth of film and rise of such icons as Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Clara Bow and Rudolph Valentino, not to mention the substantial numbers of great stars, like Garbo, who successfully made the transition from silents to sound films.

"Silent Movies" covers the spectrum from the art form's birth in the 1890s with the earliest narrative shorts through the full-length features of the 1920s. It also explores the technology of early motion pictures, the use of color photography and the restoration work being championed by some of Hollywood's most influential filmmakers. It belongs in any film buff's library.

Bits and pieces

"The Jane Austen Book Club" opens here Friday. But fans needn't be content with just seeing the movie or re-reading "Pride and Prejudice." Emma Campbell Webster's new interactive book, "Lost in Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure" (Riverhead), affords readers the chance to actually be "Pride and Prejudice's" Elizabeth Bennet. As Lizzy, the reader manipulates the story, but must navigate her way through a variety of decisions that will determine her romantic fate. ... Now playing, "In the Valley of Elah" has echoes of both Costa-Gavras' "Missing" (1982), with Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, and Ed Zwick's "Courage Under Fire" (1996) with Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan. But writer-director Paul Haggis' latest is getting mixed reviews as a followup to his Oscar-winning screenplays for "Million Dollar Baby" and "Crash" and his Oscar nomination for the "Letters From Iwo Jima" script. ... Word has it that the most frightening environmental calamity movie this year is not some ham-handed documentary rehash hosted by a Hollywood heavyweight — a not-so-subtle dig at "The 11th Hour" and Leo DiCaprio — but rather Larry Fessenden's smart and well-crafted horror film, "The Last Winter," set at a remote Alaskan energy company outpost in late winter.