The Adventures of Tintin

I'm having computer troubles so posting may be light over the next week or so. Please bear with me.

The Adventures of Tintin

seen @ Jamaica Multiplex Cinemas, Jamaica, Queens NY

1.10.12

In his seminal book about the history and unique nature of the medium, Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud posited that the appeal of Tintin creator Herge's art style lay not just in his "ligna claire" style - the ease and grace of his linework - but also the fact that the character is a simply-rendered image against a meticulously-rendered background. McCloud states that the simpler a character is drawn, the more universal its appeal, since the lack of specificity makes it easier for one to project themselves into the character.

As a visual artist, I can attest to this. In college, I learned the value of juxtaposing simple, less-detailed areas against heavily-detailed ones. When I started making comics, however, my inclination was to draw like most superhero artists, since I was under the mistaken belief that this was how one becomes a success in the industry. It wasn't until I changed my style to one closer in spirit to Herge's that I began to get noticed (not that I ever became a star or anything).

In North America, comics fans generally tend to prefer detail to a ridiculous degree, particularly in their superhero comics: every last vein and muscle on the bodies; elaborate costumes and weaponry; cityscapes in which you can see every window in every building. One popular artist pays so much attention to detail that he actually broke his wrist while drawing a highly-anticipated crossover mini-series featuring characters from Marvel and DC Comics. While such devotion is commendable, I was taught that in art, detail for detail's sake is less important than being judicious with it - knowing how to use it and where. Herge embodies this philosophy, which may be one reason why Tintin, as well as Carl Barks' Donald Duck comics, have historically been more popular in Europe.

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have said that they chose to make The Adventures of Tintin in computer-generated performance capture (I'll leave it to you to decide whether or not it should be called animation), in part, to pay tribute to Herge's distinctive style. The film is a marvelous hybrid of Herge's character designs with the photorealism capable with CGI. Tintin looks more or less like a real teenager, even with his distinctive duck-tail hairdo, but secondary characters like Haddock and Thomson & Thompson maintain their more distinctive features. And of course, with p-cap, their movements seem more fluid and natural.

I forewent seeing Tintin in 3D, though I'll bet it looks great that way. Still, I was quite taken with this film. The non-stop action has the feel of Spielberg's Indiana Jones movies. I confess, I've read very little Tintin myself, so perhaps the books answer a few nagging questions I had - for instance, if he's a reporter, why do we never see his office, or at least his editor (if he's only a freelancer)? Doesn't matter though.

The Room (2003)

The Room (2003)
seen @ Sunshine Cinema, New York NY
1.7.12

There are many unknown filmmakers out there who believe their work to be of high quality - and some of them are. The odds against them achieving any kind of fame are long, but still they persevere. Now imagine yourself as one of them for a moment. You've taken film classes, you've studied the work of the great directors of film history, you've refined and reworked your screenplay over and over with the help of friends and teachers and you've got a solid cast and crew. You believe you've got what it takes to become the next Spielberg or Scorsese. Then along comes some guy who makes a horrible, horrible film by every stretch of the imagination - one that, against all logic, becomes a cult hit. How would that make you feel?


I don't believe anyone truly sets out to make a "bad" movie. Some filmmakers may aim for camp or parody or satire, and in so doing, deliberately lower their standards, but I don't think that's quite the same thing. That's more like being in on the joke. One is led to believe that quality will eventually win out over time - a statement that can apply to any creative medium. However, thanks to the Internet, we live in an age where both the good stuff and the bad stuff can not only be preserved, but analyzed and celebrated, to a degree, for all time - and word of mouth is much quicker.

Soundtrack Saturday: James Horner

Main title from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

"The Sinking" from Titanic (1997)

"Jake's First Flight" from Avatar

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Not film-related but it is music-related: my sister sent me a link to the blog of this cartoonist who does comic strip "music video" parodies, mostly of 80's videos. Pretty funny, too. Check it out.

Sister, Sister (1982)

Couldn't find a poster for this TV movie, so here's a title card.

Sister, Sister (1982)
seen online via YouTube
1.5.12

I've never been big on poetry, so I'm not too familiar with most of the writings of Maya Angelou. I've read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, of course. I own a copy; it's a marvelous book. I'm probably more familiar with her career in Hollywood. As an actress, she was in Roots, which everyone's seen. As a director, she made a film called Down in the Delta with Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes, and that was pretty good. And as a screenwriter, she's mostly written a bunch of teleplays, including the adaptation of Caged Bird and a film called Sister, Sister that aired on NBC in 1982, three years after it was filmed. Supposedly the network was worried about low ratings - 'cause, y'know, who's gonna watch a black drama?

