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Relax—I interviewed a pilot once
Apparently I decided to inaugurate 2012 with cheering movies. The last thing I watched before the ball dropped last night was The Court Jester (1956), which B. had given me for Christmas, and I have just returned from The Adventures of Tintin (2011).
That was absolutely delightful.
It's got to be the first Spielberg I've liked in ages. I'm not really qualified to evaluate it as a version of Hergé—I haven't read any of the books in decades except for Tintin in Tibet (1960), which I discovered in graduate school was even better than I'd been able to appreciate at the time—but saving the odd in-joke like the shark-fin cut of Tintin's hair through the water or a chase scene involving a motorcycle and a jeep, it feels like the work of a director who was smart enough to stay out of the way of his material, which I realize is a funny thing to say about a medium in which almost nothing of what we see actually exists. The uncanny valley is adroitly avoided by the visual design: the textures are realist, but the characters have the proportions and intermittently the physics of a ligne claire drawing, so that we can be looking one moment at a microexpressive wince and the next at a plane crash designed by Rube Goldberg. And it is not that the animation allows Spielberg to stage the kind of action sequences that would not be possible in a live-action film, because if you can afford a computer nowadays, you can stage anything you feel like; it's that it allows the kind of action sequences that would never pass in a live-action film without being stupid. An obvious example involves alcohol fumes, a subtler one a tank wearing a hotel. (Seriously. It barges into the increasingly katamari chase scene with no explanation whatsoever, like a surrealist's kitchen sink; it never gets explained and everyone's fine with that.) At one point a character regains consciousness with a small ring of canaries around his head. We are not sure how to take this; the film has so far skirted the overtly cartoony, but then again Hergé drew his characters drunk with their heads full of squiggles and spirals, radiating multicolored stars when in pain. The canaries are still there, tweeting and circling. And then the owner of the pet store comes out with a net and begins trying to catch them, muttering annoyedly while the character sits dazed on the sidewalk out front of his shop. The film is full of moments like this, which are not so much gags as a kind of endlessly inventive appropriation of anything to hand. Shots dissolve through empty bottles into telescopes, from wave-glints to glasses; the knuckles of a handshake become camel-trodden hills and desert sands thunder apart into a raging sea. You begin to look at the ordinary objects in any frame and wonder what might be done with them. And it is never mechanical. After the fact, I started thinking of comparisons like Buster Keaton or Jacques Tati. I don't know if I should try a second viewing before I go quite that far, but it's an impressive reality of stuntwork for a bunch of pixels.
And there are characters under it all, or I wouldn't bother with this review. Jamie Bell is an earnest, ingenious, tenacious Tintin who is not above moments of annoyance or despair, as indeterminately boyish as the comics in both looks and voice; he can be a cool-headed ace reporter and a cheerful holy fool within seconds of one another (and sometimes simultaneously, as in the subject line of this post) and most importantly, he's never dull. I had never pictured Captain Haddock with a Scottish accent, but apparently Andy Serkis really can do anything. He was my favorite character, so I had been slightly worried. (I think I imprinted on his swearing.) They match beautifully and will no doubt generate reams of fic I can ask![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teenybuffalo to filter for me. Daniel Craig should be allowed to play silky villains more often, because it took me at least a third of the film to recognize him; it was body language more than voice that finally did it. I think I would have liked Thomson and Thompson better if they had been played by actual Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, not just their motion data. The credits are lovely: an animated Tintin adventure in silhouette, complete with written sound effects. I liked the cameo by Hergé.
There is obviously a sequel. What's even nicer is that the film feels as though it is itself a sequel to the previous story, which we just didn't happen to see. But if Spielberg makes either of them, I'll go. When I bought my ticket tonight, I wasn't expecting that.
That was absolutely delightful.
