The Adventures of Tintin

I've already said much of what I had to say about how much I like the character of Tintin a couple of days ago in my review of Tintin and the Mystery of the Golden Fleece, an old French adaptation of the character. In short: I'm a big fan. But even if I wasn't already a fan, I would have been pretty psyched for this new movie.

You see, The Adventures of Tintin's geek credibility is through the roof. It's directed by Steven Spielberg, and produced by Peter Jackson. The screenplay is credited to current Doctor Who/Sherlock showrunner Steven Moffat, Shaun of the Dead/Scott Pilgrim writer/director Edgar Wright, and Attack the Block writer/director Joe Cornish. It features Daniel Craig, AKA James Bond as the villain, Andy Serkis, AKA Gollum as the sidekick, and Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as the comic relief.

Holy crap!

The Adventures of Tintin is the story of boy reporter Tintin, who purchases a model ship at a market. Within the ship is a clue to hidden pirates' gold that leads him and his dog Snowy on a globetrotting adventure filled with peril and intrigue. Along the way, he gets help from dunderhead inspectors Thompson and Thomson and everybody's second favorite drunk seaman with an anger management problem (the first being Donald Duck, who must have been hitting the sauce, right?), Captain Haddock.

The movie was filmed using the performance capture method, where the actors' performances are fed into computers and then animated to look like the characters they're playing. These movies never seem to perform very well, mostly because of the often zombie-like rendered appearances of the characters. The technology has come a long way since Polar Express, though, and I have to say, it didn't really bother me this time around. There's no attempt in Tintin to make the characters look photo-real; rather, they're made to look like the human equivalent of creator Herge's art style.

Spielberg seems to be having a field day, letting his camera and imagination run wild. Positioning the camera in places that would otherwise be physically impossible in a live action film. The action centerpiece of the film is a huge, complex chase sequence done in a single shot. I'm not sure he captures Herge's spirit, exactly, but I think he manages to emphasize the stylistic and tonal qualities that the two of them have in common.

The cast all seem to be having fun as well, and are all perfect fits for their characters, particularly Jamie Bell in the title role. Pegg and Frost are quite impressive at making themselves indistinguishable from each other as the Thom(p)sons, especially considering how different they look in person. The dog, Snowy, is a purely CGI creation, but interacts perfectly with the actors, and perfectly captures the dog's personality from the comics. John Williams delivers a fun, upbeat score, that actually surprised me. In my mind, I expected it to be more along the lines of Indiana Jones, given the similar nature of the stories.

I'm honestly not sure if everyone will enjoy The Adventures of Tintin like I did. I have to admit, I was pretty inclined to like it from the get-go. I'm still not sure if America at large has any real reason to care about the character. Luckily for me, the rest of the world loves him, so a sequel is already on the way. Yay, Tintin!

Attack the Block

I recently got the opportunity to catch an advance screening of writer/director Joe Cornish's feature debut, Attack the Block. Produced and just recently released in England, this was the first major screening of it in America (besides the SXSW Festival thingy). So what do I have to report? Well, I am happy to tell you all that Attack the Block is the first strong contender for Jim's Movie of 2011.

The movie is basically Critters in the Hood (oh geez, pretend I didn't just say that). In all those Critters movies, alien puppet monsters come down from space or something and kill dumb teenagers. In Attack the Block, the aliens land in the poor, inner city part of London, and the teenagers they're hunting are stone cold hard-asses.

The film opens with a gang of 14-year-old boys mugging a lady at knifepoint. Their mugging is interrupted by a meteor falling from the sky and crashing through the roof of a car next to them. The lady runs away, and the Hoodies go to investigate. Their badass leader, Moses, gets attacked and clawed by the creature and decides to hunt it down. They track it, kill it, and parade it around town, proudly displaying their pelt to all the neighborhood kids. Holy shit! This is in the first 10 minutes!

Not long after, a second wave of meteorites come crashing down, this time way more than just the one. These aliens are bigger, meaner, and scarier than the first one, and appear to be out for vengeance on Our Gang. Other people get embroiled in the whole thing, the young woman they mugged, two wannabe gangsta 9-year-olds, the friendly drug dealers upstairs, and their not-so-friendly boss. Nearly all of the action takes place in or around their crowded, cramped tenement building.

I will spoil nothing else. There is, of course, a body count, including some characters you genuinely don't want to see die. There's some nice gore, but it's actually pretty tame. It's a light R here, but probably earned England's equivalent of PG-13 (I think they have a "15" rating there).

The characters were all very likeable. These kids are actually the age they're portraying (instead of the usual 25-year-olds we get over here), and are mostly minorities (instead of the mostly whites we would get over here). They all have distinct personalities, are funny (besides the stoic, tough-as-nails hero, Moses), and you genuinely sympathize with the state they live in. Yeah, they're little punks, but none of them have crossed that line yet that would make them irredeemable.

The effects are great in their simplicity. They went for practical effects and puppetry with the creatures, which takes away the disconnect from reality that we all accept when going into a CGI movie. It's so much easier to believe in fantasy when it looks like something you can actually touch.

I should also note how awesome the soundtrack is. It's all hip-hop, which I'm not too into or knowledgeable about, but I would probably buy this soundtrack if it comes out in America.

Before the movie started, we were told by a representative of the studio or distributor or something that Attack the Block doesn't have a U.S. release date yet, but it will soon. I'm guessing this fall, September or October, maybe. When it comes out, I want all of you to go see it and spread the word. Attack the Block deserves to find the largest audience possible.

UPDATE: Attack the Block opens in 7 major cities on July 29th. Go see it if you can!