The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of The Unicorn

I really enjoyed the old-fashioned adventure of Tintin, even the opening credits, in their catch-me-if-you-can style, were exciting. Based on the comic books by Hergé, I, myself, remember watching the 1991 animated series when I was a child.

Spielberg first bought the rights for producing a film based on the books shortly after Hergés’ death in 1983. This may seem a while to wait before making a film when surely everyone knew would be popular, but given the stunning animation it was well worth the wait. The animation far surpasses most animated films that I have seen before, the detailing is superb and fascinating, and I also loved the little nods to the original animation such as the street portrait and mannerisms of Tintin.

Jaime Bell does excellently well as Tintin, he would have been an equally good choice had they chosen to make it live action. Captain Haddock, voiced by the ever-humble Andy Serkis (or as we have type-cast him in our home, Gollum), offers many comedic moments, which you really do laugh at and part of that credit simply must go to Serkis' timing.

I would say the story is for older children and big kids like myself, only because it does drag a little in its length for younger ones. But that is not to say that they wont enjoy it. The action sequences are truly wonderful and will have even the wriggliest of children captivated by the twists and turns, there were quite a few nail-biting, in –the-nick-of-time moments where you are left thinking “just how is Tintin going to get out of this one?”

The cast and light mannered adaptation of the script means that the film feels quintessentially English, which of course it is not, Tintin is from Belgium. I have not read the comics and so approached the film without any preconceptions, which I feel may not be the case for avid fans of the books, however, I will be making a slightly later New Year resolution to read the comics and that is solely because of the exciting, swashbuckling, escapades in this film. I will also looking forward to the films’ sequel.

Silence Please. Art in Progress.

I think this would be a good example of what over-hyping a film can do for it's reception because despite it's subtleties I found 'The Artist' to be a bit disappointing.  

The central story seemed to be lacking some passion, which made it unconvincing, coupled with the clichéd, hammy acting I came away wondering what on earth everyone had been talking up, the silent film that no one can shut up about. There is no doubt that this is a brave film and a nice contrast to all the epics with hundreds of extras on horseback that have been filling our cinemas the past five or so years add to that the excellent stand out performances from Jean Dujardin and John Goodman there is a lot to like in this film. The little metaphors, such as the sound of a feather or the argument with his shadow are brilliant however the light humour seems somewhat odd against some of the darker moments within the film. It’s a very light-hearted film about alcoholism, divorce, bankruptcy and suicide, with a little light dancing, which I am sceptical about.

The music is just perfect; Ludovic Bource’s score gives you every emotion that the actors do not say and it is on the strength of this that the film rides to jovial heights and dark, almost disturbing, lows. With beautiful hints to the past golden era of Hollywood and great boasts from the jazz of the 20s and 30s the film score could easily be listened to with and without the film.

This will win many favourable reviews and just as many awards I am sure, but I feel that the haste to do so will be founded on the fact that there isn't really anything to compare it to (and it's uniqueness should be celebrated). So before walking out of the screening declaring it a “triumph” and that “Michel Hazanavicius is gonna be a star, doll-face” just think that this should be seen as a stepping stone film for more, could there be a silent film renaissance?

Don't Mention The War?

Warhorse is not a film I would usually be galloping my way to the cinema to see but given I was able to take my little honey bee and let him wriggle about to his hearts content, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity.

Warhorse, as I am sure you have already heard, is Spielberg at his best, beautifully shot scenes paired with an equally beautiful score from John Williams – this is Classic cinema. There is no challenges here just simple storytelling of Joey – the symbol of the human spirit.

The opening scenes are a delight; they cascade over fresh countryside in a muted spring sun with an uplifting orchestral overture, a newly born foal bounds into life. The film begins with something that wouldn’t look out of place in a Catharine Cookson novel, there is gentle humour and rosy cheeks when the characters are exposed to hardship.

Overall acting in the entire film is good but you get exactly what it says on the tin with British sapiens so anything less and there would be uproar. It was the characters that left you a little dry-eyed and distant as they seemed stereotypical and predictable, who would have ever thought that a German commander wouldn’t give a hoot about the well being of a horse? I know, me neither, shocking!

