THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN Press Conference

L to R: Jamie Bell as Tintin, Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock, producer Peter Jackson and director Steven Spielberg.

The press conference for THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN was held on Saturday, December 10^th in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York's Columbus Circle, in a conference room offering a sweeping view of Central Park. On the panel sat director Steven Spielberg, producer Kathleen Kennedy, special effects supervisor Joe Letteri, actor Jamie Bell (who plays the title character) and actor Nick Frost, who plays one of the two bumbling Thompson detectives.

There was an excitement in the air over the presence of one of — if not the — most influential directors of the last three decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. So while most questions were aimed at Spielberg, being the gracious man that he is, he would steer questions, attention and compliments to his co-panelists. (And the articulate and thoughtful director was so fascinating to listen to that I'm including many of his quotes in toto, with only a few snips here and there.)

The first question concerned the painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell. What inspired Spielberg's passion to collect his work, and how have his images inspired his films, especially TINTIN?

"Norman Rockwell has been one of my favorite artists over the years, and I was raised with [him], because when I was a kid we used to get the Saturday Evening Post… I realized the old cliché that one picture is worth a thousand words, which is really true with Rockwell. His images just spoke volumes about America, family, community, religion, faith… When I first started collecting art, the first art I collected was Rockwell. And [George Lucas and I] had a very successful exhibit at the Smithsonian. You probably are seeing images that remind you of Rockwell in TINTIN only because of… the color palette and because it's bright… Rockwell always painted very, very vivid paintings, and also because I will allow the camera sometimes in just a simple frame to say a lot about what’s going on inside the story."

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THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN Review (3 out of 5 stars)

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN, one of two highly anticipated Spielberg movies to come out this Christmas season — the other being the WWI-epic, WAR HORSE — sets a high mark for motion capture animation and provides moments of visual ecstasy on the big screen. An extraordinary level of attention was paid to every pixel-sized detail and the three-dimensional adaptation of the fresh-faced, wholesome boy reporter from the 20^th century comic books, with his trademark shock of red hair.

Perhaps it's due to the screenplay’s combination of elements from three (and arguably more) of the original books (The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn, and Red Rackham's Treasure), but the film's sprawling, international storyline challenges our comprehension. And some of the action scenes — as with too many modern, big-budget adventure films — are so replete with CGI and swooping camera work that it can be hard to discern what's going on those high-adrenaline moments as well...

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HUGO Press Conference

The press conference for Martin Scorsese's HUGO took place on a recent Saturday morning at the Ritz Carlton in Manhattan’s Central Park South, a light and happy affair centered around a film that obviously delighted both cast and crew. And not just because they got to work with one of the greatest living filmmakers, but to shine a light on the life and work of Georges Méliès, the pioneering director of hundreds of early twentieth century films. Méliès shot three of his little silent masterpieces each week in a glass-enclosed studio by day while also performing magic shows at night. The storyline is an adaptation of Brian Selznick’s award-winning 2007 bestselling illustrated novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret (A Novel in Words and Pictures).

On the panel were Asa Butterfield (THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS), Chloë Grace Moretz (LET ME IN), Sacha Baron Cohen (BORAT), Sir Ben Kingsley (SHUTTER ISLAND), Emily Mortimer (SHUTTER ISLAND), Hugo Cabret author Brian Selznick and co-producers John Logan and Graham King. And while Martin (or "Marty," as everyone referred to him) Scorsese's absence was noted, there was no lack of enthusiastic discussion about working with the fabled director.

Méliès's whimsical filmmaking style lost favor with moviegoers as World War I began to take its toll on Paris and the rest of the world. Losing his fortune, burning his costumes and sets and selling his films to be melted down for chemical use, he  ultimately wound up behind the counter of a toy store in the Montparnasse train station, where he languished for years in depression. But his contributions to film were rediscovered in the '30's, and he was properly celebrated in Parisian society before his death in 1938. It's this rediscovery and rehabilitation of the man and his work that HUGO partly covers...

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ANONYMOUS Review (2 out of 5 stars)

I felt lost throughout ANONYMOUS: its editing is a train wreck, and its characters (and their loyalties) are easy to confuse, since they're referred to interchangeably by their titles and names. The roles of England's neighboring countries (Ireland, Spain, France) are perplexing. And the story's so poorly written, I couldn't keep track of who the actual genius playwright in the story was supposed to be, given the film's allegation that Shakespeare was a fraud.

