The Adventures of Tintin

Based on the Belgian creator Hergé’s popular children’s comic book series, The Adventures of Tintin, this is a computer animated feature film by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, who teamed up to give Tintin the loving special treatment that it deserves and hopefully kindle interest in the original comic books for a new generation of children.

This movie is full of extremely detailed and fantastic action set pieces as you would expect from the directors of such iconic action/adventures as the Indiana Jones and The Lord of the Rings trilogies, and is fun for the whole family while remaining true to the spirit of the comics. 

There are story elements from three of the Tintin books fused together to make a blend of action packed adventure sequences that take us to exotic locations around the world. Tintin, a young reporter, follows the clues to a mysterious buried treasure as we are introduced to the main characters.

I was under the impression that, as there would not be enough action in one Tintin comic to base a whole movie on, the movie would be a combination of two or three comics, and indeed that is what has been done, but the action set pieces are so numerous and drawn out that only half the story arc from two comics is actually covered in the movie and we are left hanging at the end. It is clear that the adventure continues with the next film.

The movie is a mix of very realistically rendered motion-capture performances from the actors used to play the characters on the one hand, and extremely fantastic and unrealistically cartoonish action sequences on the other.  You get the feeling that you’re watching a live-action film at times and then a Disney cartoon at other times. The John Williams music score is very evocative of the Indiana Jones soundtrack also by the great John Williams.

The staggering drunkard Captain Haddock, hilariously played by Andy Serkis, is the most fun to watch as he gets our hero from one misadventure into another. The movie moves at a breakneck pace without stopping and has plenty of stunning eye candy but could be a little overwhelming at times on the first viewing.  The movie and the viewer would probably benefit from multiple viewings; I know I would love to see this again on Blu-ray.

I saw this film in 3D but the 3D effects are mostly very subtle and probably not worth spending the extra money on. I think it will be just as enjoyable in 2D and maybe even more so for some people who find the 3D effect distracting and uncomfortable.

At the beginning of the film, watch for a wonderful homage to its comic creator in a cameo appearance as a street portrait artist, painting a caricature of Tintin as he appears in the comics.

Tintin et Moi (Tintin and I) (2003) is a detailed, in-depth documentary about Hergé, the Belgian creator of the popular children’s comic book series The Adventures of Tintin and the circumstances under which he was sometimes forced to work when the company he worked for came under Nazi control during W.W. II. Never having traveled to any of the placed that he so accurately depicts in his hero’s adventures, he meticulously researched all the locations in books, newspapers and from people who had been there. This documentary is even more interesting because it’s all based on an interview he did for a young student, years before, that he felt he could open up to and talks intimately about his personal life and his creations.

JP

The Artist

The less you know about The Artist going in, the more likely you will be to go see it. The Artist is one of those movies that has certain elements associated with it that may diminish your interest in seeing it. It’s like last year’s movie The Social Network. No matter how much I tried to convince people that it was a great movie worth seeing, people were just turned off by the idea of a movie about Facebook.

So when asked what The Artist is about, I would reply ‘I can’t tell you, if I did, you wouldn’t want to see it.’ Even by choosing my words carefully to describe it, and to make it sound as interesting as possible, certain words would inevitably need to be used that I knew would have a negative effect on the listener.

Let’s do this. I will be as blunt as possible and get all the offending words out of the way first. Then I will ask you to forget about all that because this movie is so lovingly made, that it will transcend any negative effect of these words. 

OK here goes: It’s a love story, it’s black & white and it’s a silent film, filmed in 1.33: 1 aspect ratio. (not widescreen) and no Dolby digital surround sound.

Now, unless you’re a fan of silent films, forget the previous sentence because despite all that, this is a new film, not an old one from the 20s, although it is set in the Hollywood of the 1920s and 30s. It follows a Hollywood silent film star at the beginning of the sound era in movies, marking the end of the silent film. Many silent films stars were not able to make the transition to sound as they were mostly physical actors more like stunt men in many ways. It was particularly sad for the big stars like Buster Keaton who tried to adapt their style of comedy to sound films but were just not successful. Such incredible talents were instantly made obsolete and a whole art form vanished overnight. 

The effect was devastating for silent actors and The Artist, which is filmed and performed in the style of an authentic silent film, shows the decline of a dashing Douglas Fairbanks type of silent leading man after sound revolutionized the film industry and killed his career. 

The film also has lots of heart, humor, and charm, and after you get used to the silence of the film (there is only a music track) and begin to appreciate the physical performances and expressions through body language and visual art, you really get a sense of how alien sound must have seemed when it first arrived and added a whole new dimension to film.

The Artist is full of wonderful visual homages commonly used in silent films to communicate emotions and ideas to the audience and it recreates old Hollywood so realistically that you think you are actually seeing a silent film from the time. Also lovingly recreated is the acting style and filming style of the time. The film pulls you in with its excellent cast of relatively unknown actors and a compelling story that’s funny, sad and emotionally satisfying in a wholesome way that’s appropriate for the time period.

The Artist proves that you don’t need sound or color or digital effects to tell a great story or make a great film. Unfortunately, The Artist will probably never reach a big audience precisely because it doesn't have the trappings of a modern movie. But it has recently won a number of prestigious awards that should help it find a bigger audience, including The Oscar for Best Picture, Director (Michel Hazanavicius), Actor (Jean Dujardin), Costume and Original Score, The Critic's Choice Movie Award for Best Picture, The Golden Globe Award for Best Picture (Comedy/Musical), and 7 British Film Awards (BAFTA) including Best Picture.

Also see Jean Dujardin in the very funny French spy comedies, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006) and its sequel OSS 117: Lost in Rio (2009), by the same director of The Artist.

