Upcoming Movies - Beowulf, Tales from Earthsea and ???

Spotted a few interesting looking upcoming movies over the last week so I might make this a regular feature here…

Beowulf

Beowulf is the retelling of the Scandinavian epic poem about a hero, a monster and the monster's mother. It's one of those tales we get taught at school and is pretty much regarded as a classic.

I'm not sure about Ray Winstone doing the voice of Beowulf but the trailer looks promising and Angelina Jolie is seriously well animated as Grendel's mother. It's directed by Robert Zemekis and written/adapted by well-known fantasy author Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, who was involved with Killing Zoe, Crying Freeman and Silent Hill.

The cast line-up is also quite good as, along with Winstone and Jolie, there's Anthony Hopkins as King Hrothgar, Crispin Glover as Grendel, Brendan Gleeson and John Malkovich.

It's due for a UK release on 3oth November.

Tales From Earthsea

This is doing the rounds now in smaller cinemas and I'm hoping it'll get up here to Glasgow. Adapted from the series of books of Ursula K. Le Guin and animated by Studio Ghibli, who also gave us Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle. It also marks the directorial debut of Goro Miyazaki, son of the legendary Hayao Miyazaki.

This enchanting story takes place in a fantasy world of dragons and wizards and follwos the wizard Sparrowhawk on his quest to find the source of the evil forces that are shaking the world.

The official site is in Japanese but it's beautifully done and gives a nice sample of the quality of the artwork and sound you can expect in the movie. There are also a few trailers available.

???

There's a teaser trailer doing the rounds for an upcoming monster movie. It has no title as yet, simply being listed as an Untitled J.J. Abram's Project, but it would appear to be something along the lines of Godzilla kicks New York's ass and it's being touted for a January 2008 release.

Shot in a sort of documentary style, The trailer is definitely worth catching for the pretty excellent looking and sounding special effects. Watch it in HD and put on the headphones.