It's got to be the first Spielberg I've liked in ages. I'm not really qualified to evaluate it as a version of Hergé—I haven't read any of the books in decades except for Tintin in Tibet (1960), which I discovered in graduate school was even better than I'd been able to appreciate at the time—but saving the odd in-joke like the shark-fin cut of Tintin's hair through the water or a chase scene involving a motorcycle and a jeep, it feels like the work of a director who was smart enough to stay out of the way of his material, which I realize is a funny thing to say about a medium in which almost nothing of what we see actually exists. The uncanny valley is adroitly avoided by the visual design: the textures are realist, but the characters have the proportions and intermittently the physics of a ligne claire drawing, so that we can be looking one moment at a microexpressive wince and the next at a plane crash designed by Rube Goldberg. And it is not that the animation allows Spielberg to stage the kind of action sequences that would not be possible in a live-action film, because if you can afford a computer nowadays, you can stage anything you feel like; it's that it allows the kind of action sequences that would never pass in a live-action film without being stupid. An obvious example involves alcohol fumes, a subtler one a tank wearing a hotel. (Seriously. It barges into the increasingly katamari chase scene with no explanation whatsoever, like a surrealist's kitchen sink; it never gets explained and everyone's fine with that.) At one point a character regains consciousness with a small ring of canaries around his head. We are not sure how to take this; the film has so far skirted the overtly cartoony, but then again Hergé drew his characters drunk with their heads full of squiggles and spirals, radiating multicolored stars when in pain. The canaries are still there, tweeting and circling. And then the owner of the pet store comes out with a net and begins trying to catch them, muttering annoyedly while the character sits dazed on the sidewalk out front of his shop. The film is full of moments like this, which are not so much gags as a kind of endlessly inventive appropriation of anything to hand. Shots dissolve through empty bottles into telescopes, from wave-glints to glasses; the knuckles of a handshake become camel-trodden hills and desert sands thunder apart into a raging sea. You begin to look at the ordinary objects in any frame and wonder what might be done with them. And it is never mechanical. After the fact, I started thinking of comparisons like Buster Keaton or Jacques Tati. I don't know if I should try a second viewing before I go quite that far, but it's an impressive reality of stuntwork for a bunch of pixels.
And there are characters under it all, or I wouldn't bother with this review. Jamie Bell is an earnest, ingenious, tenacious Tintin who is not above moments of annoyance or despair, as indeterminately boyish as the comics in both looks and voice; he can be a cool-headed ace reporter and a cheerful holy fool within seconds of one another (and sometimes simultaneously, as in the subject line of this post) and most importantly, he's never dull. I had never pictured Captain Haddock with a Scottish accent, but apparently Andy Serkis really can do anything. He was my favorite character, so I had been slightly worried. (I think I imprinted on his swearing.) They match beautifully and will no doubt generate reams of fic I can ask
teenybuffalo to filter for me. Daniel Craig should be allowed to play silky villains more often, because it took me at least a third of the film to recognize him; it was body language more than voice that finally did it. I think I would have liked Thomson and Thompson better if they had been played by actual Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, not just their motion data. The credits are lovely: an animated Tintin adventure in silhouette, complete with written sound effects. I liked the cameo by Hergé.There is obviously a sequel. What's even nicer is that the film feels as though it is itself a sequel to the previous story, which we just didn't happen to see. But if Spielberg makes either of them, I'll go. When I bought my ticket tonight, I wasn't expecting that.
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Nine
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I thought this was one of the more boring ones!
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Talk to
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Thank you! I try to write about the things that interest me.
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I saw it in 2D and it was fine.
(Hugo was my concession to checking out 3D. It was well-handled—Scorsese was using it as a technique, not a stunt, and mostly in very subtle ways—but I didn't feel it made or broke the movie in the same way as sound or color. I'm just hoping movies continue to be released in 2D, because announcements like the re-release of Cameron's Titanic in 3D (why, God, why?) somewhat worry me. Also, I really want to see The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! when it comes out in March and I really don't want to have to deal with those glasses.)
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You should write it up. I like how you think about art.
Mille mille de mille sabords!
Further to my own review as well as yours: non-Scottish actors doing Scottish accents never sound quite convincing to me, perhaps because they don't talk as fast as real Scots do. But it's a small fault to find with a wonderful, generous performance.
Hergé as the caricaturist in the market was a lovely touch. It's a salute to the original comic in more ways than one: whenever there's a really big detailed crowd scene, such as the people who camp outside of Marlinspike Hall in "The Castafiore Emerald," Herge drew himself and sometimes his family and friends. If you see a tall, fair-haired man wearing a trench coat and a preoccupied frown and carrying a notebook, that's his self-portrait.
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Well, and obviously tell me if you write any.
But it's a small fault to find with a wonderful, generous performance.
