When we as a class were first told we would have to blog about Dante once every fortnight, the assurance was "It won't be hard to think of material at all!  Dante comes up all the time in everyday life!"  Well, something like that anyway.  At the time I was dubious, and to be honest every other Friday, (or sometimes Saturday) I find myself searching my brain, the web and my friends for random Dante references that we havn't discussed in class or recitation.  This week I found myself doing this once again, for a full 24 hours this time (hence why this is a day late).  I stumbled upon one thing or another but either it was a tenuous connection at best or it simply wasn't something I wanted to write about.  

Anyway, this morning I found myself watching Beauty and the Beast as I ate my coco puffs and  searched the web for a topic, and suddenly an I found myself with an idea.  Finally something had come to me, with the suddenness of a light turning on, the way I remember being assured would happen.  I had already eliminated the idea of proposing that sugarless cereal be the punishment for the gluttons... (obviously a good idea, but seemed like it would be a short post.) Although now that I'm looking at the sun over the "O" I'm realizing that maybe those cornflakes really are God's will.

But back to the idea I got.  My roommate and I were watching the most amazing scene in all of movie history. If you didn't automatically think of the beautiful library, shame on you.  And we were talking about the changes the new addition have to it.  Primarily that the book they bond over, was changed from Camelot, to Romeo and Juliet.  

I had a eureka moment.  Back story: My friends and I have a habit of pointing out references to other movies, books, fairy tales or musicals when we watch movies.  Back to the narrative: I was explaining to my roommate how that scene was a possible reference to Dante, how Francesca and her lover were induced into love and the second circle due to Galeotto.  AKA Camelot.

Eureka!  The original book in Beauty and the Beast (that Belle teaches the Beast how to read) was Camelot.  Disney is so much more interesting than I ever imagined.  I want to have been the animator who thought to slip Camelot into the movie as a Galeotto.  And I really don't want to be the animator who when rewriting the movie was too stupid to catch the reference.  Well maybe stupid is too harsh, after all, those of us who do get the reference are really just incredibly intelligent and with it.  It's a special club that you dear reader are now a part of. (If you weren't before.) So we'll go with ignorant. 

   Thank you Disney.  I like when you utilize intelligent people for the creation of Children's movies.  If I ever decide to contribute to the population of the Earth, I will trust them to some of your movies.  

Inferno - Animated

Links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aa4milSQZE

Above is the link to a trailer to an animated film of Dante’s Inferno, titled ‘Dante’s Hell Animated’.  The trailer is a collection of scenes from a full-length animated film.  The defining feature of this film is that all of the dialogue and voice acting takes on the original Italian texts and utilizes English subtitles.  Apparently, this is one of the only major representations of the Comedy that uses the original text.  Though this is only a trailer for a longer production, it does hit most of the major scenes in Inferno.

One depiction that was interesting to see was the creature of fraud, Geryon.  In this film, he is an entirely green, serpent-esque being, with the face of a man, as he is described in Inferno.  In my imagination, I visualized Geryon as much less animal-like, and more like a human with animal characteristics, but this depiction make him look much more like a sphinx than how I visualized him.  Regardless, this is an interesting point to visualize, because as the ‘face of Fraud,’ Geryon represents the concept of external vs. internal qualities.  The premise of fraud as a sin is that one masks their true intentions with a facade.  In this way, it is crucial to depict Geryon as representative of this concept; he serves a very important purpose.

Another interesting depiction is Lucifer; he is shown with three heads, one red, one black, and one whitish-yellow.  These three heads are gnawing on the souls of Judas, Brutus, and Cassius, their blood dribbling down the chins, and each head is crying.  This is, in one sense, a piece of the climax of the Inferno, and this depiction is incredibly true to that described by Dante, with the exception of the long hair that Lucifer has (this may be a quality that Dante pointed out, but I can’t see it overtly).  Further, this animation does capture the terror of the image, without being overly ‘scary’, in a sense.  What I found most interesting about this segment in Inferno was the sense of awe and shock in Dante’s speech, but not like he is in the face of danger, but more so overwhelmed to observe what he is beholding.  This depiction captures the spectacular image before him.

All in all, this trailer seems to present the film as an animation that attempts to be as ‘true’ to Dante’s original words as they can.  Contrary to the film by Sandow Birk, the characters and dialogue inserted in the movie are those directly written by Dante.  It is an interesting trailer to watch, having seen the entirety of Birk’s film.  Birk takes a lot of liberties to not only translate the text and dialogue into English, but also to ‘translate the sentiment’ expressed by Dante and introduce characters who are analogous to those written in by Dante.  It is interesting to see this film, which does the opposite and brings to animated life the work of Dante.