Having a better and more productive life than my monster father has been my most significant accomplishment.

In 'Beowulf,' director Robert Zemeckis uses a technique called 'motion capture' to conjure fantastical things, angles into action and sweeping vistas to stun your eyes and take your breath away. But what he hasn't mastered and what the technique can't do is this: emotion capture.

'New' movies are almost always hipper, faster, they mix genres aggressively, they smother their genre origins in new form, there are fewer of them, and they tend to cost a lot more money because you usually make more money on the megahit than you do on the steady progression of break-eveners. Except for the horror movie.

Three men at McAlester State Penitentiary had larger penises than Lamar Pye, but all were black and therefore, by Lamar's own figuring, hardly human at all.