{"id":642,"date":"2011-12-21T13:08:27","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T21:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rumblespoon.com\/wp\/?p=642"},"modified":"2011-12-21T13:09:21","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T21:09:21","slug":"the-good-the-bad-and-the-tintin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rumblespoon.com\/wp\/2011\/the-good-the-bad-and-the-tintin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good, The Bad, And The Tintin!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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While the film is indeed flawed, there are so many things this film does amazingly well. From the onset, it may seem like Spielberg is taking something of a step backwards in his career by making this film. It certainly feels nothing like his seasoned vet pictures of recent\u00a0 years — this is straight-up 80’s Amblin material all the way, made all the more obvious by the decision to include the Amblin logo at the beginning of the film.<\/p>\n

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Is that a little kid in that basket?!<\/em><\/p>\n

But I can completely understand his desire to make this film. Outside of his obvious love and protectiveness of the source material, Spielberg has always been a very vocal fan of animation, and has produced a sizeable amount of animated theatrical and TV animation.<\/p>\n

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Animaniacs, anyone?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0His love of the exaggerated, pronounced, sometimes three-dimensional visual language of cartoons is reflected at times in his films through his choices of lenses and camera movements. But, with the advancement of mo-cap animation, I think Spielberg finally found a technology that could allow him to direct an animated film in a way that he knew how. He’s usually never content with being nothing less than a trendsetter, and it’s flat-out scary how good the motion capture animation is in this film. For the very first time, I did not get a sense of lifelessness from the eyes of the characters. The faces are so realistically expressive and well-rendered that there are times where I forgot I was watching an animated chartacter.<\/p>\n

And see, this is what held my attention after the movie was over. I kept thinking of the possibilities now open to just about ANY professional filmmaker who may be curious to try their hand at computer animation. You get the sense that Spielberg is having a lot more fun than he has in a long time — with animation affording him to tell his story in a far more precise way, he frees his camera up and designs shots and sequences that FEEL like live action and carry the requisite weight and spectacle, but were completely rendered in a computer. He stages SEVERAL sequences with unbroken shots lasting several minutes,\u00a0 and it’s in these shots where Spielberg feels more alive than he has in a good while.<\/p>\n

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He died twice while making this film.<\/em><\/p>\n

On the whole, it seems that we’re progressing into a stage where, with the right tools, the right vision, and the right amount of green, you can convincingly create anything. We just need the stories to catch up.<\/p>\n

And this goes to show why the next Tintin film needs a far meatier story. All this amazing technology in our face — it’s distracting. We need something underneath it to compliment it. We need a story suited for the sweeping style Spielberg and Jackson are giving this series. And with Jackson taking the reigns in the next installment, I have my fingers crossed that the right steps are taken to ensure the life of the series. Why? Well…’cause I liked this Tintin stuff. It made me feel like a kid again.<\/p>\n

(SPOILERS BELOW)<\/p>\n

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:<\/p>\n

THE OPENING TITLE SEQUENCE – Very nifty, yet strangely reminiscent of the title sequence for Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can. Even Williams’ title theme was jazzy and somewhat like his Henry Mancini-inspired stylings for that film, but also sounding like it had been dipped in European sauce.<\/p>\n

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Holy crap, it does exist!<\/em><\/p>\n

THE SAKHARINE\/RED RACKHAM CHARACTER – I had absolutely no idea this was Daniel Craig until about an hour into a film. It took me that long to shake the fact that Sakharine looked a LOT like a younger Spielberg to me.<\/p>\n

THE 3-D VERSION – I didn’t see it. From my understanding, this film was designed for 3-D, so that alone ensures my return to the theater when this is officially released to see it that way. I’m very interested in seeing how somoene like Spielberg uses 3-D. He’s always tried to make his images as “three dimensional” as possible on a 2-D plane. With this, Spielberg said that he very consciously designed his style and shots working in three dimensional plane. He said that before, he would always close one eye when designing shots so he could approximate how others would see it — but when creating the shots for TINTIN, he always had both eyes open.<\/p>\n

Up Next…Herge’s World!!!<\/p>\n

Josh Davis once held an opponent’s wife’s hand in\u00a0 a jar of acid….at a party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the film is indeed flawed, there are so many things this film does amazingly well. From the onset, it may seem like Spielberg is taking something of a step backwards in his career by making this film. It certainly feels nothing like his seasoned vet pictures of recent\u00a0 years — this is straight-up 80’s […]","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/www.rumblespoon.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/REAL-Short-Box-New-Logo-FINAL-scaled.jpg","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"amazon":{"key":"amazon","url":"","label":"Amazon","class":"amazon","icon":"amazon.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/www.rumblespoon.com\/wp\/feed\/podcast\/the-real-short-box","embedCode":"

The Good, The Bad, And The Tintin!<\/a><\/blockquote>