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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