Basically it's about three sisters with family issues: uptight Jesus freak Diahann Carroll (who also starred in Caged Bird), struggling single mother Rosalind Cash, and oppressed little sister Irene Cara. Angelou's teleplay is more than a little too literary in places - certain lines that may sound one way on the page sound different when they're actually said out loud - but it's good overall.

To us 70s-80s kids, we remember Carroll from Dynasty (yes, I watched the nighttime soaps - Dallas, Dynasty, Knots Landing, Falcon Crest - even though I was probably way too young to understand much of them), but of course, she had a long career in mostly television before that, most notably for the TV series Julia. She was even in the notorious Star Wars Holiday Special, if you can believe that. (She was also in Carmen Jones.)

For all the craziness of today's reality TV, the 70s and 80s were a pretty trashy period for TV as well. You'd think a little kid wouldn't have much interest in adult shows like the aforementioned nighttime soaps, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, etc., but I did, and I'm sure there were plenty of others like me who watched them also. Why? Partly because we were little TV sponges who would soak up anything and everything on the boob tube, but also, I suspect, to catch a glimpse of adult life, or at least a distorted representation of same.

Fortunately, Sister, Sister is much more down to earth than the antics of the Carringtons and Colbys. I don't remember seeing any ads for this movie on NBC or in TV Guide, though I'm sure I must've come across them, especially in TV Guide. That's unfortunate, because I think I would've got something out of this, even as a kid. Better late than never, I guess. (BTW, here's a blog about TV movies from the 70s and 80s, if you're interested.)

War Horse

War Horse
seen @ UA Kaufman Astoria Cinemas, Astoria, Queens, NY
1.3.12

I remember when my sister went through her horse phase. She had this one horse doll that she always kept on her shelf. It wasn't articulated; it was just a model of a brown and white horse. I don't recall if its tail was hair or not. Sometimes I'd play with it when she wasn't around. I think she had a horse calendar and maybe even a horse poster at one time too. I definitely remember going to see The Black Stallion with her and my mother when it came out. It was playing at the other RKO theater on Main Street in Flushing - not the Keith's on Northern Boulevard, but the other one, whose name I can't recall. Point is, my sister loved horses.


Myself, I remember going to the petting zoo in Flushing Meadow Park as a kid with my mother and seeing horses for the first time there. I think I may have even gotten to ride a pony. I would've been about six, maybe seven. The summer camp in Massachusetts I worked at had horses, which some of the kids would ride. There was this one camper - a 13-year-old girl named Claire; I'll never forget her - who allegedly once inquired as to whether or not the fenced-off area that the horses roamed in were only "psychological boundaries." I say allegedly because I got this quote second-hand, but it's exactly the kind of thing she would say. One day I'll have to tell you about her.

I never had pets growing up, but I've seen first-hand how devoted people can get with them. Bibi and Eric, for instance, have a sign near the front door of their house that says something like, "In case of fire, please rescue our cats." I've known other friends whose attachment to their pet dogs and cats is unshakeable. So the relationship between Albert, the main character of War Horse, and the eponymous horse Joey, is certainly nothing unusual on the face of it.


The original source of both this film and the recent stage play of the same name is a young adult novel, and War Horse the film does feel like the kind of story written for that audience, even if it hasn't been marketed as such. An animal's loyalty to its beloved master, tested through time and circumstance, hits many of the same notes as anything out of Benji or Lassie, only on a much bigger scale in this case.

Some people who have fully embraced this film don't like the fact that its unabashed emotionalism and sentimentality has been a turn-off for others. I admit, I was hesitant to see it for this reason, especially since director Steven Spielberg is a Grade-A master at it. Now that I've seen the film, I find that my initial suspicions were more or less correct: the melodramatic aspects of War Horse are given the hard-sell like I couldn't believe. Especially that ending!


So is this a bad thing? Well, I can certainly be a sucker for sentimental movies just like anybody else, and I got caught up with this story too. But yeah, in the end I'm afraid the hard-sell was a bit much for me in this particular case. Sometimes I'm willing to accept it, other times not, and this one was the latter. Still, Spielberg seems more guilty of this tactic than other filmmakers, and I suppose I was hoping for something different here. 

