DVD Notes: "The Adventures of Tintin" |
| Tintin and Captain Haddock in a troublesome situation in "The Adventures of Tintin" |
In my introduction to The Back Row, I wrote that I’d be seeing films years, even decades after their release, and shouting out my own uncouth commentary from my seat among the distracted and amorous here at the back. So far, anyone who missed my introduction and my mention in it of Singin' in the Rain and Raging Bull, will think I’ve never seen a film released before 2008, the earliest date of a film I’ve reviewed so far. Now, my first review of a Steven Spielberg film would have been a marvellous opportunity to begin remedying this, with some of the Boy Wonder’s most iconic and beloved features being landmarks in the New Hollywood of the 1970s and early 1980s. Alas, these, my first notes on Spielberg, are of one of his 2011 releases, The Adventures of Tintin (the other being War Horse), and I’ll have to go a little longer with readers doubting my level of cultural literacy.
The Adventures of Tintin is based on three of Hergé’s
beloved Tintin albums: “The Crab With the Golden Claws,” “The Secret of the
Unicorn,” and “Red Rackham’s Treasure.” These were written and published in the
1940s, and, though Spielberg describes the setting of his film as “just
timeless Europe ,” it seems very much constrained
to that time. The place, however, seems to have been changed – the books were
set in Belgium