The way he delivers the obligatory third-act pull-yourself-together speech to Tintin, and it's poignantly clear who he's really talking to: "Failed? There are plenty of people who'll be willing to call you a failure—a fool, a loser, a hopeless souse. But don't you ever say it of yourself! You send out the wrong signal, that's what people pick up, don't you understand? . . . There's something you need to know about failure. You can never let it defeat you." Speaking from bitter experience is an equally well-worn trope, but the effect is strangely as though Tintin has become the captain's last embodied hopes—his real confidence, not the sloshy braggadocio that accidentally laid out his two new friends with a pair of oars before breaking them up for firewood in the middle of the Mediterranean—if the kid crashes on him now, he's lost. And Tintin reponds on the same frequency. He makes no direct response to the substance of what Haddock has said. He jumps up like someone who's just had a brainstorm: "Sending out a signal!" And away they go. It was lovely.
whenever there's a really big detailed crowd scene, such as the people who camp outside of Marlinspike Hall in "The Castafiore Emerald," Herge drew himself and sometimes his family and friends. If you see a tall, fair-haired man wearing a trench coat and a preoccupied frown and carrying a notebook, that's his self-portrait.
Aw.
You know, if you have not seen the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1982), run, do not walk to your nearest library, video store, or Netflix access and procure the DVDs, because I think you really will like it. Speaking of lawful good and hidden depths. (I wrote a little about it here.)
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it's poignantly clear who he's really talking to
Yeah. Yeesh... I liked it for the same reason. The idea of the Captain seeing Tintin as his own younger self (who is much more clueful and may not screw up, this time) is new to me, but it's wonderful; roll on, filmmakers.
tell me if you write any.
I'm so overawed by canon that I hadn't even considered it. In one way, I've been writing fanfic in my head since I was a small child (otherwise known as "imagination" or "the characters have a life outside the story"). In another way, I hesitate. But if I do write anything, you'll be the first to know.
As for Nicholas Nickleby, I'd forgotten that was ever filmed--I know some people who saw the like-nine-hour stage show, that's all. OK, if you think it's my sort of thing I'll try and check it out.
Do you want to borrow any of my Tintin books? Mind you, they're dog-eared and weathered, but still good. I could potentially bring them to Arisia.
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I did receive your e-mail, finally! I will even respond to it, once I get through this backlog of stuff I didn't see over the weekend . . .
is new to me, but it's wonderful; roll on, filmmakers.
I'm just praying Peter Jackson doesn't screw the sequel up. I hadn't realized the plan was for him and Spielberg to switch off: I'm a little saddened, since finally Spielberg has done something I really like it!
(otherwise known as "imagination" or "the characters have a life outside the story")
Yeah. There are ways in which I find the entire categorization of fanfiction kind of unhelpful: it is only what most people do when they read. The different just seems to be whether you post it on the internet or not.
But if I do write anything, you'll be the first to know.
Yay!
(I imagine you'd be good at it. You write well and you care.)
As for Nicholas Nickleby, I'd forgotten that was ever filmed--I know some people who saw the like-nine-hour stage show, that's all. OK, if you think it's my sort of thing I'll try and check it out.
This is a taped performance of the nine-hour stage show. It's one of the best transfers of Dickens to another medium I've ever seen. And I do think you'd like it.
Do you want to borrow any of my Tintin books? Mind you, they're dog-eared and weathered, but still good. I could potentially bring them to Arisia.
Thank you for the offer! I thought I'd try hitting up libraries first, but I'll let you know if everyone else on the planet has had the same idea.
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I suppose I'm going to have to see this film--it sounds utterly charming. I'm glad it delighted you.
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It's really worth seeing in theaters. I do not think the 3D is essential.
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There's some of that Madcap Transitional to be had in the first of the new series of "Sherlock" from the BBC, which has Stephen Moffatt in common with the Tintin cinema venture. It wouldn't surprise me to find that the rather manic aspect of Moffatt's writing has survived the usual overhaul process from initial draft script.
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Interesting. I hope I'll like what he does with it. They're switching off directing-producing?
I believe a third director has been mooted about for the third film (unless Spielberg does it again.)
Well, since they've already got him scriptwriting, they could give it to Edgar Wright.
There's some of that Madcap Transitional to be had in the first of the new series of "Sherlock" from the BBC, which has Stephen Moffatt in common with the Tintin cinema venture. It wouldn't surprise me to find that the rather manic aspect of Moffatt's writing has survived the usual overhaul process from initial draft script.
My familiarity with Moffat is limited almost strictly to Coupling. I've seen intermittent episodes of Doctor Who ("Blink" is brilliant, I loved the first three episodes of the Eleventh Doctor and then I sort of lost track of the show except for last year's Christmas episode). I've wanted to see Jekyll for years.