I grew up on the Tintin books, in both English and the original French. Now comes a Tintin movie written by Steven Moffat (the first draft anyway), directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Peter Jackson, and scored by John Williams. I’ll probably want to see that.
Click the pix for biggification.
In my discussion of Thor yesternight, I forgot to mention the film’s surprisingly antiwar politics. I can’t go into details without spoilage, so I’ve once again relegated them to the comments section.
SPOILER WARNING:
Just saw Thor, which was a lot of fun. Tom Hiddleston really stole the movie as Loki (and the script gave him a nicely ambiguous role to play). Jotunheim looked cool. (Well, it looked like a cross between Mordor and the White Witch’s palace, but that seems about right.) The cameos for Straczynski and Lee were a hoot. And the post-credits sequence promises more good fun to come. (I have a comment on the post-credits sequence, but since it’d be a spoiler for those who haven’t seen Thor yet, I’ll put it in the comments section.)
My only real gripes were: a) Natalie Portman seemed a bit lackluster – closer to her Star Wars performance than to her much better V for Vendetta and (I gather) Black Swan performances.
And b) why can’t they bother to pronounce Norse names correctly? I can see why they might not want to depart from the familiar pronunciation of “Odin,” but why not go authentic for “Heimdall,” “Jotunheim,” “Mjöllnir,” etc.? (Still, at least they didn’t have the Asgardians massacring Elizabethan English the way the comics do. Just how hard is it to learn the differences between “ye” and “you,” “thou” and “thee,” and “doth” and “dost”?)
While we’re on the subject of things Norse-related, I recently recalled, in a comment thread on how the filming of Tolkien’s Silmaterial might be handled, the short animated film of Beowulf from 1998, voiced by inter alia Derek Jacobi and Joseph Fiennes. It’s the most faithful adaptation of Beowulf I know of, and I think the animation style is beautiful. Check it out:
And now, back to Thor:
SPOILER WARNING: