I Don’t Know About This Tintin Character, but I Do Like Shaun of the Dead
Yes, as a matter of fact, I did spend much of my childhood locked in a closet. (OK, actually I was shuttled between a strict Catholic household and a strict Catholic school, so really it’s all the same.)
The point is that although I’ve definitely-maybe heard of a comic-strip character named Tintin, I don’t know anything about him. But apparently this (literally) animated Belgian reporter is getting his very own big-screen story, a feature to be directed by Steven Spielberg and co-starring the can-do-no-wrong Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as detectives known as the Thompson Twins.
Never fear, these Thompson Twins have nothing to do with the ’80s “Hold Me Now” dudes and dudette. But something that gives me a bit of concern is that Tintin isn’t going to be old-school animated but motion-captured, a la the creepy-as-hell Tom Hanks nightmare The Polar Express from a few Christmases past.
Now, Beowulf also used that technology and admittedly made it work. But that movie was supposed to be a little frightening, right? Pegg and Frost should only be reanimated as zombies — one performance-capture gone awry that’s as “lifelike” as Hanks and those freak train trolls, and I may be put off the British duo for good.
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11:46 am
The Economist had an article recently on the background of Tintin and why he is not popular in the US.
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12795471&source=hptextfeature
1:45 pm
Do you suppose they will show the real Tintin or whitewash his sexuality?
http://www.queerty.com/was-tintin-a-fairy-20090107/#more-36937
1:49 pm
I was Tintin for Halloween one year. The only person who knew who I was was the other guy dressed as Tintin.
2:05 pm
Tintin is awesome. I read the comic books over and over again until they were dog-eared and falling apart as a kid. There are already animated movies of most or all of the books (I think there were a total of about 20 or so written) in French.
Actually the ’80s dude and dudette have everything to do with Tintin, they took their name from the characters.
3:05 pm
Please, no more “uncanny valley” animation!