Monday 1 November 2010

Tintin finally revealed ... and a letter from Steven Spielberg


I go away on holiday for two weeks and all hell breaks loose regarding Steven Spielberg!

Empire have got the biggest Spielberg scoop of the year with today´s unveiling of the first glimpse of the CGI characters from The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (due in UK cinemas in October 2011).

Created by Peter Jackson´s visual effects company Weta, the images provide us of our first look at Tintin, his loyal dog Snowy and Captain Haddock.

The article on the Empire website (and in full in the next issue) also has quotes from Spielberg about the plot of the film, the first in his career to be fully motion-captured.

Spielberg says: “The first part of the film, which is the most mysterious part, certainly owes much to not only film noir but the whole German Brechtian theatre — some of our night scenes and our action scenes are very contrasty. But at the same time the movie is a hell of an adventure.”

Peter Jackson had this to say about the look of Tintin:

“With live action you’re going to have actors pretending to be Captain Haddock and Tintin. You’d be casting people to look like them. It’s not really going to feel like the Tintin Hergé drew. It’s going to be somewhat different. With CGI we can bring Hergé’s world to life, keep the stylised caricatured faces, keep everything looking like Hergé’s artwork, but make it photo-real.”

Read the full article, along with two other pictures from the film, on the Empire website.

Since I´m typing this on the computer in the lobby of a hotel and my alloted time is ticking down really fast, I thought I squeeze the another bit of Spielberg news.

It seems that he has finished shooting parts of his other big 2011 release, War Horse, on and around Dartmoor in England.

To thank the locals for their support he wrote a letter to the Plymouth Evening Herald and spoke of the "abundance of natural beauty" in the area.

Steven Spielberg wrote: "I have never before, in my long and eclectic career, been gifted with such an abundance of natural beauty as I experienced filming War Horse on Dartmoor.

"And, with two-and-a-half weeks of extensive coverage of landscapes and skies, I hardly scratched the surface of the visual opportunities that were offered to me.

"We have had an incredibly successful shoot and every member of our substantial crew has commented on what a great experience the shoot in Dartmoor has been.

"We faced many logistical challenges working in the narrow lanes and villages on Dartmoor with our extensive film unit.

"The patience and support of the local community was critical in allowing us to safely and quickly move from place to place in search of the best shots and the best light to shoot them.

"We wanted to thank all the residents of Sheepstor and Meavy and the surrounding communities on Dartmoor for their support throughout our stay in Devon, without their help co-operation and patience we would not have been able to achieve so much in such a short space of time."

So there we go - two big bits of Spielberg news that broke while I was thousands of miles away from my home computer. Just typical!



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