”Holy Week,” as it is known by all Spaniards, is a huge time of celebration in Spain, and a high season for pastry shops. I don’t know anything else about this one except that it’s in Barcelona somewhere, but to draw in customers and celebrate the Easter Season the shop has made the entire ”Unicorn” ship out of chocolate! The ship was made with over seventy kilos of chocolate, and took over 40 hours to complete! It’s not strictly accurate compared with the real ”The Unicorn”, but is quite an impressive feat and I think it is quite recognizable. I love this thing, and sure would love to see it up close…and buy some chocolate, while I’m there…

Source: http://www.afuegolento.com/noticias/cocina/noticia/10488/rayos/centellas/velero/chocolate/tintin/el/capitan/trueno/otras/monas/pascua/%7C/fiestas/locales/populares/tradicionales/barcelona

I found this at www.tintimportintim.com. I love finding anything Hergé did related to Tintin outside of the albums, such as art from Tintin magazine, cards, or this. Hergé has been critiqued, very harshly by some, for not including almost any female characters in any of his Tintin albums. A case can be made against him here, as the only ”important” female character (the only other named character I can think of at the moment is Mrs. Finch…) within the whole series is Bianca Castafiore, the amusing, yet sometimes obnoxious, fat opera singer. I was always under the impression that Hergé was simply writing in a time when everybody thought ”girls just didn’t go on adventures like that.”  However I admit I’ve never actually read Hergé’s biography (I really should). Anyway, I thought I’d post this up, as there are almost certainly more women drawn in this picture by Hergé than he ever drew in any other picture. All of the women are ganging up on Tintin in a movement for women’s rights, while a helpless-looking Tintin stands surrendered. I wonder if Hergé ever felt a bit guilty for not ”giving ladies a place” in his stories as well. If anybody knows the context of this 1953 image, I would love to know it and post it for the rest of the readers who don’t know either.

In Hergé’s defense, he did add a main female character in his other series with ”Jo, Zette and Jocko.” Zette did need to be saved a lot, but she played her part in the action of things and was, I thought, I pretty good character. And the mother in the series is also a nice female character.

source:

Apparently Tintin and Haddock were so happy that they found the gold in their basement, they even went out of their way to invite every character in the movie together for a party at Marlinspike. If you’re interested in buying a copy of the ”group shot”, check out Weta’s site here.

The portrait costs 35 dollars. Myself, I’m not a huge fan of the painting. I love the idea and the setting, but, unlike in the movie, I don’t feel like this poster quite pulls off Tintin well. Something about the way the hair was done doesn’t feel right. Some of the other characters look pretty good though. The whole thing has the feel of a lot of the concept art for the film, and it certainly would be a unique portrait for a Tintin fan, especially for the Tintin fan that has everything else and is looking for something different. Personally, I would love to see a unique image similar to this with all of the characters fully rendered as they are in the movie.

After four years of politics, the Belgian Supreme Court has finally come to the conclusion that Tintin in the Congo is not to be banned. While the content in the book would certainly have been deemed racist had a cartoonist published a similar work today, the tribunal has said that the Belgian law against racism can not apply to Tintin in the Congo unless it is clearly shown in the work that the intent of the author was to discriminate. ”Taken in the context of the 1930s,”said advocate M L’Hedim,”it is clear that Hergé had no such intent.” Allen Berenboom represented Casterman and Moulinsart in the case. ”It’s a sound decision and common sense. A work must be taken in context and compared with the information and stereotypes of the time.”

Congo, the world and the way people think have changed a lot since Tintin in the Congo was published. If you’re new to Tintin, just know that this one adventure, only the second Hergé ever did, is filled with stereotypes from the time that show the Congolese people to be very, very simple people. But every adventure after this is better, especially after The Blue Lotus. I do not believe Hergé had any harsh feelings whatsoever towards the people in the Congo, and while Tintin bosses them around and teaches them very very basic stuff, he does take their side and help them solve their problems with a white gangster-type criminal and a tribal-type witch doctor. Don’t buy into any of these articles online written just to sound like big news that say Tintin is racist (and by the way, he’s not Nazi either…).

