Tintin Movie Most Exciting Thing Ever

Fuck me.

All right, maybe Jamie Bell isn’t THAT bad a choice, but he’s a little too old for it (OK, it’s mocap) and I would have preferred more of an unknown. He just annoyed me in King Kong as well. Not seen him in owt else though, Billy Elliot aside.

It’s worth noting that Peter Jackson has been a massive Tintin fan since he was young, so it’s in the right hands (he’s producing the first, directing the second). Don’t know about Spielberg though. Indy 4 was disappointing, bar few choice sequences (bike chase through the uni). The scenes with just Indy and Mutt were great though. Too bad most of the other characters were terribly written and acted, and the last 20 minutes were painfully dire.

I can imagine Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis working really well together as Tintin and Captain Haddock. They obviously know each other from King Kong so that’s a plus point. Serkis was a no-brainer from the get go, with his extensive mocap experience and the right demeanour for Haddock.

> he?s made exactly two bad movies in his entire career (Indy 4 and 1941)

Correct. People slag off stuff like The Terminal but I really like it. Minority Report and A.I. are both overlong but they’re still great. The Lost World is probably on the verge of crapness…

> It?s in the centre of shite.

Oh, poppycock. Must the film really get this sort of hyperbole directed at purely for not being as good as one of the best films ever made?

>Oh, poppycock. Must the film really get this sort of hyperbole directed at purely for not being as good as one of the best films ever made?

I’m assuming you mean the original JP. To me, describing that as “one of the best films ever made”, is just as hyperbolic. I don’t dislike the sequel so much just because I compare it unfavourably to JP, I dislike it because it’s a bit of a mess. And that’s long before the final reel.

I enjoyed JPIII far more.

>The ribcase that becomes a pipe rig, the cracking glass motif, the raptors? wakes in the tall grass.

Some short, admittedly very well conceived, moments can’t redeem the other 2 hours. Indy 4 is far more watchable.

One of the most successful films, yes.
One of the most important films, yes.
One of the most fun films, fine.

One of the best films ever made, I truly doubt it’d scratch my top hundred.

Even though there is plenty of fluff in Jurassic Park (not as much as TLW) there are also several classic Spielberg moments. Not just the big effects set pieces, the sitdown meal scene is IMO one of his great conversation scenes (‘You stood on the shoulders of geniuses and, before you even knew what you had, you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox and now *slam* you’re selling it…’ ‘Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution, have suddenly been thrown into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?’ ‘I don’t believe it. You’re supposed to come here and defend me against these characters and the only one I’ve got on my side is the bloodsucking lawyer!’) The way it’s shot, it’s very…Spielberg.

No-one can deny the greatness of the T-Rex attack sequence. 16 years ago and you show me another big effects scene like that with the same impact. Not only is the T-Rex head one of the greatest physical props ever made for a movie (the late great Stan Winston…), but the way it and the rest of the physical Rex was used and the way just a handful of still-amazing CG shots sold that monster as being utterly real to a 1993 audience should NEVER be forgotten. My favourite shot is when the Rex head nudges against Grant and Malcolm’s car, then moves off to the side, then the CG Rex walks out toward the other car, all in one shot. And the CGI right there looks REAL, and you buy it more because the physical animatronic Rex head was just there in the same shot. Filmmakers must still cream themselves over that shot! Though maybe my favourite favourite shot is when it gets Gennaro on the toilet. I find it mildly hilarious how it cuts it out when ITV2 show it (which is basically every other day).

Oh yeah, I also love when Grant is explaining to the kid at the beginning why he should show Raptor’s respect. It’s a great film! Though I can see why many people don’t agree. The promotion and the whole dinosaur craze was shoved down people’s throats at that time. Turning it into a franchise (even if TLW was ‘based’ on Crichton’s book sequel) didn’t help either. It’s easy for people to forget how good the first one was.

