Tintin Forums

Did anyone happen to see the opera on BBC2 tonight of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's masterpiece, The Little Prince?
I was really impressed by it - especially the stunning costumes that make the actors look like they had just stepped out of the book itself. The translation from book to libretto seemed very natural, and hats off especially to the actor who played the Prince.

I would have liked to have seen that but we don't get that here in the States, but here's some news - Hollywood's going take a crack at their version of it - the rights were bought not too long ago.
Let's hope it's not another Polar Express...

I've heard things - I hesitate to say "good things" - about The Polar Express, so I hope that it's not another like that.
I heard a while back that Pathé, the company behind Chicken Run and the film version of The Magic Roundabout, is set to make their own animated version - is this the one you mean ?
I'm personally hoping that it'll be 2D animation, not 3D-rendered, like their two films I mentioned.

I was working on an independent project, and one of the guys in our group sold his interpretation of the story to Disney after acquiring the rights to make a movie, don't ask me how (it might actually have been Disney who bought the rights, after they saw his presentation...).
Let's just hope Disney is acting soley as a distributer as in the Pixar movies.
With Pixar's domination of 3D, 2D seems to be on its way out - just look at the the last couple of 2D Disney debacles.
Of course nobody counts it out, there might be a saturation of 3D and it swings back to the 2D, especially if somebody comes up with a 2D blockbuster - Hollywood tends to copycat and cannibalize itself.
Then there's the the really original works like Tripletts of Belleville (a..k.a Belleville Rendez-Vous) and The Iron Giant that get glowing critical reviews, but make modest, if any, money...

I keep meaning to get a copy of Triplets of Belleville, I heard the theme song (and saw a few trailers for it), and it seemed fascinating.
There's also the Japanese Oscar-sweeping Spirited Away, which for UK viewers is on Sky Box Office sometime over the Christmas period.

On the continent, however, they seem to be sticking to 2D animation - a German company recently produced a Becassine film, and Ellipse of France came out with a Corto Maltese animated film.
And curiously, after the massive success of Astérix & Obélix : Mission Cleopatre, the next Asterix film currently being worked on is animated (and said to be the most expensive European animated film in history).
Apparently Uderzo thought the last film was a bit distanced from the original book (despite the fact it was incredibly funny, and I didn't understand a lot of it, since I haven't seen an English subtitled version yet).

Belleville was eye candy!
The general style of the backgrounds reminds me of 101 Dalmations (it's the same "pen and ink toned by watercolors" look) but the stylization of the characters, the anatomy, the city, ships, Citroëns, combined with the different genres of music, was unique.
Check out the still gallery section on the official Triplets website through Google...
Of course, it was David vs Goliath at the Oscars when it went up against Finding Nemo, which I think is the weakest of Pixar's films. Even though I knew Nemo would trounce it, I still had my fingers crossed...
I loved Spirited Away too...
As for Asterix, I think there is to be a live-action movie with Gerard Depardieau - or has that already done? I never got into it...

They made two live-action Asterix films: Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar being the first, and Mission: Cleopatra the second. They starred Christian (Les Visiteurs) Clavier as Asterix and Gerard Depardieu as Obelix.

The first one was a mixture of lots of parts of different books thrown together, but the second was based very much on the original album, Asterix and Cleopatra.

The first is okay, nothing spectacular, but the second one is really very funny indeed, with absolutely loads of cultural references, spoofs of films etc., and a great dance number to James Brown's I Feel Good, performed by the whole building site.

Has anyone seen the 1974 (I think ?) live-action film version of The Little Prince? It starred Gene Wilder as the fox, I think.
I've not seen it, but am curious as to whether it's any good or not - it came out on R2 DVD recently, so if it's good, I'll get a copy.

The book of The Little Prince is something I always feel I should like more than I do - I think the illustrations are nice, but the story is just a tad too portentous.

The live-action movie tends a bit too far in that direction too, and doesn't manage to retain any of the lightness of the look of the book; it also suffers from terrible songs by Lerner and Loewe, in what was to be their last musical (I might be wrong, it may have been the way in which the songs were presented, rather than the songs themselves, as L&L fell out with the film's producers, and refused to help orchestrate and produce the soundtrack - either way, the songs, such as they are, land with a thud!).
I don't write it off entirely, as there are some interesting points to it: Steven Warner, the wee boy playing the Prince, is suitably fey, and looks the part, and they manage the asteroid set quite well, as the Prince appears to be able to walk convincingly all over its surface, in any direction, even though it was a practical smallish, spherical set.
Anyway, it's a curiosity more than a satisfying transfer of book to screen.

I missed the actual broadcast of the opera, but the clips on the trailer looked quite nice, and the score sounded charming with the choir.

The score was excellent!
I particularly enjoyed the duet of the Prince and the Rose, and crossing the desert to the well was done beautifully, making the most of the small stage using effective lighting - it really looked like they had travelled a great distance!

Another nice little sequence was when the Prince asks the Pilot his famous request - to draw him a sheep. To make it more suitable for a stage performance, the Pilot draws the sheep in the sand with his finger, and the Prince kicks it away when he doesn't like it. The Pilot eventually draws the crate holding the sheep on the back of a map, making it easier to see than in the notebook that he draws it in originally (I think).

The travelling between the planets by the flock of seagulls was well handled as well - in the book, the Prince hangs onto strings carried by the seagulls (similar to the later James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl).
In the opera, the Prince sits on a swing and it surrounded by seagulls carried by children. Kind of hard to explain, but it worked really well.

If anyone missed it but would like to see it, it is being released on Region-2 DVD (and the score on CD) tomorrow, I think, and is available from Amazon, amongst other places.