The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Adventures of Tintin, and War Horse
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One of the movie’s great charms is the way in which it echoes elements of Spielberg’s Indiana Jones films, especially in the water-lashed seafaring scenes and a sun-baked trek through the Moroccan desert. The digitized environments teem with lifelike detail, and the action choreography and acrobatic camera movement can only elicit wonderment.
But the incessant uproar and overextended chases and escapes grow tedious after a while, and the constant presence of the blabbering Captain Haddock (“I know these waters better than the warts on me mother’s face”) becomes a sizable annoyance. Even the kids who are this film’s intended audience may turn out to have their limits when it comes to such clamorous overkill.
War Horse
Before I embark on my daily round of puppy-kicking and unicorn-strangling, I have to say that in sitting through Spielberg’s second new release, War Horse, I felt as if I were being lowered into a vat of warm tears, there to remain for nearly two and a half freakin’ hours. This is a movie so boldly old-fashioned that much of its true target demographic must be long dead, or nearly enough.
It’s a movie about a noble horse and the boy who loves him. Well, the boy and the girl and a few other people who love him. The horse—one Joey—is conscripted into the British cavalry and dispatched to help fight World War I. Joey has many dangerous adventures, and the picture is in fact most effective in conveying, however discreetly, the horrors of the Great War—the mustard-gassed trenches, the mounted soldiers swinging outmoded swords in the face of enemy artillery. That’s not the problem; the movie is beautifully made. The problem is the story, which is an episodic sprawl, and its dripping sentimentality, a quality that Spielberg is unsurprisingly disinclined to mitigate.
In the 1982 book on which the film is based, the horse was the narrator, I gather. In the 2007 London stage play that was made from the book (and which has since collected a number of Tony Awards on Broadway), the story’s several horses are depicted by ingeniously designed, life-size puppets. Spielberg rightly decided that real horses would be required for the film version, and his ability to turn one of them (or several, actually) into a lead presence is remarkable.
We first meet Joey as a spirited colt in the rolling green hills of Devonshire, where he bonds with a good-hearted farm boy named Albert (newcomer Jeremy Irvine). Albert is bereft when Joey is auctioned off to a good-hearted cavalry captain named Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston, who played Scott Fitzgerald in Midnight in Paris). Transported to the war-torn continent, Joey falls into the hands of a good-hearted young German soldier named Berg (David Kross), and then into the care of a spunky French farm girl named Emilie (Celine Buckens, another newcomer). By this point, we’ve learned that Albert has left his own farm to join the army and scour the continental battlefields in search of his beloved steed. Anyone who has seen the 1943 Lassie Come Home—of which one contemporary critic said, “only the hardest heart can fail to be moved”—will know how this tale is heading.
As shot by Spielberg’s longtime cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, War Horse swells with a love landscape, particularly in the early Devon section, that might have drawn an appreciative sigh from John Ford. But the movie’s unabashed weepiness, which John Williams’ syrupy score shamelessly heightens, may prove tough going for viewers unaccustomed to such anachronistic heart-tugging. Compounding that problem, the picture goes on far too long; and while I understand the soggy appreciation of many who’ve seen it, after about an hour or so I found myself unable to go along with it.
Kurt Loder is a writer living in New York. His third book, a collection of film reviews called The Good, the Bad and the Godawful, is now available. Follow him on Twitter at kurt_loder.
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War Horse, chock full of property confiscation and questionable use of animals. Good times.
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Once that had run its course, civilization might have returned to its normal pattern of decline, starvation, plague, and eventual collapse, but for the dynamic created in London, where a large population had become wealthy coordinating the colonial trade that dealt essentially in seizing the enormous wealth of the Americas for Europe, using enslaved populations from Africa to supplement the decimated Native population.
A Pirate’s Life for Me II: Opening the Map
by Jason Godesky | 22 May 2007
http://rewild.info/anthropik/2.....index.html -
Shut up, Godesky.
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STFU, LoneWacko.
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Tim C. sez Hollywood cinema is dead. Discuss.
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Rin Tin Tin could like TOTALLY take Tintin out.
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With breasts that seem to defy gravity Gabriella was surely destined to be a nude model. One hundred percent natural, Gabriella tells us she inherited her incredible assets from her mother. Although mum’s are apparently twice the size!
This Brazilian beauty is as passionate and temperamental as they come and has lots of life experience for her age. She loves to dance, can mix the best cocktails and at the end of a long day likes to relax by sucking on a fine cigar! The only problem for Gabriella appears to be that she is unlucky in love...