Pete’s Dragon > Jurassic Park > Jurassic Park III > The Lost World

I wonder if the soundtrack will actually include the Thompson Twins…

I wonder what accents they’ll give Tintin, Haddock and the others. His American/Canadian accent in the cartoon is slightly annoying and doesn’t sit right with the character IMO. I highly doubt they’ll go with a French/Belgian accent. Probably English for most of the main characters.

For me, Teesside Tintin is the best version.

I’m surprised that in this discussion of Spielberg’s more dodgy films, Hook hasn’t been mentioned once.

I liked it when I was little. But then, I was little.

> ?There you are, Peter?

That bit makes me cry. No it doesn’t I just made that up.

The idea behind Hook is really good but Spielberg didn’t quite get there. Maggie Smith is great as Wendy, Julia Roberts quite good in her hot days, Dustin Hoffman does a great scenery-chewing Hook performance, the kids are pretty good as well, but I don’t buy Robin Williams as ever being Peter. They should have cast someone who DID look like an older version of what Peter Pan would look like, instead of Williams who’s like the opposite. He DOES look friggin ridiculous in the getup at the end.

Though I always think of it fondly because of the Hook point-and-click game!! I always got stuck at the Lost Boys secret hideout, even though I’d played through the game before. You know, the place where you can get him to lift weights and speak with Rufio to try and make the food appear on the table.

I’d say that Always, Hook, the Lost World, Temple of Doom, Crystal Skull, Empire of the Sun and Amistad were all a bit wonky for differing reasons.

Lost World had some brilliant set-pieces but as a whole it wasn’t very good. Actually prefer Crystal Skull.

I do love a bit of Raiders, Jaws and War of the Worlds, though.

>I bloody love Empire Of The Sun

A great film.

I have mixed feelings concerning Saving Private Ryan though.

The depiction of war at the start was one of the best, most gruesome and most realistic* realizations of war that has probably ever been shown. At least up until then (and I think since then.) The film deserved awards just for that.

The problem I have really is with the underlying plot premise. A family has lost all their sons except one… so we’ll send in a troop to rescue him from the front line.

It’s a lovely thought. And it would be great if ‘last sons and daughters’ were withdrawn from our wars. But to risk the lives of a whole troop of men, who have as much right to live, regardless of whether or not they have living siblings? It seems to me the writers/director were allowing sentiment to dictate the story to an unreal extent. Which is somewhat ironic when you consider the opening scene.**

Whilst I’m sure the authorities of the time would sympathize with the families who lost their children to war, to suggest they would do anything more than present the flag and a medal is casting them in a rose tinted light I fear. (And in their defence, on checking the scales, I’m not sure they should in this case.) In the end they’re there to win a war with all the ugliness and sacrifice that involves. That shouldn’t involve throwing away a troop of men who can be utlized more offensively at a later date. (I say ‘shouldn’t’… the First World War took waste of life to a whole other level. All the more reason not to do the same thing this time round.)

That being said, it was certainly thought provoking, and the ending scene in the graveyard touched me deeply (I’m not one to cry but it took a bit of an effort.)

*I’d imagine not having actually been in that situation thank God.

**Incidentally I’m not against ‘crack troops rescuing an individual’ stories. But this film was supposed to be a realistic depiction of the second world war.

I thought the Saving Private Ryan idea was inspired by a nugget of a true story?though I may be wrong.

Really? Despite what I saw as sentimentality, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised.

Certainly there?s a way to view the mission not as sentential, but as an exercise in propaganda. It?s not about saving the last of a family and preventing more grief, it?s about the PR exercise – avoiding a major news story back home and among the troops that seriously impacts on moral and public support.

That’s a good point actually.

I’m still not convinced they would have done such a thing considering the expense in human life, but it at least makes more sense looking at the bigger picture.

Besides that underlying premise (which really irritated me for some reason. I’m not sure why I took it to heart so much not having grown up in that time period), I’d like to say I thought the film was still brilliantly shot and depicted and the actors were great in their roles.

I saw a book in the library recently called the greatest screenplays never made. I think it included Kevin Smith’s Superman Lives.