Also, I'm willing to accept that I may be too much of a cynical bastard to take War Horse to heart. That's entirely possible. The manner in which Albert and Joey are eventually reunited (not a spoiler; this is a Spielberg film after all) literally had me going "Oh my god" as I saw it happen, as in "Oh my god is this really how it's gonna happen?" And again, I've been willing to go along with a film's melodrama on occasion, but this wasn't one. Spielberg does the emotional hard-sell better than anyone else, and it does not make his films inherently bad, but after all these years, it no longer comes as much of a surprise.

I thought I might have to get violent on somebody in the audience who talked on and off throughout the movie - a little louder than I would've liked, too. I don't think it was an older person; the old couple at the opposite end of my row did mutter intermittently as well, but not as loud as this other guy. Fortunately, the movie itself was generally louder, what with all the battle scenes. Also, the ticket clerk accidentally gave me a ticket for Tintin instead of War Horse. It wasn't a problem with the usher, though now I guess this means I'll have two Tintin tickets (after I see it, of course). Maybe I should've snuck into a Tintin screening afterwards, but I was really hungry and wanted to eat.

It's the Movie of My Life Blogathon!

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post that was kind of a last-minute thing, and certainly not one I intended to be taken seriously: imagining who would play me in the pretend movie based on my life story. Turned out that people liked it, for which I'm grateful of course, but also, the idea was floated that it would make a good subject for a blogathon.

Well, what can I say except that I'm game if you are!

So welcome to the Movie of My Life Blogathon! As in the original post, the main objective is to imagine who could play you in a theoretical movie about your life, but I'm gonna expand further on it. You can approach this in one of two ways: you can do what I did, and simply make a list of actors who conceivably could capture your essential nature on screen and why. One commenter suggested the I'm Not There route - going totally abstract with your casting. If you think you can do that, fine, but you'll definitely have to explain your choices!

Your second option is casting your family and/or friends in addition to yourself, but if you do that, here's the caveat: I want you to take a specific event from a specific period in your life - high school prom, wedding day, moving to a new neighborhood, etc. - and cast accordingly. So if you decide to pick a period from when you were, say, ten years old, or sixteen, you'll have to pick an age-appropriate actor.


Be creative. Maybe you're not the star of this movie. Maybe this is set in your future (if you think you can project that far ahead into your life). Maybe you can cast it with actors from the 50s. Whatever you like is fine as long as you keep it grounded in the real world; no sci-fi or fantasy elements.


Post it on your blog and send the link to me at ratzo318 (at) yahoo (dot) com, and on Friday, February 3, I'll put up all the submissions. Your banner is up above.


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Related:
My Hometown Blogathon

Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Trouble in Paradise (1932) 
seen online via YouTube
1.1.12

One of the most rewarding things about watching old movies for this blog is that sooner or later, after watching enough movies, I start to recognize certain actors that I've seen over and over and  I make connections. For example: I wasn't too familiar with Miriam Hopkins. Then I saw her in Design For Living a couple of weeks ago, and Trouble in Paradise last night. I liked her in both, but as I watched her last night, I realized I'd seen her in something else too, and I struggled for a few minutes trying to figure it out. Then I went to IMDB and got the answer: she was Olivia de Havilland's aunt in The Heiress, a role from later in her career. Now this is one of my favorite movies ever. I've seen it so many times, but it's like I can appreciate it in a different way now that I know who she is.


So I'm continuing to check out the films of Ernst Lubitsch, obviously, and I liked Trouble a lot. I went into it without reading about it in advance. I didn't even know who was in it. It's about a pair of high-class thieves who try to run a game on a rich businesswoman. It's short - only 83 minutes - and yet it feels like there's a lot going on in it.

I think I'm beginning to understand this "Lubitsch touch" that people always talk about. He seemed to love setting his stories in Europe, for one thing, and made a point to use the native language wherever possible. Design begins with the main characters speaking French, and Trouble has Italian-speaking characters. Hopkins gets to not only speak French in the former, but Spanish and a little German in the latter.


There's always more than a little bit of glamor and sex appeal in his films. It's hard to explain why, but there's something about this movie in particular that feels palpably sexier than rom-coms made today. I think the glamor element may be a big reason why. Everybody dresses fancy, the ladies look fabulous, they run around European cities (or at least sets made up like those cities) and the situations they find themselves in, while important to them, never seem like a matter of life and death. Lubitsch makes it all seem... not so bad at worst. And it's genuinely funny.