Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Snow, and Snowy

One of those strange Dunedin days: mild initially but with a bitingly cold wind. Then a drear sky. Then sunshine, just when you'd turned all the heating on. And then, just as we were going out for lunch with a young friend who's been in England for a year (he's my younger son's best mate) and another older friend, the sky went deep gray and the wind sent snow flakes hurling at you at a rate of knots. By the time I got from the house to the car I was covered in them (snowflakes, not knots).

And then, while we sat inside the pub having our meal, the snow vanished completely (it hadn't settled on the ground at all) and it was sunshine again.

Meanwhile, I've just had a look at the first official trailer for Tintin. He wasn't ever a great favourite of mine, but I must have read some of the books at some point, as the characters presented here all look fairly familiar. But where's the personality behind them? If the trailer's anything to go by, the CGI process presented here is no better than the one in Polar Express in terms of characterization. Where's the real Jamie Bell under all this, or Andy Serkis? There was a great deal more life in the latter's Gollum or even in his King Kong. These characters lack something which I can't quite put my finger on. The various comments on the Guardian article put it down to a deadness in the eyes, which, when you think about it, is odd, because there are real actors involved in the production of what is essentially an animation process. Why should there be any deadness?

The trailer looks very hustle and bustle and not terribly enticing, to be honest. Maybe it just presents all the fast bits and none of the slow...

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