If you have a child who just HAS TO HAS TO HAS TO HAVE every Tintin book and you are still afraid it will have a negative influence on him (which I seriously doubt), just explain to your kid that Hergé, and people in Belgium back then, were very misinformed when it came to both what was going on in the Congo and what the people were like. Teach them, if they don’t already know it from TV or school of just the fact that they are good, normal kids, that every human being, regardless of skin color, is equally human and to be treated on an equal level. Maybe even go out and donate a kilo of rice (or a large sum of money) to a non-profit organization or missionary, or something like that. I know of a missionary family down there, and from what I’ve heard about what the Congo is like today, they really could use all the help they can get.

Source: http://www.liberation.fr/culture/01012389189-la-justice-belge-refuse-d-interdire-la-vente-de-tintin-au-congo

Sorry guys, Tintin got even more awards than I mentioned in my last post. Thanks for pointing that out! Tintin also won the satellite award for best animated feature and has received numerous critics prizes as well such as NY Online or Toronto, to name but a few. To see a full list of the films awards, both those it has won and those that it has been nominated for, check out this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tintin_(film)#Accolades

There are a ton! I counted ten awards there that it has definitely won, and others that seem likely to be awarded as well. There are another ten ”pending” and 17 different nominations!

Here’s a quick post to once again celebrate one more award for Tintin! ”The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of The Unicorn” recently won the award the Producers Guild of America for Best Animated Feature!Even if Tintin didn’t do so terribly well as it did in Europe over in the USA, it’s great to see how it’s being recognized as a great movie. Congratulations! Good find, Adesh!

Source:http://www.producersguild.org/news/81677/PRODUCERS-GUILD-OF-AMERICA-ANNOUNCES-2012-PRODUCERS-GUILD-AWARD-WINNERS-.htm

All the years that this blog followed the movie, WETA was hard at work. A large portion of their work is visible in their new book ”The Art of the Adventures of Tintin”, but a lot of it is available for free on their website. They have a few very good videos you can watch showing the original footage of the actors, the early version of the digital characters, and the final rendered product. It really is amazing. Check out the videos here.

One video I HIGHLY recommend is a video that shows how they created the model Unicorn, and then made it a real ship. A virtual camera gives you a full tour of the ship! It’s the next best thing to actually being on board.

Other highlights are the video that shows each stage of designing the Morocco sequence and a section on the crane fight that shows Sakharine without any hair! (I think he’s actually more threatening bald…)

One thing I thought was interesting though was, as I watched the video of Haddock yelling at the seaplane, it sounds very much like he yells ”froglodytes!” instead of troglodytes…can anybody else back me up on that? As much as I love the movie, that blunder should make any tintinologist cringe… they need to make sure Haddock gets lots and lots of his insults in, in his usual outraged self. Out of curiosity I googled ”froglodyte” and apparently there’s a dark horse comic where ”froglodyte” aliens try to take over the world. At least if there had to be a blunder, the word still definitely fits in the context of an insult, and even falls within the comic book realm.

Thank you Clem’s for finding this!!!

About a month ago I was bummed out that McDonald´s was doing Alvin and the Chipmunks instead of The Adventures of Tintin, and mentioned that on this blog. I never dreamed I would get any thin out of it, but after reading my post somebody who occasionally comments on this site,Soheil, left me a message saying he had picked up a few and wanted to send me some! Of course I was thrilled and I promised him that, if he should send me those toys, I would definitely post about it. He was true to his word, and now I’m true to mine.

