Beowulf

(Newser) - In 1926, an Oxford University professor named JRR Tolkien finished a translation of Beowulf—in his words, the "greatest of the surviving works of ancient English poetic art." Tolkien called the 11th-century work "sombre, tragic, sinister," and "curiously real," the Guardian notes. Elements of...

(Newser) - Mead, that honey-based alcoholic drink last popular around King Arthur’s Round Table, is making a comeback—well, sort of, Nicholas Day reports in Slate. Meaderies are springing up around the US, publishers have printed a spate of how-to books, and the Internet is rife with mead-making sites that include...

(Newser) - The Golden Compass took top spot at the weekend box office but fell short of its expected $30-40 million tally, Variety reports. The flick grossed $26.1 million, chump change for a film costing $180 million—and New Line execs didn't hide their disappointment as they touted its sales abroad....

(Newser) - Most of the reviews of Robert Zemeckis' Beowulf have noted the video-game feel of the CGI flick, and they're right: there is no technological difference between the film and animations used in high-end video games. Wired gaming blogger Chris Kohler argues this is a watershed for film; when scenes of...