Tintin Movie

A very quick link to the Tintin Puzzles blog. As well as a few spot-the-difference type puzzles, the site has Tintin sticker designs and bookmarks to download.

P.s. I’m off to spend a week camping in a field at Glastonbury so there won’t be any updates on Tintin Movie. Sod’s law says that they will make a big Tintin announcement on tomorrow, the moment I’m away from my computer. In the meantime you can keep an eye on Tintin related news via the Tintin RSS Feed that picks up any mention of Tintin in the news or on major blogs.

The Ephemerist has details of a slightly surreal Flemish comic where all the Flemish comic heros have gone missing and the writers convene a meeting to find new heros.

While most of the story will be beyond everybody who wasn’t raised on a steady diet of Jommeke, De Rode Ridder and Suske & Wiske (not to mention Thomas Pips, Dees Dubbel and others), some of the scenes might be quite intriguing for those interested in Eurocomics. Take the scene pictured above, presenting the cartoonists council mentioned before. We see Hergé presiding over the meeting, but the careful observant also will recognize many more comics luminaries.

Source: The Parliament of Comics

At the end of the year, Evans and his Italian wife, Chiara, hope to visit the Tibetan child they sponsor.

The trip should be less hazardous than the one taken by the person whose story inspired Evans’s passion for the country and its people, the fictitious Tintin created by the Belgian cartoonist Herge.

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Tintin became the first fictional recipient of the Dalai Lama’s Light of Truth award on June 1, 2006.

Evans says the story, first published in 1960, “got me interested and really aware of the Dalai Lama situation, and reading about Buddhism and so on. I respect [the Dalai Lama] a lot and feel he has been very unfairly treated.'’

Evans gears up for a free Tibet tour

Herge’s other comic creations, Quick & Flupke, have been launched in India.

“Even worse will be the Tintin Purists…” is a blog post looking at purists reactions to the Lord of the Rings films. Even if the Tintin Movie is as good an adaptation as Jackson’s LotR then a lot of Tintin fans will complain because their favourite bit has been cut. Personally, I’m going to take the films on their own merit and their general feel. If they are well made films, with good scripts and stick to the general tone of the books, then I will be a very happy Tintin fan.

From The Guardian:

In Tintin’s last-but-one-adventure, Flight 714, our intrepid boy reporter and his friends find themselves on a small and deserted Indonesian island. The first intimation that things may not quite be as they seem comes when a rather bemused-looking but undeniably giant lizard ambles out of the bushes.


“What on earth’s that?” exclaims Captain Haddock. “A monitor,” replies Tintin. “What’s it doing here, pestilential pachyderm?” demands Haddock, displaying his usual grasp of alliteration (and absence of scientific knowledge). “It looks like it’s escaped from the ice age!”

Into the dragon’s den

Think Belgium, think comics and you’ll think of Tintin. Try it again, and Belgium’s only other literary export springs to mind. Yes, its those annoyingly happy Smurfs. Like Tintin they are also going to get a live action / CGI film.

Source: Smurf Movie News

Not a lot happening on the Tintin Movie front at the moment. Filming due to start in September, cast not yet announced sums it all up. However, Tintin remains a cultural force, cropping up all over the place.

Bartholome Marquez, the new manager of the Espanyol football team has joined a long list of people, including politicians, to be nick-named Tintin: New adventure for Tintin

On the Tintinologist forum, Pharaoh spotted an interesting plot twist that was lost in the translation into English: Tintin in America: Bad News

Finally, blogger Jordan Hurder, explores his own fascination with Tintin and makes a few pointed observations.

4. In German, Tintin is called “Tim.” Why do they have to be so efficient?

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7. Tintin is supposed to live in the real world, yet he does things that are clearly impossible. In one adventure, he’s stranded in the jungle with only elephants as his company (elephants to whom he relates with polite detachment). To communicate with them, he picks up a tree branch and handily uses a pocketknife to carve it into a giant trumpet that he then uses to approximate the sound of elephant speech. (Aside from the impossibility of approximating elephant speech, there is also the obvious difficulty of hollowing out a 4-foot solid branch of wood using a two inch pocketknife.) The scene where he asks the elephant to spout water out of its trunk so he can shower under it has to be seen to be believed. Also, he showers in his boxers, presumably because Herge didn’t want to show nudity. But is there a bigger secret being hidden here? In another episode, he kills an ape, cuts off its head, and puts its skin on like a suit in order to blend in with the other apes. And it’s not supposed to be gross at all. Gross.

Source: Tintin, Your Flipped up Tuft of Hair is the Least Curious Thing About You

Is Tintin really going to use a that cat-o’nine tails on someone? More importantly, where did this scene, created by Herge and longtime Tintin illustrator Bob De Moor, appear? Only The Ephemerist has the answer

Herge’s painstaking attention to detail was always at its best when dealing with the latest and future technology. Sometimes, such as the Me-109s in King Ottokar’s Sceptre, he adapts the latest technology of the time. In other books like the rocket in Destination Moon or the sound weapon in The Calculus Affair, he takes current theories and makes them real.

Yet one area that technology that Herge never explored was computers. Unlike planes and motor vehicles that came to the fore in Herge’s lifetime, computers were only really making their mark towards the end of his life. More importantly, computers don’t look exciting and make for lousy action sequences.

Despite this, I think Herge would be fascinated by the internet and the role technology plays in out lives. So he would be proud to now be part of the iTunes store. Tintin’s animated adventures can be download to your iPod. Perfect viewing for that dull commute into work.

The horse ‘Tintin In America’ isn’t a race horse as previously reported. Well, not in the normal sense. He (she? it?) is a harness racing horse where the horse pulls a little buggy on which the rider sits. In fact, here is a picture of Tintin In America in action.

Tintin script-writer Steven Moffat has finished the script and is ready to move on to his next job, writing Dr Who. Moffat is a fantastic writer, his comedy Coupling is one of my all time favourites and about the only sitcom I have ever watched. He has also written some of the best Dr Who episodes ever, including the truly scary Blink, and is to become chief writer for the 2010 series of Dr Who.

Its not clear if Steven Moffat has written just one or all three scripts. The article (see below) says its just the first film but the article also says that Thomas Sangster will definitely star so it might be lazy journalism. If the films are being filmed back-to-back-to-back then I would expect them to have scripts already for the second and third films, or at least rough drafts.

Personally I really hope that Steven Moffat has done all three films. I’m concerned about how sensitively the directors (particularly Spielberg ) will handle the source material. But if Moffat has written all three Tintin movies, then I can be sure at least that the scripts will be in tune with Herge’s orginals.

Source: Moffat replaces Russell T on Doctor Who