Soheil sent me three separate McDonald’s toys, all still in their plastic bags. The Thom(p)sons with a pencil and a ”briefcase” that folds out to write on, Captain Haddock with a frame that can hold puzzle pieces that make people’s faces, and Haddock’s spyglass with the Unicorn on the side. I felt just like a little kid again opening these and putting all the parts together! He even went so far as to send a few things not from McDonald’s, Red Rackham from the Moulinsart figurine collection! I was so glad to see that Soheil as I have a number of the figures in that series and it goes wonderfully with them on my shelf. The three new characters from McDonalds are just about the same size to stand next to them as well, and go together quite nicely. And finally, he even sent me two postcards, a very appropriate ”Secret of the Unicorn” album cover postcard, and a cool one made from a panel in Tintin in Tibet. I also have a collection of postcards framed on my wall, and these will go great with them!!! I’ve never seen the Tintin in Tibet postcard before for sale…

Thank you so much Soheil, I really was very, very excited when I opened this. It’s one of the best ”late Christmas presents” I’ve ever had. I love them all.

Here’s a picture of them all together. I had to upload the pic to another site (I’ve unfortunately uploaded more pics than wordpress can hold), and then copy and paste it into this one. I’m doing this on Google Chrome, so I hope other browsers can see it OK. Let me know if it’s not so.

Again, thank you Soheil! It’s great to see Tintinologists from all over the world comment on this blog and help each other out.

2011 has been a great year for Tintin. For the first time in many many years he returned to the big screen, and for the first time ever he has appeared in a movie that is honestly loved by millions of people around the world. Spielberg and Jackson told us at one point that to promote Tintin all they needed to do for it to be popular was advertise it as any other animated movie. It’s too early to tell how much money it’s making, but it is clear that it can’t rival the hundreds of millions the movie made overseas. Kids are going to see ”The Muppets” and ”Happy Feet 2”. And ”Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” is rolling in the dough (as well as taking up a lot of IMAX theaters that would have been playing Tintin). I can’t judge any of the films as I haven’t seen them or even read any reviews over them, but it’s probably safe to say that Tintin will not be as big as several of them when all of the numbers add up. So far Box Office Mojo is saying Tintin has made 35,841,000 dollars, about 13 percent of the movie’s total income (minus asian profits).
But Tintin is by no means a failure. Financially it has done really really well when you add up the money it made all over the world (sure enough Sony definitely got the better half of the deal). But even if the movie had flopped, it was still a wonderful gift for Tintin fans around the world that we can appreciate for the wonderful movie that it is. Sure, it’s not perfect, but it’s very very close to being perfect, and of any possible issues you might have with the movie, I think it’s ironic that the one people on the internet most feared and most pushed was the motion capture, which I thought was flawless. Especially if you’re a Tintin fan, this is the movie for you. Depending on where you live it’s not to late to go see it in theaters, but the movie will be coming out on DVD and Blu-ray March 19!!! Click here to see the amazon page. I will certainly be buying this, watching it with popcorn, subs, pizza or some other food I didn’t have the money for when I saw it in IMAX, and my albums, searching for each reference in the film I missed the first time I saw it.
Thanks for a great year. I’m not going anywhere, and will continue to appreciate any Tintin news or info of any kind you bring to my attention. Have a wonderful 2012.

For those of you who may have found this through google or some other way and are not a regular follower of this site, I can assure you that while you will find many, many reviews of ”The Adventures of Tintin” on the internet, you will find very few written by somebody who has been an avid Tintin fan for years to the extent that he has been following every last piece of information available about the progress of this movie since it was first announced almost five years ago that Spielberg was going to pick up his old project and finally make a Tintin movie. Here you will find two such reviews. One is Chris’ review, the guy who started this blog and wrote everything until his schedule got busy and allowed me to write posts. Shortly after the movie premiered over in Europe he wrote a great review for both the Tintin fan and the man who’s never heard of him until now alike. I recommend you check it out here

The other such review of course is mine. I’m probably the biggest American Tintin fan you’ll ever meet. For those of you clueless people out there, Tintin is a very well known comic the Belgian George Remi (pen name Herge) drew from the late 1920s to the 70s. Tintin is a reporter that always finds himself on incredible adventures with his faithful white fox terrier, Snowy. He’s never been popular in the USA, but just about every other country in the world has heard of him. If you think that’s an exaggeration, check out how well Tintin did in the box offices over seas. I’ve been looking forward to seeing this movie much more than I’ve ever looked forward to see any other movie in my life. Did it live up to my expectations? In a world where movie tickets are expensive, is it worth your cash? What if you’re not a Tintin fan? Will you enjoy it?

