The Playlist

Review: Steven Spielberg's 'The Adventures Of Tintin' Is A Gloriously Enjoyable Mo-Cap Marvel

By Oliver Lyttelton
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October 24, 2011 4:05 AM
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5 Comments

Across his 40 year career as Hollywood's most beloved filmmaker, Steven Spielberg has tried his hand at many different things -- the blockbuster thrill ride, the family film, the comedy, the war film, hardcore science-fiction, serious dramas and whatever it was that "The Terminal" was, a diverse range of pictures united by that certain Spielberg je-ne-sais-quoi. But there's something he's never tackled directly himself; the animated film. Sure, he's produced TV cartoons like "Animaniacs," and even the occasional big-screen one, like "An American Tail" and "We're Back," but for the most part, the Bearded One has always preferred live action to ink and pixels.

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Steven Spielberg Says 'The Adventures Of Tintin' Is "85% Animation, 15% Live Action"

By Oliver Lyttelton
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October 16, 2011 10:44 AM
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6 Comments

And More We Learned From Empire Magazine's Feature On The Steven Spielberg Animated AdventureIt's been three and a half years since Steven Spielberg's last movie (and nearly six since his last good one), but the wait is nearly over as "The Adventures of Tintin" (or to give it its full international title, "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn") hits Europe in a few short weeks, and it started screening for press in the last few days, with reviews emerging from London in the last 24 hours. The film, a long-in-the-works performance-capture version of Hergé's boy-detective hero, marks the great director's first entrance into the world of CGI animation, and his 3D debut, and it's looking more and more promising as its release gets closer (check out the clips from the film in case you missed it).

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Watch: Excellent, Action-Packed New U.K. Trailer For Steven Spielberg's 'The Adventures of Tintin'

By Oliver Lyttelton
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October 5, 2011 1:05 AM
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1 Comment

Even as a big fan of Steven Spielberg, this writer is strangely cool on "War Horse," the director's big awards hopeful this year. The full trailer, of course, debuted yesterday, and it looks handsome, and probably moving, and well-acted, but...there's something that's just not quite connecting there. Maybe it's that the Bearded One has something arriving more imminently that's taking up our focus, such as his long-in-the-works adaptation of "The Adventures of Tintin," which sees Spielberg team up with Peter Jackson to bring Hergé's beloved comic book boy detective to the screen with WETA-enhanced performance capture.

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James McAvoy, Jamie Bell & Alan Cumming Set For Irvine Welsh's 'Filth'; Filming Starts January 2012

By Kevin Jagernauth
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August 4, 2011 6:51 AM
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1 Comment

Earlier this year, in an interview with The Daily Record, James McAvoy hinted at a tantalizing potential project on the horizon saying, "I'm looking at a part soon, like the second half of this year, that is quite extreme I mean, quite full on mental." While the actor is currently shooting the crime drama "Welcome to the Punch," the premise of that film -- about a London detective whose old nemesis, an armed robber, reappears after five years away -- doesn't sound "quite extreme" or "full on mental." However, one project that has been floating with his name attached is an adaptation of Irvine Welsh's "Filth" and it now seems the long-gestating project is coming together.

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Watch: Jamie Bell IS Tilda Swinton In First Trailer For 'The Adventures Of Tintin'

By Oliver Lyttelton
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May 17, 2011 12:28 PM
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20 Comments

One of the biggest question marks of the year has been Steven Spielberg's "The Adventures of Tintin." The director's coming off the worst film of his career, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," and tackling a comic book that few in the U.S. have heard of, in the performance capture manner that's seen the undoing of Robert Zemeckis in recent years, seemed like a fairly risky move, all things considered. And it doesn't help that the film's been mostly shrouded in mystery.

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Nifty Teaser Posters Debut For Steven Spielberg & Peter Jackson's 'The Adventures Of Tintin'

By Oliver Lyttelton
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May 16, 2011 5:22 AM
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2 Comments

First Trailer To Arrive Tomorrow MorningFor one of the most eagerly anticipated films of the year, at least everywhere except the U.S, word's been strangely quiet on "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn." Uniting blockbuster giants Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson for the first time (the former's directing, the latter producing), on an adaptation of the massively successful graphic novel series about a Belgian boy detective, his dog Snowy, his best friend, a drunken sea captain, and the adventures they go on, we had a glimpse of a handful of images before Christmas, but little since then. We guess because the film's being realized in performance-capture computer animation, and so Sony and Paramount have presumably had to wait until the polish has been put on properly.

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Review: 'Jane Eyre' A Hauntingly Effective Gothic Drama

By Drew Taylor
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March 10, 2011 5:13 AM
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5 Comments

When tasked with reimagining Charlotte Brontë's immortal "Jane Eyre," which seems to be adapted somewhere, by someone, every couple of years, some key decisions must be made. The impulse that seems to have seized director Cary Fukunaga was to emphasize the gothic horror elements of the story, while making the narrative more structurally complex, allowing for more of Jane's back story to slip into the movie (it's the stuff most commonly left out of the multitude of adaptations).

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Cary Fukunaga Talks His Horror/Romance Take On 'Jane Eyre' With Michael Fassbender & Mia Wasikoska

By Kimber Myers
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March 8, 2011 7:39 AM
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0 Comments

Indie Filmmaker Also Discusses His Gestating Musical With Owen Pallett, His African Civil War Drama 'Beasts Of No Nation,' & His Good Filmmaking Fortune So FarExclusive: Delighting fans of period romance everywhere -- and kids who can't be bothered with even the Cliffs Notes of the classic Charlotte Brontë novel --"Jane Eyre" is making another appearance on screen. But rather than coming from a predictably English pedigree, the 2011 Focus Features version arrives from the seemingly unlikely source of Cary Fukunaga, a young American director with a single feature to his name, 2009's gritty immigration thriller "Sin Nombre." Fukunaga went young with his casting, opting for Mia Wasikoska ("The Kids Are All Right") to play to the title role, while Michael Fassbender ("Hunger," the dreams of many a female Playlister) takes on the brooding part of Edward Rochester.

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Review: 'The Eagle' Marred By Humorless Melodrama & A Silly Bromance

By Drew Taylor
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February 10, 2011 5:27 AM
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0 Comments

Helluva Chase Though...While mildly engaging initially, but soon marred by cliches, all-to-familiar and humorless swords and sandals tropes, a barrage of mixed accents (including puzzling Brooklyn ones), and the unintentional bromance comedy of two warring leads turned bffs by the end of the picture, Kevin Macdonald's "The Eagle" fails to deliver anything we haven't seen from the Roman soldiers/bros. on-the-run genre.

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