Thighs Wide Shut

The Adventures of Tintin
Let The Adventures Begin & NEVER End!!!
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG | 107 min

We never read a single word of Hergé‘s classic tales of Tintin, the world’s most famous fictional young Belgian reporter EVER (go ahead, NAME ANOTHER!), but we’ve always been captivated by the artwork. As a kid, we’d go to the public library and stare at the Tintin covers, but never bothered with what was inside (remember, we’re illiterate). Well, them images have been brought to cinematic life, AND BOY HAVE THEY BEEN BROUGHT TO CINEMATIC LIFE!!!!  Without question and further debate – the most fun we had (and probably you’ll have) in theaters in 2011 was eyeballing Steven Spielberg‘s beyond magical motion capture 3-D extravaganza The Adventures of Tintin!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you need more glowing endorsements? Of course you do, you haters of ginger-haired Belgians! Tintin is Spielberg’s bestest adventure movie since Indy’s Last Crusade.  IT’S TRUE!!!!  Hell, some of Tintin‘s action sequences HACTUALLY top ANYTHING he’s ever done (DID WE JUST WRITE THAT, we did!)!!! Even the digital animation visual stuff here rivals any of that crazy visual shaz seen in his modern futuristic fare, like A.I. and Minority Report!!!!!!

Now, we really should wait a few years before making such statements like this, but we’re almost ready to safely name Tintin as one of Señor Spielbergo’s top ten works, EVER!!!!  Same cannot be said of the other movie being released this week with SS’s name on it, about a boy & his horse, but that’s not for now, cause now it’s all about a boy and his dog and Belgium waffle-awesomeness!!!

So, it cannot possibly be bottom to top mad rad, cannnit?  Well, the plot aint eggzactly all that fancy (it’s the combo of three books - The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn, and Red Rackham’s Treasure), but an adventure doesn’t need to be all that schmancy when it is so dang adventurous!!!!  Sure, the ending doesn’t even come close to matching some of them sequences that preceded it, but then again, not much in movies in 2011 can match those sequences either + the ending is really juss the beginning of what we hope is like 1444 dozen more of these movies.  IT’S TRUE!!!!

Tintin is like one of those National Treasure movies minus Nic Cage & stupidity, and replaces it with the epic epicicity skills of Spielberg & (producer) Peter Diddy Jackson + the wonderful voices of Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, et al + animation so bla-zam-a-zamm-a-slammin-za-mazing, that you’ll almos forget yer watching a cartoon, even though it is a cartoon, sorta!  And you know we hate cartoons, but this aint like any cartoon cartooned before!!  EAT IT PIXAR!!!

moral of the story: catch THIS if you can!!  9reals.  It’s a PG movie that kicks MAJOR a$$.  We mean, it’s got a kid in it who packs heat and hangs out with an always drunk sea captain!!!  If you can only see one movie this holiday season (that doesn’t have dragon tattoos in it), then this HAS to be the one.  We enjoyed this one singular tale more than we did all 7 of the Harry Potter flicks combined!!!  IT’S SO TRUE!!!!  EAT IT HOGWURST!!!!

He Hate She: there’s 2 female characters in the Tintin film, and that’s about as many as there were in the entire Tintin comic world! Hergé usually abstained from including women in on the fun.  He said ‘For me, women have nothing to do in a world like Tintin’s, which is the realm of male friendship. [They would cause] misadventures rather than adventures. Mocking women would not be nice’.  C’mon, doesn’t Tintin wanna celebrate some of his conquests by conquesting some biznatches???