I hate spoilers as much as you do so need not worry about reading any here. First of all, if you are new to Tintin you will not be lost. The movie does a terrific job of introducing the movie’s main characters. If you are a fan, you will recognise all of them as the characters you know, not as some horribly distorted version of them Hollywood threw together. Everybody making this movie went to great lengths to make sure that the original stories and artwork were respected as much as possible. The movie actually combines two Tintin albums, ”The crab with the golden claws” and ”The Secret of the Unicorn (there’s also a little bit of ”Red Rackhams treasure” in there, but not much), but you’d never know they weren’t one fluent storyline if you’ve never read the books because they are so magnificently blended together. As a matter of fact, while there are certain things that surely only a Tintin fan will appreciate when they watch the film, there are some things only somebody who is not at all familiar with the storyline will experience fully. I had very few problems while I was watching the movie, but one of them was really my own fault: I know the story of ”The Secret of the Unicorn” like the back of my hand. As a result I already knew almost everything that Tintin discovers little by little throughout the film. At some points I thought that the mystery side of the movie had been a bit overdramatized and that Tintin was taking just a little too long to put all the pieces together (quite literally), but again, the answer to the mystery is obvious once you already know the secret. But even when I knew what was coming, I still thoroughly enjoyed the film. There are lots of hilarious lines in the film, many straight from the books but most just clever new lines the excellent writers came up with. Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking that actors only did the voices in this film: every movement from their bodies and faces has captured by computer, and the animators then did an excellent job of putting ”digital makeup” on. Jamie Bell did a very good job as Tintin. Some people have complained in other reviews that the movie is so action packed there is little time for Tintin’s character to be really developed. But the truth is that we know very little about Tintin, and Jamie Bell did a great job at not answering those questions for us. We don’t know who his boss is or who his parents are. We don’t really care. What we do know is that once he sets his mind to do something, he heroicly keeps going against all odds no matter where in the world danger takes him. And the movie does a wonderful job at taking us on the adventure with him.Pretty much every frame of the movie is a piece of art…You could get a sense of what I’m talking about by checking out some of the movie stills or watching the trailers, but you really won’t understand just how great it looks until you see it in the movies. Especially the city of Brussels and the port in Morocco are bright,colorful and incredibly detailed. As far as the people go, they look wonderful to me. They still look like the cartoon characters from the comics, but when you see each individual hair on their heads and the sand and the sweat on their faces as they trod through the desert, you have to remind yourself it isn’t real and congrutalute Weta for their great job. The movie is in a number of formats, but I recommend you go see it in IMAX 3D like I did (if you can find one that doesn’t have all of it’s showtimes filled up with ”Mission Impossible 4”). Chris didn’t particularly like the 3D, but I’ve always been a big fan of IMAX 3D and really enjoyed certain sections when it looked like the dust Tintin’s flashlight was hitting or the woodchips that were exploding or even Captain Haddock’s nose were really in front of my face. Aside from a few moments when the camera pans so quickly a few things seem out of focus, this is a movie that the 3D really works well in, especially on the enormous screen. However I’d say that if you see it in 2D you shouldn’t feel like you’re missing too much because the 3D is more of a fun added bonus to the movie experience.