JP

The Incredible Mr. Brad Bird makes live-action debut

What do The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille and the upcoming fourth Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol all have in common?  Brad Bird was the creative force who directed all of these incredible films. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, already being considered the best of the franchise, will be in cinemas Wednesday Dec. 21, 2011 (watch the trailer), and will be Mr. Bird’s first time directing a live-action film.

The Iron Giant (1999) was a Warner Bros. animated film, whose anti-war story with a loveable robot and boy friendship at its center, was widely considered a masterpiece and made with half the budget of a Disney animated film. Unfortunately the movie went widely unnoticed because Warner Bros. did not promote the film as much as they should have and many of the people involved, including Brad Bird, felt let down by the studio for not promoting a film whose story many thought was superior to the films of the bigger animation studios.

The film’s powerful emotional and heart felt story won over many fans that heard about it through word of mouth and it eventually became a classic of animation. Even people in the industry working for competing studios noticed the excellence on display and admitted that The Iron Giant was one of their favorite films. 

John Lasseter, the head of Pixar, and a good friend of Brad Bird from the days when they both attended a Cal Arts character animation school in 1976, which was Disney’s brainchild, decided after seeing The Iron Giant and hearing his idea for a new project, that Brad would be a great person to have at Pixar Animation, who were now working on Toy Story 2 (1999), and Monster’s Inc. (2001).

So in 2000, after reconnecting with each other, Brad was hired by Pixar to start work on his idea for a new super-hero story that he had been working on years before. The Incredibles (2004) was a story about a super-hero family forced to live in hiding after being outlawed by society, who sees them as a menace. Most of the story had already been developed by Brad Bird when he joined Pixar and the movie went on to become one of Pixar’s most beloved films. Critics loved it, praising Brad Bird for giving a new freshness to the super-hero genre and calling it the smartest and most enjoyable for the whole family of all the Pixar films so far. The Incredibles won the Academy Award for best animated feature giving Pixar its second win in that category.

At about the same time as The Incredibles was being made someone else at Pixar, Jan Pinkava, came up with the idea of a rat who aspired to become a gourmet chef in Paris. The idea was so bold and risky that only one man could do it justice.  Pixar approached Brad Bird again to direct a film called Ratatouille (2007). 

Ratatouille set another high-water mark for animation at the innovative San Francisco based studio and became an instant classic, going on to win another Academy Award for best animated feature and Brad Bird was nominated for best original screenplay. He even topped himself with Ratatouille, which is hard to believe considering his unsurpassed work to this point. Brad has always been a talented animator and director but he has really flourished at Pixar, doing some of his most brilliant work there. 

The inspiring theme that seems to run through all his movies is that no matter whom you are or where you come from or what you are born into, you can choose to be what you desire most. Whether you’re a military weapon doomed to a life of destruction, or a super-hero family forced to live an ordinary life, or even a rat living off garbage aspiring to be a chef. All these characters made the choice to follow their passion no matter what their circumstances.

It should be very interesting, to say the least, to see how he does with his first live-action movie; Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011). Watch for it coming Wednesday Dec. 21, 2011.

The Women on the 6th Floor

The Women on the 6^th Floor is a charming French romantic comedy about Spanish maids in 1960s Paris. During the Franco era dictatorship in Spain, Spanish women found work in Paris, France where living and working conditions were much better, even for maids.

The Film is set mostly inside a French style luxury apartment building where the cramped attic floor is used to house maids who were hired by the tenants of the building to clean their apartments while they are at work. These maids often worked for the same family for many years raising their children and becoming part of the family themselves.

We are treated to a wonderful nostalgic and often funny look at the maid’s daily routine and their relationship with the family and the other maids living and working in the building. Because of their tight living arrangement and because they share a common culture in an alien environment, the maids form a close bond and help each other out when needed.

The movie focuses on the middle aged French landlord Jean-Louis Joubert (Fabrice Luchini) the owner of one of these apartment blocks who also lives in the building with his wife Suzanne (Sandrine Kiberlain) and leads a routine conservative life working in the family business as a stock broker for the wealthy.  When his French maid quits one day over disputes with his new class conscious young wife, Suzanne decides to hire a Spanish maid when her friends convince her that they are all the rage in Paris now.

The movie revels in showing us the comic clashes between the reserved French upper class and the lively passionate Spanish maids. The maids from Spain are often from the poor Spanish country side and found themselves working in unimagined luxury where they dream of someday achieving a better lifestyle for themselves back in Spain or marrying handsome Frenchman.

When the landlord Jean-Louis meets his new young and beautiful Spanish maid Maria (Natalia Verbeke) he becomes instantly and quite genuinely attracted to her and decides to learn more about this new mysterious culture. What he discovers is a whole new world he had never known existed living right above him; a whole floor of women from Spain with curious and intriguing customs and history.

As he becomes more infatuated with Maria, he decides to help the women living upstairs by improving their living conditions while learning more about the maids' lives and their problems. The women in turn fawn over him in gratitude, treating him with the greatest respect and enthusiasm and including him in their secret lives.

The boisterous ensemble performances by the maids are a pleasure to watch as they interact with the French and each other at the local market while teaching Maria the ways of the French culture. And veteran actor Fabrice Luchini is priceless as Jean-Louis who finds a renewed vigor for life when using his influence as a broker to help the women as he becomes entangled in their personal lives.

The story takes some hilarious twists and turns that will make you laugh and sigh with pleasure. If you have ever been enchanted by a new culture through its charmingly beautiful women, you will fully identify with and appreciate this delightful romantic film. 

JP