The film canters on at a moderate pace and I did check the time twice, although it wasn’t groundbreaking or particularly memorable it feels like a film secondary school children might enjoy being shown in a history class.

Two parts of the film try very hard to question the morality of war and you find yourself willing it to go further but it is only a 12A. The Reader, however, is not. With full frontal nudity and nipples tossed about in countless shots you would be right to question if this was a film about the Holocaust. Nonetheless I did not feel as though the tasteful nudity or sex scenes detracted from the story, which was perhaps not as seamless as Warhorse. A far more quietly shot film with three pleasing performances from Kate Winslet, David Kross, and Ralph Finnes, The Reader settles the audience into a love story that is oddly dull and oddly charming.

Hanna Schmitz is as dull and mediocre as your evildoers come and that helps to carry the film slightly apart from other films about the Holocaust. Watching the main characters shared love of great literature is beautiful, even if I was sick of seeing Winslets’ nipples by the end.

I enjoyed the twist in the story, the shame, of which, Hanna felt heavier then her guilt in participation of the atrocities of WWII, this was intriguing but never explored. It ends bittersweet, but this is the best you can hope for from a Holocaust movie and I’m not complaining as it fits well into the bitter sweetness of the love story. This is a film that attempts serious moral questions but doesn’t have the courage or pace to do it strongly enough, however the films quietness seems to be a defining feature that works.

Having not read either of the books that these films have sprang from, all I can conclude is that there is a great willingness to question the black and white of war, which audiences seem to be really enjoying.

Our Day Out

I visit the Liverpool Tate gallery about five to six times a year; personally, I favour the Walker and the Lady Lever. It would seem that I tend to leave just enough time between trips so that I forget what my previous visit was like and think what a great cultural change it would be from my usual haunts. On this occasion I did not venture into the special exhibit (Alice in Wonderland) so this is not a reflection on that specific exhibition. 

Each time I go to the Tate I feel confronted by a cold, soulless atmosphere where everything (art included) and nearly everyone is ever so pretentious darlings. I almost always have my pint-sized best friend at my leg side, who, despite his impeccable behaviour, sharp-witted, blunt analytical critique and admirable curiosity, seems to put the gallery attendants on the edge of their seats. This often unnerves me and can easily spoil my experience, which seems at odds with their supposed accommodation of families (family room, an Alice exhibit and a foyer that boasts free family activities “…just ask!”).

The DLA Piper Series ‘This is Sculpture’ is refreshing in the sense that each time I go they have mixed things up a bit, blended new sculptures with the old and alternated their pieces around the gallery. However, I find the rooms very sterile and rather unapproachable, not knowing what to touch and what not. There is a consistent lack of information on the mounted wall plaques, instead the word count seems to be filled with sanctimonious drivel about how the artist had changed the world as we know it or waffle about it being a reflection of this, that or the other. I got the feeling that if you looked at the sculpture, read the plaque and disagreed you might be immediately escorted out by a member of the Thought Police.

Having said this I did like the previous attempts by Wayne Hemmingway and Son to make an interactive disco, which allowed visitors to view the works in a more memorable way. It helped to contrast against all the “DO NOT TOUCH” signs that are EVERYWHERE. A lot of the pieces, I felt, were just begging to be touched or interacted with and would help people gain a greater connection with the piece. This time around the only interaction I could do was metaphorically.  The Tower II by Richard Artschwagner, I was told on the information plaque, that we are “…metaphorically invited to climb the steps and communicate with the eyes, ears or mouth of the person who might be glimpsed on the other side.” Perhaps this is the artists’ wish or maybe they are just trying to justify their hardened policy of “you look with your eyes, not your hands”.

I am not really an ‘arty’ person and I am not even going to pretend to know what the artists displayed at the Tate are trying to convey, but when you put yourself out there I am going to have an opinion about it and the Tate is surely a way for the artists to converse with the general public.

