Wednesday movie news tidbits: unathorized Joss Whedon, boring Beowulf, more

• Unauthorized early draft of Serenity script on eBay; fans torn.

Killer quote:

My question is this — if the guy doesn’t really have Whedon’s blessing to sell this script (which I believe his disclaimer clearly indicates), is it kosher for browncoats to go buying it? Are you a real fan if you buy the early draft of a cool movie, or are you a real fan if you stick with what Joss himself wanted you to know and see?

• Who’s afraid of Beowulf? Not us, laments the NY Times.

Killer quote:

It’s tempting to say that every age gets the “Beowulf” it deserves, or one that suggests what’s most on people’s minds: the kooky sci-fi version; the brooding, existential one; the sensitive anti-epic. What the original audience for “Beowulf” had on its mind was terror. They listened to the poem in circumstances much like the ones it describes, huddled together around a fire and fretting about what lurked outside in the darkness, and they knew something that some of the modern adapters may have lost sight of: that in the right circumstances it’s extremely pleasant to be scared out of your wits. Far more entertaining than a lonely troll with grief issues, or one working through identity questions, is the thing from the night who (to adapt Mr. Heaney) bites into your bone lappings, bolts down your blood and gorges on you in lumps.

• Animation makes actors kooky, say Scanner Darkly stars.

Killer quote:

“It was fun to make bigger gestures and exaggerate certain facial expressions,” Cochrane said in a separate interview. He, Harrelson and Downey may have gone more nutty with their performances because they knew the live-action footage would be turned into animation, but that knowledge didn’t affect Ryder’s or Reeves’ performances, they said.

• Snakes on a blog at Snakes on a Blog.

(Technorati tags: Serenity, Beowulf, Scanner Darkly, Snakes on a Plane)