I'm a big fan of Beowulf: no, not the new movie, the Anglo-Saxon epic poem. I've read it several times in the original and in modern English translations, most recently in the bilingual edition with Seamus Heaney's fine verse translation. I haven't yet seen the movie: maybe I'll get to it this weekend. I'd like to see it in IMAX 3D rather than at my local multiplex. I'm not sure I'll be able to do that, but I'll I haven’t yet seen the movie: maybe I’ll get to it this weekend. I’d like to see it in IMAX 3D rather than at my local multiplex. I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that, but I’ll try. I may decide that’s it’s a travesty of the poem, but I’ll try to judge it on its merits.The new Beowulf movie uses motion capture to capture live performance data for use in digital animation. The technology used is quite a bit more sophisticated than rotoscoping, but not state-of-the-art: in Beowulf, the body and face performances were captured with Vicon, which captures a few hundred markers. The state-of-the-art is Mova Contour, which captures hundreds of thousands of points, in what Mova calls markerless high-resolution surface capture.Reviewers are calling Beowulf “creepy” and “uncanny.” The Times blogger David F. Gallagher said “When it was over, I felt relieved to be back in the company of uncreepy flesh-and-blood humans again.” I can certainly see using motion capture for video games. I can sort of see it for TV. I’m not sure whether it will ever make sense for movies, at least for movies being viewed on a big screen.What do you think? Software Development