Although established as a popular model for car shows around the world this was her first time ever doing full nudes. Gabriella however took it all in her stride - as the results show!
And you won’t want to miss her videos, when the camera started rolling Gabriella turned into a wild cat in the springtime.
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Pictures or it didn't happen.
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I'll be in my bunk...
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Your tits are stupendous.
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Kurt some of us out here going to tractor pulls and shopping at Wal Mart like a movie with some "dripping sentimentality" every now and again.
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Then you'll probably love the new Tom Hanks 9/11 movie.
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“boldly old-fashioned…dripping sentimentality…unabashed weepiness…John Williams’ syrupy score”
Dear Santa,
Please help Spielberg get over his Norman Rockwell fetish. -
What do people think of the Swedish "Millennium" movies?
I liked the first one well enough, even though I guessed the ending without too much trouble. But the second and (especially) third didn't do much for me.
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It has to be said that Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin represents a new peak in motion-capture artistry.
Innovative? The trailors look less convincing than this, and this is done in real time instead of processed at the leisure of the artist.
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I was not aware of the original "Dragon Tattoo." Interesting...
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I saw it. Some pretty brutal stuff in that flick. It will be interesting to compare.
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I was only aware until this article that Hollywood was making its own remake. Watch the Swedish original, I suspect you will prefer it over the sanitised Hollywood version.
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From what I've been reading, this is apparently a pretty brutal movie, and I've heard it expressed that if it had been directed by someone with less clout than David Fincher, it would likely have been slapped with an NC-17. Haven't seen it yet, but it sounds like it's anything but sanitized.
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Daniel Craig reminds me of a serial rapist with a psychosis in overdrive. But I'll watch the movie anyway.
And Epi was right, damn it. Terra Nova was cringe-worthy, to say the least
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Terra Nova was cringe-worthy, to say the least
I haven't seen Terra Nova, but it looks to me like they've stolen Stephen Lang's character from Avatar, renamed him, and made a show about him.
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much of its true target demographic must be long dead, or nearly enough
How old is John, anyway?
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This Dragon Girl thing -- has anyone here read it? I can barely get through a synopsis without my brain numbing over.
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It's a good read.
Nothing too heavy.
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The books are similar to "Less Than Zero" and "American Psycho" in that they are based upon quite depraved pornography, wherein the action revolves around rape, serial murder, sex slavery, and criminal sex trade with a leavening of socialist political correctness. Don't bother reading this tripe, or seeing the movie, unless you like feeling dirty.
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I don't understand why anyone who read the Larsson book would see the movie, when you know exactly what's gonna happen.
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Fun football trivia: Who does Rooney Mara (Female lead in GWDT) root for and why?
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Guess:Somehow related to Wellington Mara...expired Giants owner. But she no doubt roots for the Raiders cause she is bad ass.
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But also somehow related to Art Rooney...
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Steelers. I believe she is named for/related to the family
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"After his misadventures in the piddling Cowboys & Aliens..."
That movie rocked. If you were looking for more than what the title delivered, that was your fault.
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I have yet to finish C&A. Dour. And tedious.
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I have yet to finish C&A. Dour. And tedious.
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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Now in Nerd Spankovision!
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War Horse looks like it will be some combination of cloyingly sweet, and if remotely realistic, depressing. I will avoid it like the plague.
I still don’t understand remaking GWDT with an English speaking cast and setting it in Sweden. Why not just rent the Swedish films? The female lead is hotter in the Swedish films anyway
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You said it. I love Fincher, but what's the point of remaking a recent, excellent movie with a new cast? Wait, I know: $
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I am a fan of Tintin, read almost all the volumes, but I just can't see myself going to see this movie because it seems so unnatural. The French did a live-action Tintin that was much better imo
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This Tintin should have been live-action. Would have been more amazing and memorable.
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My buddy showed me the trailer to the 2012 release of The Three Stooges. Upon hearing his description, I cringed, wondering why anyone would try to remake a classic that cannot be duplicated. Then I saw the trailer. It puts the Stooges in modern times, and is f'ng hilarious. Can't wait for the movie to open.
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Don't you remember the SNL-style sketch comedy Fridays from the early 80s?
It had stoner-Stooges bits with Larry played by the Larry David.
Too lazy to link.
That said, CC, I shared your same concerns but now I am curious....
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This line has been bugging me since yesterday:
"...and for the length of the movie, at least, she obscures the memory of Noomi Rapace..."
It's like saying, "For the length of the show, Rich Little obscures the memory of Johnny Carson." OK, bad analogy, but the point is that Rapace *realized* the character. Mara is not even reinventing; she's merely copying.
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