Tintin: The Adventures of Steven Spielberg

Copyright: www.us.movie.tintin.com

“Kids, no matter what your age, you’re kids, and you’ll be kids the rest of your lives. I’ve been a kid all my life,” Steven Spielberg, apparently, shouted to thousands of people at the Comic-Con International Convention held in San Diego last month. You can imagine the effect he must have had on his audience, a caboodle of comic-book, graphic-novel and animated-movie fans from all over the world. I wasn't there but I read about it in the papers and on the internet and knew what he was screaming about.

Hollywood’s master craftsman had every reason to be excited: after all, he is releasing The Adventures of Tintin, the part-animated 3D motion capture film, on December 23. Not everyone gets a chance to make and release a film based on a universally popular and monumental character like Tintin; that too on a grand scale as you will see this year-end.

When was the last time you remember a film, based on a comic-book hero, create anticipatory anxiety among superhero fans? In my opinion Tintin and Asterix are superheroes too.

Let’s see: Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher and Christopher Nolan stirred us up with Batman while Sam Raimi had us rooting for the first Spider-Man movie ever to be made (thumbs-up to Val Kilmer, thumbs-down to Tobey Maguire). Between the caped crusader and the web crawler, or since 2000, we have had the less hyped-up Hulk, Daredevil, Catwoman, Fantastic Four, Superman (Returns), Iron Man and Thor. We liked them because we love our comics and because we are faithful to our comic-book heroes. Mentalpiece icons…

I will not comment on Captain America because I have not seen the film, as I write this piece, and also because the reception to Steve Roger's alter ego has been rather lukewarm in India. 

The closest I can remember a superhero film creating a mild frenzy was in 1978 when Richard Donner ‘shocked and awed’ us with Superman (Did you see that? He actually made Superman fly!). Remember: this was long before the technology-digital-marketing revolution gave us a new purpose in life. Thirty-three years on, Christopher Reeve’s reign as Kal-El, Clark Kent and Superman remains unchallenged.

Yet, none of these films, with the exception of Batman and Spider-Man to an extent, has created the kind of media and marketing hoopla that is building up around Tintin; at least not several months prior to the launch of the film.

I reckon Steven Spielberg is going to rake it in with his maiden adventure of the young Belgian reporter and I don’t think the film will be panned by fans and critics as is anticipated. Netizens are suggesting that Spielberg would have done better with Asterix which I desperately hope will be his next directorial venture. Gérard Depardieu took the fun out of the boar-gorging, Roman-bashing, menhir-delivering Obélix in the Asterix movies.

For now, Spielberg promises to delight us with his celluloid adaptation of Tintin. I, for one, am waiting to be surprised. What better way for a kid to ring in the new year…

Where is Prof. Calculus?
The Adventures of Tintin is the story of the secret of the unicorn where Tintin and Capt. Haddock go off on a treasure hunt to locate a sunken ship captained by Haddock’s bearded and sword-wielding ancestor Red Rackham. So it’s a combination of two Tintin adventures, The Secret of the Unicorn and its sequel Red Rackham’s Treasure which owes its humour element to the antics of Prof. Cuthbert Calculus. Unfortunately, his character appears to be missing in the Steven Spielberg offering.

Stamp of a Writer: 
Ernest Hemingway

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

JUKE BOX

Oh! Carol by Neil Sedaka

This 1959 hit song by American singer Neil Sedaka is just the number to serenade your girlfriend or make up with her if you have had a fight. Just substitute Carol for you know who... You'll love the beat, the rhythm, the lyrics, and the foot-tapping Sedaka who dedicated the song to Carole King, his girlfriend and fellow pop singer.

Stamp of an Actor:
Charlie Chaplin

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl. 

Woody Allen’s top five books



The five books that have influenced Woody Allen's film making and humour writing, according to the consummate entertainer himself, are: 

1. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)

2. Really the Blues by Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe (1946)

3. The World of S.J. Perelman (2000)

4. Epitaph of a Small Winner by Machado de Assis (1880)

5. Elia Kazan: A Biography by Richard Schickel (2005)

I haven't read any of these books yet though I am halfway through The Complete Prose of Woody Allen, an early collection of fifty-two pieces of hilarious writing. Barring Annie Hall, I prefer his writings to his other films. As bizarre as it is, I enjoy Woody Allen's brand of humour. He doesn't make sense maybe that's why he's so freakin' funny.

Read why at www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/06/woody-allen-top-five-books/print

Check out his full interview at www.thebrowser.com/interviews/woody-allen-on-memory

When it’s time to sell your comics

Would you still be a comic-book fan if you woke up one morning and decided to sell your entire collection of comics? Well…umm…yes; then again...maybe not. There are always two ways of looking at something and comics are no exception to that rule.

I suppose you will always cherish comics even if they no longer occupy pride of place in your dusty attic; and yet, it’s your sweat-of-the-brow collection that singles you out as a comic-book fan, in a crazy sort of way. Without your carton of comics you are incommunicado in the comics universe. A world without pictures, dark and foreboding.

And so it was with a lot of anguish that I read on the internet about one Jason Neale's ill-advised decision to sell his 4,000-odd collection of comics built over 25 years (see link below).

My first thought was: You’re crazy! You can’t do that!! No one does that to comics!!!

So what has driven Jason to find foster homes for his poor old comic books? “A family and a change of priorities,” says Jason, who is hoping to make a neat pile of around $4,500 (nearly Rs.2 lakh) from selling his soon-to-be-orphaned comics through online auction.

Different people have different priorities like family, health, job, religion, wealth, and relationships. You can add a dozen more to that list and you still won’t find comics anywhere near, unless you start bottom up. Or, better still, join the comic-book industry for then it becomes your job and a priority and no wife and kids can shake your comics off you.

In this case, though, a family does call for a change of priorities and $4,500 is a heck of a lot of money. In India, Rs.2 lakh is retirement benefit.

But, it’s one thing to sell comics purely as an investment (you might as well sell underwear), it’s another to be a diehard comic-book fan and have to sell it, especially if you don’t want to, especially if…

Jason’s dilemma is every CB fan’s dilemma: if he holds on, he loses; if he sells, he still loses. Figure it out.

Do we detect a hint of sadness when he says, “It’s saying goodbye to an old friend. I spent many years actually searching for this collection....It’s been a big part of my life.”

It’s a big part of many other lives too. I once lost some prized Phantom comics to thieving termites (I hate termites). A friend of mine lost his entire lot to flash floods (he hates rains). His friend lost his collection to space invaders (and he hates aliens). It’s a fate worse than selling comics and making money and buying more comics.

[Link to the Jason Neale article: www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2011/08/02/3283208.htm]

Copyright: Hodder Dargaud

Stamp of a Writer: 
Bertrand Russell

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.