Odds & Ends

Saturday, March 29, 2008

The Casting of Tintin

The Age, via The Guardian, have the news that Thomas Sangster has been cast as Tintin in the upcoming Steven Spielberg / Peter Jackson mega-series.

Sangster's best known as Liam Neeson's stepson from Love Actually. I liked him in that film; he was sweet without being saccharine, and he seems like as good a choice as anybody. But the casting of this part really underlines the difficulty that still confronts the Tintin movies. By casting the 17 year old Sangster, the Spielberg and Jackson have acknowledged the popular description of Tintin as a "boy reporter." But in the comics Tintin's age is deliberately ambiguous; indeed, the intriguing thing about Tintin is that he's such a "blank" character. We can read almost anything into Tintin - his age, background, job and so on are left almost completely unexplored. (Even his gender is soft-pedalled; while he's definitely a boy, he's a fairly androgynous one).

But maybe Sangster will also become a cypher: we don't yet know quite how much the final film Tintin will look like Sangster, or whether his performance will be translated to a computer generated character who looks like the comic book character. I remain very curious about the proposed technique to be used for the film (and I talked about the difficulties of a computer-generated Tintin here); this could be either a breakthrough film for the medium or a Beowulf-esque testament to its shortcomings.

The other interesting news is that Andy Serkis is cast as Captain Haddock. I have previously expressed my admiration for Serkis' collaboration with the Weta people, but perhaps it's time to call "enough!" on the idea that Serkis can play anything or anyone through computer animation. I'm surprised they didn't go with John Rhys-Davies; while Serkis was obviously a comfortable choice for Peter Jackson in particular, I'd have thought Rhys-Davies would have been even more of a natural selection. After all, his two most famous roles are in Spielberg's Indiana Jones films and Jackson's Lord of the Rings series, and he has the bellicose bluster to make a good Haddock.

And whenever we mention Rhys-Davies, we have to mention his sort-of double: Brian Blessed. Perhaps he missed the casting call.

Labels: animation, peter jackson, rumours, spielberg, tintin

Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 29.3.08 - 1 comments

Friday, March 14, 2008

Round-Up of the Frivolous Things

The site has had, until yesterday, another quiet few weeks, what with one thing another. Whenever I go through one of these periods where I don't have time to get something substantial up (or where, as was the was the case over the last week or so, I'm labouring over something that starts as a short post and ends as a great big one) the temptation is always to keep the page ticking over by posting the various silly things and rumours on this page. But then I get self-conscious about how lightweight some of this stuff is.

After I've just published a "proper" article or post, though, I've got no such qualms. So on the coat-tails of my piece on Film Theory, it's time to catch up on the frivolous stuff from the internet.

Bees! Bees! Millions of Bees!

This one came from Jaime J. Weinman's Something Old, Nothing New, where Weinman was taking about Irwin Allen's The Swarm.

A very dumb clip, but it gets me every time: as a commenter over at Weinman's blog put it, the way the guys says "Millions of bees!" makes it sound like he's selling them, not getting killed by them.

Bosko Says What?

Everyone loves it when a cartoon character swears. Via Cartoon Brew.

Clampett Update

There's been some good stuff on the internet about Bob Clampett over the last few eeeks: this post by Kristin Thompson looks at some freeze frames from his work and Michael Barrier talks about the cult of Clampett. The latter follows a debate that had played out following Barrier's earlier comments about the merits of Clampett's Buckaroo Bugs; you can follow that earlier debate through links from the more recent piece.

If you're not that familiar with Clampett, I would humbly point you towards my earlier essay on him, which was intended as introduction for the uninitiated.

Wall-E.T.

The main trailer for Pixar's Wall-E is out. YouTube below, but the much nicer HD version is here.

People are really flipping out over this movie. I don't know - I don't find the trailer as completely convincing as others do, and Pixar have lost that aura of invincibility. But here's hoping.

Speed Racer Trailer

Now here's one that redefines the term "garish." YouTube below but this one you really need to see in HD (here).

Who knows what to make of this. It kind of looks hideous and badly shot, but then I've commented just recently on what good action directors the Wachowskis are.

Harry Potter and the Multiple Films

And apparently Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is to be two movies. Given the really good bits of the last book are in the second half (see here for my comments when the book came out) this strikes me as unwise. Perhaps they can give the first half of the book, where the kinds are wandering the country, an epic Lord of the Rings-ish scope. But I think they risk getting a real dud out of this.

Labels: animation, bordwell, clampett, harry potter, humour, pixar, rumours, trailers

Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 14.3.08 - 0 comments

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This page is for assorted musings and editorialising that don't fit elsewhere on Cinephobia.

It was formerly referred to as "Rumours and Ruminations" but has been renamed to better represent the haphazard nature of what appears here.