Verdictgo: BREAST IN SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

yer inin like Tintin at a theater near jews December 21st

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Super 8
Amblin’ Enuff Entertainment
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 112 min

Steven Spielberg doesn’t make Steven Spielberg movies anymore (yes, Munich is the knees bees, but do flicks like that scream Spielberg’s name? no), so why not let someone else make them?  Fine by we, and apparently fine by Spielberg, who produced JJ Abrams‘ Super 8, which is soaking in so much Spielbergian Spielbergedness that someone has rightful dubbed it ‘Spielberg porn‘.  Still fine by us.  We all loved Spielberg’s 70s & 80s output (if you didn’t, you must have skipped childhood), and no big flicks these days has come even close to (re)capturing that magic and wonder (maybe Pixar stuff, but that’s computer cartoon stuff, and thus doesn’t count).  Abrams must feel the same void we do, and he certainly aims hard to fill it.  Good for him

For 2/3rds of his first real film, Abrams hits the E.T. marks to perfection.  By the time we get to that last third, he’s still following in Spielberg’s footsteps, but instead of karaoke-ing on the good stuff, he gets Super 8 bogged down in the lesser and louder Spielberg stuff, like his War of the Worlds. That’s not a good thing (we can never forgive Spiels for everything that happened after Tim Robbins showed up), but still, it’s OK.  We’d rather have movies that hearken back to older movies that work, and not just be extensions of franchises and name brands (we know yer siked for that Battleship movie… SIKE!).  We must support this kinda stuff, hispecially since Abrams comes awfully close to nailing it

Recently, we were watching The Goonies (another Spielberg related 80s gem thingie) and felt sorry for today’s kids who don’t have their own Goonies. Movies where kids are the focus and there’s fun AND serious stuff going on (read: NOT Hotel for Dogs) are too far and few between.  Again, Abrams is gunning for that same territory, and is A THIRD CLOSE to having an encountery-kind there.  They did cast a great bunch of youngins, who all fit into some sorta Spielbergesque kid role/look – Mikey Walsh (Joel Courtney… hope this kid’s around 9ever), Chunk (Riley Griffiths), Henry ‘Elliot’ Thomas (Zach Mills), Elliot’s brother (Gabriel Basso) and Mouth (Ryan Lee), but in 10 years time, no one will be remembering these characters’ names or any lines of their dialog.  It’s kinda like Joe Dante’s Explorers, which sorta looks and feels Spielbergay right, but juss aint eggzactly the genuine article.  Wait, what the hell was Explorers about?

So what is it that doesn’t work?  For one thing, Elle Fanning should have played every role.  Yep, she’s that hammazin.  She’s even more hammazin than her sister is/was.  If you haven’t seen her in the nowhere going Somewhere, yer going nowhere, MISTER mr!!!  Our lil Joel Courtney (see, who cares what his character’s name is) falls for her, and you will too. You will!!  So much so that yer gonna start rooting hard for them tweens to hook up.  Kids making out is a pretty sick thing to root for, but thats how compelling and believable their budding relationship is!  That shiz is Super-gr88888!!!

So what is it then that keeps this Spielbergy thing from being totes Spielbergeded????  If we told you, we’d have to kill you, or spoil-ish the movie, sorta.  We will tell you this – Abrams is grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr8 at keeping the lid on mystery (and keeping the pace fast!!!), but once the lid is lifted, what’s behind the curtain was probably better left being a mystery.  Remember how Lost began and ended?  Bang and whimper?  Still, we’re not going to complain here.  This is only Abrams’ first stab at Spielbergvilletown.  Looking forward to seeing his Indiana Jones rip-off.  Just don’t let George Lucas anywhere near it

ps, Kyle Chandler is so good at being a screen dad.  we so wish he could be our screen dad!!

ps 2, we agree with Leitch, Abrams’ buddy Matt Reeves’ Let Me In is THE Super 80s throwback over Super 8

West Virginia Is The New Ohio:  what happens when yer town is rundown and hasn’t changed in 30 years?  YOU GET TO STAR IN A SPIELBERG JJ ABRAMS MOVIE!!!!!

welcome to Weirton, West Virginia, home to ‘Lillian, Ohio’!  watch this! read this! & look at this!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

8 is duper-enuff tomorrow at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…