The idea that Shakespeare didn’t write the material attributed to him is an interesting theory to ponder, but Sir Derek Jacobi's onstage soliloquy (as part of a modern, fictionalized play — Anonymous — presaging the tale to unfold) fails to support the claim with adequate context. Is this fantasy — an Oliver Stone-like conspiracy theory reshuffling of history for entertainment’s sake? Or is it credible speculation based on scholarly facts? You’ll have no idea if you didn’t read up ahead of time. And while the gaps in what we know of the great bard's life story may call his authorship into question, negatives still don't prove a positive — this abstrusely detailed "what if" is made up of guesses, coincidences and fictions...

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THE SKIN I LIVE IN Review (4 out of 5 stars)

We see a woman in a body stocking receive her meal by dumb waiter in a hermetically sealed room. Is she suffering from a rare disease? Is she a wealthy eccentric? Thus begins the torrent of questions you'll inevitably have in the opening moments of THE SKIN I LIVE IN, Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar's newest creation.

The sprawling tale of murder, revenge, passion and surgical nightmares it unspools — from present day to years ago and back again — will answer each in time, drip drip. And while the big twist, which is one for the books, is presented in a less plausible way than can be imagined (which robs SKIN of some of its power), you're sure to be riveted, the marvelously unique story ensnaring you in a sticky web. Unsurprisingly, Spain's award-laden director has again summoned so much cream-of-the-crop talent to his side, including a trio of his favorite actors from work past...

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THE THING Review (2 out of 5 stars)

Finally, here it is: the prequel to John Carpenter's cult-classic 1982 horror film, the identically titled THE THING. The new one doesn't quite match up in quality, and its marketing materials' giveaway of so many adrenaline-pumping surprises doesn't help matters. (So don't watch them beforehand.) But it does cleverly and methodically set the stage for the Carpenter film, itself a remake of 1951's THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, based on John W. Campbell Jr.'s 1938 novella, Who Goes There?

In the '82 film, an American team explores the burned-out wreckage of a Norwegian camp — the prequel tells the Norwegians' story, and it ends with the Carpenter film's iconic beginning, in which a Norwegian helicopter chases the alien (in wolf form) to the American outpost.

At the start of Dutch director Matthijs van Heijningen's feature film debut, the Norwegians follow an ominous radio signal into the wilds of Antarctica until their vehicle crashes through the ice, lodges in a crevasse and illuminates a spacecraft below.

Enter young paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, listening to Huey Lewis in the one sign that this is the 80's). The Norwegians recruit Kate to help extract the craft's survivor from the ice nearby, its talons just visible beneath the surface. They haul it to camp, where cocky lead scientist Dr. Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) drills through the ice it's encased in for a tissue sample. Which is a bad move: the resulting cracks and building's higher temperature enable the beast to break free and begin to stalk, absorb and then replicate the camp's international denizens one by one. And so this team of Norwegian, American, French and British scientists and their helpers must carry out the nerve-wracking task of rooting out and destroying the alien within their ranks...

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TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL Review (1-1/2 out of 5 stars)

TUCKER AND DALE is a spoof on college-kid-slasher movies – the FRIDAY THE 13TH films (all fifty-six of them), CABIN FEVER, even BLAIR WITCH – and, like most of those, becomes boringly predictable from early on. Still, Tyler Labine (as Dale) and Alan Tudyk (as Tucker) have a ball playing the title characters, a duo of lovable hillbillies upending an all too often grotesque stereotype in popular entertainment. It's them and their hilarious one-liners that make my recollection of the film a bit warmer than I actually felt watching it in the theater; they alone could make this B-movie a cult classic.

The two are best buds in the West Virginian Appalachians and thrilled to spend some much-needed vacation time in a dilapidated, lakeside shack in the woods forty miles outside town. While stocking up on supplies at the local store – the drawling owner reads out their list of hilariously sinister purchases, which include a machete and chainsaw -- they encounter a gaggle of obnoxious, entitled college kids. The frat-tastic, boorish males and boobalicious, ditzy cheerleader types get an immediate, negative impression of the sweet-natured duo when Dale approaches them, cluelessly, with a Grim Reaper scythe in hand and asks between anxious giggles, "You guys goin' campin'?" His pseudo-psycho behavior is Tucker’s fault however, who gave him the questionable advice to hide his nervousness around women with laughter...

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