This is a movie you can take your kids to (they’ll LOVE Snowy), but it’s not just a movie for kids. I fear that many people will go to action packed Mission Impossible 4 and miss one of the best movies that came out this year. What really made the movie for me was Andy Serkis’ brilliant performance as Captain Haddock. Haddock is absolutely hilarious. When you’re not laughing at what he’s doing, you’re laughing at his lines, and when you’re not laughing at his lines you’re probably laughing at his face. He has a Scottish accent in the film (most of us didn’t see him that way in the books) but I fell in love with this version of Haddock immediately as Serkis brought it to life before my eyes. There were times when shots Haddock and a flashback of Sir Francis alternate with a fluency that could only really be acchieved using motion capture.The Thompsons also have a great part in the film, and the only thing I regret about their parts is that I wish they had appeared more in the movie! ”Tintin 2”, which has been officially confirmed, is said to give them a larger role. Daniel Craig did an awesome job as the villain Sakharine, and it’s funny to recognise James Bond playing a villain’s part. He is not the most evil of villains, but he certainly beats (in my mind anyway) the ”Bird Brothers” that were the somewhat pathetic villains in the original stories. I disliked to some degree how Allan, who was a main villain in ”The crab with the golden claws” became more of a wimpy sidekick to Sakharine, but it did work well in the story.

For Tintin Fans (the only spoilers here will be spoilers to non-Tintin fans)

If you are a Tintin fan worried that they’ve taken the stories and thrown in too many pointless action scenes, don’t worry about it. There were really very few sections that I didn’t instantly recognise from one of the books,even when the trailers sometimes make it seem like there are more, and they were anything but annoying. Actually I was very pleased that finally Tintin was doing something new because much of the fun for me in watching the movie was seeing what fun new things the writers could come up with for Tintin to do without insulting the fans. As I said before, the storyline was very familiar to me, and it was good to see some changes to it to make the movie more exciting. The scene in Bagghar with a brilliant cameo appearance of Castafiore and the chaos that follows is actually one of my favorite parts. If Herge could see it today, I think he’d laugh. And the other new scene at the end,a final clash between Haddock and the villain,is a great way to finish their side of the story. Never once do the new scenes seem to make the characters do something against their personality, and if they slow down the story at all it’s only so you can take a moment to enjoy yourself and laugh at what’s going on.
Tintin DOES use a gun (just like he does in the books) but as far as I could tell he never once killed anybody and hardly if ever wounds somebody. He shoots at motors or ropes to get what he wants or protect himself.
Any Tintin fan would be a fool not to go see this in theaters while they still can! Herge’s artwork is apparent from the first 3 seconds of the movie, and both the style and music of the intro feels like you’re watching the beginning of ”Catch me if you can” with about 14 million tributes to the different Tintin albums thrown in. It’s fun to watch moments throughout the movie that have elements thrown in from different books. There are more easter eggs in this movie that any I’ve ever seen, and if you have a good Tintin fan that can go with you to watch the movie you’ll enjoy yourself that much more, because you’ll both be the only people in the theater that know why you’re laughing at what’s on the screen. I won’t say what it is, but there’s a magnificent tribute to ”Explorers on the moon” that I really enjoyed. I can’t wait to own this movie on blu-ray and watch it with all the pizza and popcorn I couldn’t afford when I watched it in IMAX, this time with the remote control to pause the image and read newspaper clippings, compare character’s faces with the albums or look for more references.

Conclusion

You really have to see this movie. Europe loved it for good reasons. If you don’t know who Tintin is, you don’t know what you’re missing. If you DO know who Tintin is, you would make a grave error to not watch this because you are worried about ”what they’ve done to Tintin”. Don’t worry about it, trust me. No matter who you are, this is a must see. It’s the biggest installment in Tintin’s history since Alpha-Art was published.
If I could make a suggestion for the next film it would only be that the next story not revolve as much around a mystery and more around whether or not Tintin will be able to complete his clearly defined objective at all (i.e save Calculus from the Bordurians…hint hint…) I love that heroic side of Tintin that will do anything to save a friend, and I hope to see that developed more in the next film.

Go out America, and enjoy the film. Spielberg, Jackson, Weta, and the whole massive team in the credits, I applaud your hard work. The wait was worth it.

Stephen