My favourites of the day where Liam Gillick’s ‘Returning toan Abandoned Plant’ just because it looked pretty, Vanessa Beecroft because she dares to bare, as well as Marc Quinn’s ‘The Etymology of Morphology because it reminds me of so many comic books and sci-fi films that I love. And Dame Barbara Hepworth’s ‘Corinthos’ for its sheer beauty, which I admit I couldn’t resist touching the glossy outer skin of the finely sculpted wood (no innuendo intended). I hated Pawel Althamer’s ‘Self-Portrait as a Businessman’ (a suit on the floor) because it is stereotypical, outdated and a big pile of… laundry.

As for my little honeybee, he thought Eva Rothschild’s ‘Knock Knock’ was creepy and spooky (it does looks like a spider) and his favourite was Jean Arp’s ‘Pagoda Fruit’; I would like to think because it seems somehow familiar to him.

So, will I go back? Probably.

To Wanderlust or not to Wanderlust? That is the Question.

Over the past week I have been considering the possibilities that I may become a woman who gives in to her wanderlust and disappears in a Shirley Valentine style epiphany of smashed eggs. Not because S has a relentless lust for chips and egg and I am left forced to converse with the wall, but because, although I am often overwhelmed by how happy and content I am, I do sometimes feel I have overlooked my own personal growth.

It is not likely that I am about to set sail to try and find myself, for a start I only have a beginners sailing certificate, which was completed on a waist deep boating lake, and also, not that I needed to be told, as Hans Thomas says in The Solitaire Mystery; if you are going to find yourself “stay exactly where you are. Otherwise you are in great danger of losing yourself for ever.” Although I am sure his mother left for entirely fantastical and philosophical reasons that I do not know because I haven’t finished the book yet.

It is a very excepted condition of women to regret and question her life decisions that she ultimately feels that she has been trapped into. Particularly the stay-at-home-mum debate that is swung around the right and wrong camps all to often on slow news weeks. We are all familiar with the idea of the desperate housewife chained to the kitchen sink with endless laundry, to-do lists longer than the romance her marriage once had, a screaming baby under one arm and a harmless, purely medicinal, glass of gin in the other hand. Women overwhelmed with the amount they are expected to do in a single day or under whelmed by the void left when one has no career, social life or hobbies as demonstrated with Betty Draper in Mad Men. What happens to these women when their children have grown, when the spark in a relationship hasn’t been seen since the Great Toilet Seat Argument of 2001? Where do they go? Physically? Emotionally?

Do they disappear to India, as Ms Gilbert did in ‘Eat, Pray, Love’? Walkout in egg yoked fury of despair?  Showing us all what women feel like doing every time they look at another wet towel on the bathroom floor. Or are they role models for women everywhere to make a stand and take timeout for yourself or you will end up feeling duped out of the best years of your life like me The ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ sentiment can obviously seem far off when your knee-deep in dirty nappies with dried porridge on your face and a strange fatty substance on your stomach, your thighs, your bum, your arms. My arms? Not you too!

No I do not think I am a woman who will look back on her life in ten, twenty years and regret my decisions. I don’t think I have the confidence of Elizabeth Gilbert to go out to the big wide world alone; I don’t have the charm and charisma of Shirley Valentine to be able to get along so uninhibitedly with strangers in a foreign land. I do not have the patience of Kate Reddy to allow S all the freedoms of a lone ranger while my attempt of glamorous make-up melts off my face preparing dinner over a hot stove. More importantly I am just not that trapped or exhausted or unappreciated. I feel able to do whatever I wish, everyday is different at my office, museums, art galleries, libraries, tea at a cosy cake shop anyone? I have days where I feel like I am stagnating or when I simply cannot believe that the dishes need to be done, again. But these days are supposed to happen, if I really enjoyed cleaning dried melted cheese off bowls and forks it is because I am in a alternate reality (which, if the Higgs boson has been found, probably cannot happen) or I am in a special place with padded walls. I celebrate little smiles and reward anyone who helps or saves time.

However perhaps I shall just turnout like Emilia from Othello, wise and worldly on the subject of men and her place in the world but wouldn’t turn down an indecent proposal in return for higher positioning. Or maybe I will be a modern day Mary Maloney taking my little lamb S to the slaughter; I don’t have legs of lamb in the freezer only quorn fillets… I maybe here some time…