The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn | the m0vie blog

Tintin: Cigars of the Pharaoh (Review)

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Darren

In the lead-up to the release of The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, I’m going to be taking a look at Hergé’s celebrated comic book character, from his humble beginnings through to the incomplete post-modern finale. I hope you enjoy the ride.

This is more like it. I think Cigars of the Pharaoh is the first quintessential Tintin story. It really feels like Hergé has figured out the kind of stories he wants to tell, with a weird blend of various pulp genres from crime to mystery to horror, all mixed with a healthy dose of comedy. It’s also the first adventure in the series (and I’m including Tintin in the Congo) that feels truly exotic as our hero travels the world to unearth the central mystery.

Tintin's first glimpse of a Red Sea Shark...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Adventures of Tintin, Captain Haddock, cigars of the pharaoh, Hergé, indiana jones, jack kirby, peter jackson, snowy, stan lee, steven spielberg, the adventures of tintin: cigars of the pharaoh, The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, tintin and the cigars of the pharaoh, Tintin in the Congo, tintin: cigars of the pharaoh | 4 Comments »

Tintin: Tintin in America (Review)

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Darren

Tintin in America was the earliest Adventures of Tintin book I read as a child, and I owned the entire collection from this point on (for obvious reasons, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Tintin in the Congo were not recommended childhood reading). That said, I’ve always regarded Tintin in America as one of the weaker entries in the series, perhaps because my childhood imagination yearned for something relatively more exotic than a trip to North America, or perhaps because the saturation of American pop culture made all the elements Hergé was spoofing seem like old hat. I’m not entirely sure, but I have to admit that the story hasn’t improved too much on re-reading.

America, %&#! Yeah!

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Adventures of Tintin, Al Capone, comic books, gangsters, Hergé, history, native americans, peter jackson, racism, review, steven spielberg, The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, tintin, tintin in america, Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, United States | Leave a comment »

Tintin: Tintin in the Congo (Review)

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Darren

“Unfortunate,” is probably a word that gets tossed around quite frequently about Tintin in the Congo. The second adventure in the series, it was omitted from the list of books on the back of my old Tintin collection, for reasons that aren’t too hard to fathom. Apparently, like Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, the book was driven by editorial edict – to encourage Belgians to move to the colonies in the Congo, rather than to drum up fear and mistrust of communist Russia – though, to be frank, I really can’t see much here stirring a desire to emigrate. Tintin in the Congo is very mush a product of its time, filled with casual racism and awkward portrayals. That doesn’t make it any better, and it’s genuinely quite difficult to look past that fact.

Fur and loathing in the Belgian Congo...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Adventures of Tintin, arts, Captain Haddock, controversy, Hergé, peter jackson, political correctness, racism, Secret of the Unicorn, steven spielberg, The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Warner Bros | 4 Comments »

Tintin: Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (Review)

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Darren

The two earliest Tintin adventures, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Tintin in the Congo, are looked back upon as the black sheep of the Tintin novels produced by Hergé. While Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is shameless anti-Communist propaganda (and does contain a hint of the foul racism we’d see a lot more of in Tintin in the Congo), one can detect a lot of the charm that Hergé brought to his iconic creations, scattered throughout the work, from the surreal sense of humour to the writing style to the love of ridiculous suspense, seemingly for the sake of suspense. The best was definitely yet to come, but it all started here.

The collection isn't Tintin at his finest...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: comic books, Comics, communism, cultural misunderstandings, Hergé, Joseph McCarthy, List of The Adventures of Tintin characters, peter jackson, propaganda, Russia, serialised, snowy, soviet, Soviet Union, steven spielberg, the adventures of tintin, The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, the land of the soviets, tintin, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets | 4 Comments »

Stop Motion Capture: Time to Worry About Tintin?

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Darren

Mars Needs Moms bombed at the box office. Badly. Really badly. Ignoring the fact that Disney is in need of another hit, the failure of the Seth-Green-starring Robert-Zemeckis-produced motion-capture 3D CGI films raises serious questions about the future of that particular animation style. However, I wonder if it’s playing across the minds of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson as they add the finishing touches to their Tintin adaptation.